Summers Pulls Name From Consideration for Fed Chief

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Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama’s closest economic confidants and a former Treasury secretary, has withdrawn his name from consideration for the position of chairman of the Federal Reserve amid rising opposition from Mr. Obama’s own Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

In a statement released by the White House on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Obama said he had accepted the decision by his friend even as he praised him for helping to rescue the country from economic disaster early in the president’s term.

“Larry was a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth and made the kind of progress we are seeing today,” Mr. Obama said in the statement.

he means "wrestle only the financial sector back to stratospheric wealth"

He added: “I will always be grateful to Larry for his tireless work and service on behalf of his country (of the 1%), and I look forward to continuing to seek his guidance and counsel in the future.”

(like get me some fantastic directorships and speechmaking after 2016! )

Mr. Summers appeared to have been the White House’s favored candidate to succeed Ben S. Bernanke as chairman of the Fed, though Mr. Obama had repeatedly said he had not yet made a decision between Mr. Summers, Janet L. Yellen, who is a vice chairwoman of the Fed, or someone else.

But Mr. Summers’s reputation for being brusque, his comments about women’s natural ap ude in mathematics and science, and his decisions on financial regulatory matters in the Clinton and Obama administrations had made him a controversial choice.

Three Senate Democrats on the Banking Committee had come out against Mr. Summers’s nomination, meaning that the White House might have had to barter for as many as three Republican votes for him even to pass out of committee.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/16/bu...s&emc=rss&_r=0

whew! Summers would have been as big a disaster than Greenspan or Bernanke, maybe even much worse.

Obama has to find somebody who will be simply, by definition of the job, bad for the 99%, now that the worst candidate is out.

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Most recently, his troubling conflict of interest problem has been highlighted withparticular attention to his lucrative consulting gig with megabank Citigroup.

In the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) signaled strong opposition to Summers, and was joined by senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jeff Merkely (D-Ore). When Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), considered a moderate, joined the "no" group, things began to look very shaky for Summers and the press began to predict an ugly confirmation battle.

Senator Warren deserves full props for not backing down under White House pressure. She had good reason to remain firm: Not only does Summers represent a bank-centic worldview, he actively lobbied to prevent Warren from heading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her brainchild.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/larr...-chair-running

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Goldman Sacked

Joseph Stiglitz couldn't believe his ears. Here they were in the White House, with President Bill Clinton asking the chiefs of the US Treasury for guidance on the life and death of America's economy, when the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers turns to his boss, Secretary Robert Rubin, and says, "What would Goldman think of that?"

Huh?

Then, at another meeting, Summers said it again: What would Goldman think?

A shocked Stiglitz, then Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, told me he'd turned to Summers, and asked if Summers thought it appropriate to decide US economic policy based on "what Goldman thought." As opposed to say, the facts, or say, the needs of the American public, you know, all that stuff that we heard in Cabinet meetings on The West Wing.

Summers looked at Stiglitz like Stiglitz was some kind of naive fool who'd read too many civics books.

http://readersupportednews.org/opini...goldman-sacked