"Larry" Summers, one of the arch-crimininals who engineered the financial calamity and global economic collapse of 2008, won't be the next Chairman of the U.S. Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, after the current chairman, Republican Ben Bernanke (who the nominal Democrat Barack Obama nominated for a second term as Fed chairman in 2009) steps down in January of next year.
Before his nomination was even officially announced by Obama, opposition by Senators of both parties (Senate confirmation of the nominee is required) made it obvious Obama would have an uphill battle foisting this criminal on the nation. So today it was announced that Summers "decided to withdraw his name from consideration," This lie is told every time a regime withdraws a doomed nominee- the decision is attributed to the nominee.
What is the rap sheet on Summers? Let us briefly review.
Summers was a staffer on Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Reagan's economic policies were driven by a desire to make the rich as rich as possible while cutting social services (and incomes) for the lower classes. Reagan embraced a brand of pseudo-economic quackery known as "supply side economics."
Later, as chief economist at the World Bank, Summers put forth "economic" arguments claiming that it made perfect sense to dump toxic wastes willy-nilly in the Third World. (Later the story was put out that he was just joking.) He also dismissed as bunk the idea that this finite planet imposes any natural limits on "growth," that population could be unlimited, and that global warming is no big deal.
As Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, he helped engineer the gutting of financial regulation, including the repeal of the essential Glass-Steagall Act that served so well since the Great Depression, which led to the near catastrophe of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession, which the U.S. and Europe have yet to recover from. In this his patron and predecessor as Clinton Treasury Secretary, the corrupt Robert Rubin, was a co-conspirator. Both men, along with Alan Greenspan, politically mugged Brooksley Born, then chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who attempted unsuccessfully to put dangerous derivatives under a regulatory framework. [1]
Summers then went on to being the boss of Harvard University, where he drove out professor Cornel West, and opined that the relative dearth of women "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions".(i.e. joints like Harvard) may be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end;" a fancy way of saying dames ain't as smart as us guys. He claimed this was an "attempt at provocation."
Attempt successful, Larry. Or maybe we should call you Summers the Sexist from now on.
Obama reliably did the wrong thing in choosing Summers. As soon as he became President in 2009, Obama brought the economic wrecking crew into power in the Federal Government (Summers, the awful Tim Geithner, mole for Wall Street, and others of that financial oligarchy service class). Now hopefully he'll have to go with the rumored runner-up, Janet Yellen, who at least is a sensible capitalist economist and is currently Vice Chair of the Fed.
1] After his key role in helping abolish Glass-Steagall for Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Rubin went to collect his reward at Citigroup- a multi-million dollar per year sinecure there. Don't call it a payoff or a bribe!
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