Maybe Harvard had it right in dismissing Summers, but to attribute the dismissal to his remarks about women, men, and science is a gross simplification of what actually happened.

His management style was a bigger factor.

Larry Summers never had a fan club. And I think it was a huge mistake for Obama took take all these Clinton economic people into his administration.

Dude, it's a STIMULUS BILL. This is not the time to be ramming forward anything we think is important. It doesn't matter if it provides a foundation for long term growth. Stimulus = short term, full stop.

I think lots of things are important! Infrastructure, green energy, health care. By all means let's have an infrastructure bill, a green energy bill, and a health care bill. Later this year.

Let's NOT use a crisis situation to ram through our priorities with little planning and under false pretenses. Remember the Iraq War? The Patriot Act?

Some infrastructure spending is short-term, and that can be included in "stimulus." Other infrastructure building is long-term, and that is emphatically not stimulus.

Succumbing to political opportunism and crisis exploitation is no more honorable just because the underlying programs are likely worthwhile.

Summers is also one of the non-Nationalization guys along with our Treasury Secretary.

We also need to remember that a ghost member of the key people who have Obama's ear is Robert Rubin.

For all the bullshit that Summers has "learned from his mistakes" and wants to "create a new legacy" in the place of the one that's getting sunk due to his roll in creating the current mess, he remains far too much a Monetary and Banking guy. We're past that point and need to get beyond those safe little boxes of his. Plus... he's a gigantic prick, which everyone has known for years.

I really wish it was Robert Reich instead of Summers who was in that current position. And that the name "Rubin" would remotely be associated with Obama.

John

and of course there was the memo Summers wrote back in 1991, in which he declared the logic of exporting our toxic waste to the third world to be "impeccable."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/envronmt/summers.htm

Anyone see the full page ad (at least in the Chi Trib) from Cato that warns against the stimulus package? Signed by at least a hundred academics, who are I'm guessing righty economists and biz school folks.

At the top is a statement about why they think spending on a stimulus is a bad idea. It's laughably simplistic and absolutely devoid of detail or intellectual content. Not ONE WORD about causes, either.

I bring this us because as lousy as Summers is, and he's lousy (Reich? Help us?), the right econs are even worse. Or worser, as they might say.

Obama is trustworthy, but he's also gotta get the best and brightest right now. It ain't time to pick friends and favorites.

Let's also please put education on the table.

Summers is another Clintonista who has managed to fasten himself to Obama. His economic policies in the Clinton administration are partially to blame for the present meltdown. and he is one of the (but not the only) bad, almost inexplicable, appointments our new President has made. He does not represent "Change" or "Hope". The only meme I see him manifesting is "Audacity".

Why Krugman isn't being summoned to the White House is a riddle I can't solve. He has a Nobel in economics and obviously is much more savvy than has-been hacks like Summers. Is he reluctant to serve President Obama because he supported Hillary in the primary? I wish he were on the inside giving advice rather than outside writing critical columns.

Xantar

I fully agree with you that the much of the "discussion" is very abusive. Much of it is little more than mean spirited ad hominem attacks on character -- rather than any discussions of the pro's and con's of various ideas for economic recovery. Many of these rants are actually dehumanizing.

This tit for tat crap is lame.

Why is there so much hatred for sumners? I understand that he's not the smoothest diplomat on the team, maybe perhaps the worst. But that's not what he was hired for. Yes, he advocated the repeal of Glass-Stegall, but then again it seemed everyone and their mom was preaching the Ayn Rand/Reagan/Greenspan gosple including the empowered free market with no regulation worshiping republicans that had done a thorough blanket snow job on everyone in the universe that the Laffer curve could still be even more effective when the tax rate is only a third, rather two thirds of your income. It's not like Sumners is oblivious to his faulty thinking, I'm sure he's more than aware of his mistake and hit he took to his reputation in that regard.

But as far as being anti-nationalization and a monetary and banking guy, I believe that absolutely is one of his strengths. I think some people here think this would be a better country if we restricted every facet of the financial sector in part by going the European route of intervention first. This would be shortsighted in utterly overlooking how the financial sector has been a pillar behind America's dominance in many areas and source of pride until we suffered absolutely no leadership whatsoever the last eight years, of course it's going to come crashing in a mass of infested rot and corruption. Let's not forget that, yeah sure Clinton helped push through Glass-Stegall, but I do NOT for a second believe we would be anywhere close to the crisis we face now had we had the competence of Clinton's close eye on the market that would have made efforts to head off the housing bubble that was predicted years before it happened, and begun the process of reconsidering the thinking behind conservative gospel of completely no regulation, and in GWB's case outright ignorance and neglect.

By stifling our financial sector, it would be like killing our original mama golden goose. Part of what Obama was elected to do was to rescue American capitalism, not plunge the country into socialism as some rethugs like to advertise by nationalizing everything. Our strength is our creativity when it came to financial instruments, and had been the paradigm that the rest of the world strove so hard to replicate. And with competent leadership in power, it wouldn't be seen as the bleak disaster that it is now, although the downside of mitigating the depths of the recession would be the potential of not reeling in the Madoff's and mini-Madoff's that are now being corralled en masse.

But why all this apocalyptic talk about Sumners so early in the game? We know that he recognizes the shortcomings of the deregulated republican economic gospel. No one can deny his genius and that he does understand the crisis on a level that DOES qualify him as one of the best and brightest in the field.

Because the media thinks the Right Wing is the Center.

This is hardly a new concept. Places like TPM have been pointing it out for pretty much the entire decade. Hell, it was the case in the 90s.

John