Whatever the eventual verdict on Ron “Reality-Based Community” Suskind’s new book, surely all reasonable people can agree with NYMag that Larry Summers is a toxic pest:
Adam [Moss]: Hi, Frank. So there’s a little commotion about this new book Confidence Men, by Ron Suskind, which is being published on Tuesday… To give readers a super-fast overview, it’s a book, essentially, about Obama’s economic team during his first two years in office. The news of the book, according to some reports, is that Tim Geithner was insubordinate to the president, pursuing his own pro-banker agenda. Or, according to other reports, that Larry Summers was insubordinate to the president, pursuing his own — well, monomaniacal agenda. I’d add that it’s also about Rahm Emanuel being insubordinate to the president, just because. Basically, it’s about the presidency being hijacked by these three guys. And the guys thing is important because they’re pretty awful to women. Anyway, they’re the villains. Paul Volcker, Christina Romer, and Elizabeth Warren are the heroes. Bankers win, America loses. Did I get that right?
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Frank [Rich]: Hi, Adam, and yes, you did! I would point out that among the other heroes are more women (Sheila Bair, Brooksley Born, Maria Cantwell) and at least one man, the Princeton economist Alan Krueger, who also seems to be a serious Suskind source and who has now returned to the White House to succeed Austan Goolsbee and Romer as head of the Council of Economic Advisers. Not that that will do any good…
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AM: … Summers is portrayed as an egotistical nut job, single-mindedly determined to get Bernanke’s job; when he doesn’t get it, he goes bananas. He is supposed to be a conduit for the collective advice of the team, but undermines his colleagues, only passing along advice and information that supports his positions. I was kind of stunned how many officials were willing to go on the record against him.
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Peter Orszag relays this eviscerating quote that Summers said to him about Obama during the worst of the economic distress. According to Orszag, Summers says, “You know, Peter we’re really home alone. There’s no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes.” Later, Orszag says to Suskind, “Larry just didn’t think the president knew what he was deciding. Was this [obstruction of the president’s wishes] outright and willful?” In other words, asks Orszag, was Summers saying, “I know more than the president flat-out? That strikes me as … likely.” In an amazing memo, Pete Rouse, who would replace Emanuel temporarily as chief of staff, recommends firing Summers for “Larry’s imperious and heavy-handed direction of the economic policy process.” Romer says Summers made her feel “like a piece of meat.”
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In the end, nobody’s talking to Summers — not even his crony Geithner… At least according to Suskind, the only person who could stand Summers was Obama, which — in Suskind’s telling — was a misjudgment that had a rather profound effect on the first chunk of Obama’s presidency…
Corner Stone
Few things. First, as I asked in a previous thread, is Suskind taking liberties with his interviews? Because both Romer and Dunn have now come out and very squishy squashy tip toed back some of the highlighted quotes.
Second, as I’ve been saying all along, every thing that comes out of Summers’ mouth has been CYA and damage control of some variety or other.
Also, while I have no doubt Summers has a better overall grasp of economics and the economy in general than Obama, President Obama is still the boss. And Summers was a highly known quantity when President Obama invited LS into the admin.
definitely not motorik
Listen, don’t criticize Obama or ABL will march in here with her ridonkulouses and innits and what will we do then?
MariedeGournay
I’m surprised Fincher didn’t get IL&M to CG in a Hutt instead of hiring an actor to portray him in “The Social Network.”
SiubhanDuinne
Well, Anne Laurie, now that you bring it up . . . what is the next BJ book chat selection, and when do we start discussing it?
PeakVT
surely all reasonable people can agree with NYMag that Larry Summers is a toxic pest:
Everybody except Delong, who should be penning another ridiculous defense of Larry any day now.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Fortunately, President Obama canned this horse’s ass as soon as he found out that he had been appointed to a position of great responsibility.
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BGinCHI
If you read Krugman’s blog day in day out you get a strong sense that he knows exactly what he’s talking about and can pinpoint the flaws in other economist’s arguments.
And, what’s more important: he’s funny, self-deprecating, non-prejudicial, and NOT an asshole who thinks he’s superior to everyone else.
So, of course, we get Summers running the econ policy.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Feudalism Now!
We can’t have nice things, if we only get economists as advisers who prefer the profitability of banks and financials to the prosperity of all of America.
This is why we need Cornell West and Ralph Nader to primary…. I can’t do it. I can’t even type it without laughing.
Mark S.
Hmm, this could get interesting.
handy
@MariedeGournay:
Awesome!
General Stuck
I’ve despised both Gheitner and Summers from day one they were nominated, and was impolitely told here that these guys were smartest guys anywhere to unwind the mess Obama walked into .
They both give me the creeps still, but all I know is that we didn’t fall into the abyss, and while things are bad, they aren’t as desperate as they were then. A case in point is still having an auto industry that is American owned and operated. But I have no doubt the bankers have done much better than they should have.
I did see what I thought was Gheitner early on being a little too big for his britches and running his mouth a bit much. But one day that changed, so I figured somebody read him the riot act.
I’ve believed from day one that any real recovery of our economy was going to take a lot longer than a normal downturn, especially regarding the jobs coming back. But Frank Rich has long since turned against Obama, and I don’t put much stock in what he says on that subject. And I think it’s laughable, and maybe something else, to keep pushing the meme that Obama as being manipulated by anyone, male or female and is not and has not been in full charge from day one. It sounds to me like some pro lefters are trying to stir the shit to tarnish Obama and draw a firebagger audience. Just my opinion .
Lojasmo
@Corner Stone:
Clearly, you hate all white people.
nellcote
Swiftboat anyone?
burnspbesq
@PeakVT:
DeLong is a lot smarter than you. If he’s defending Summers, you ought to be asking why rather than being blithely dismissive.
Anne Laurie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m still waiting for DougJ to start his Shock Doctrine discussion group.
Corner Stone
@Lojasmo:
Is it because I’m white? Do I secretly, or not so secretly, suffer from an immense amount of white guilt? And hate myself so passionately that my psyche can’t deal with it and I’ve thusly transferred it to everyone I associate as “my” kind?
Donut
@burnspbesq:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc
Linda Featheringill
@Feudalism Now!:
Great name change! :-)
Corner Stone
@Donut: I totally agree.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@burnspbesq:
I like your logic. Because if Lex Luthor is a lot smarter than you, and he recommends killing Superman and throwing the Earth off its orbit so it spirals into the Sun, then you ought to be asking why rather then being blithely dismissive. And that should be obvious to even the most casual balloonbagger.
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mclaren
So Larry Summers is a toxic egomaniacal pest who wrecks entire economies?
Quelle surprise! After Larry Summers oversaw the economic “shock therapy” which wrecked the Russian economy, who could ever have predicted? Next revelation: sun likely to rise in the morning…
And hey! Shouldn’t Corner Stone be banned? Because he’s an eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil racist for criticizing Barack Obama, and, stuff?
If there’s anything that will make liberalism strong and healthy as a political movement, surely it’s Stalinist purges…
Forsetti
If this assessment is true,like any hire, you do the best you can to find the best candidate and put faith in them to do the job they were hired to do. Unfortunatley, often times, that hire turns out not to be “as advertised”. With the severity of the financial situation in early 2009, it would have been political suicide for Obama to turn around after a few months and fire Geithner and/or Summers. That would have played right into the hands of “he is too green and inexperienced to be President” meme. And I am not certain that even if these two would have done exactly what Obama wanted, things would be much different. I don’t see the Republicans or Blue Dogs suddenly having a change of heart because those close to Obama are “toeing the line”.
srv
I’m glad it only took a few years into the administration to sort out Larry and the likes of Goolsbee where whackjobs. Now if they could only figure that out about Geithner, we might be able to get somewhere.
Corner Stone
@Forsetti:
Are you out of your mind?
Summers is he we thought he is! He is who we thought he is!
Summers was a very known quantity. He delivered exactly what he advertised. President Obama didn’t make a false flag hire. He hired Larry Summers.
burnspbesq
@Donut:
Pathetic. Is that the best you can, clown?
some guy
wow, a tax avoidance lawyer making an argument from authority to defend Summers. now that’s something you rarely see at BJ.
Valukis laid out pretty clearly why Geithner should be fdacing charges before a grand jury, and yet he’s still running the economy for the benefit of Citi and Goldman and JPMorgan. Oh, and he’s also telling the Europeans they should be instituting a Toobin Tax. so say what you will about the unindicted Treasury Secretary, at least the guy has huevos grandes.
Corner Stone
@mclaren:
And a BJ “hello” backatcha!
Davis X. Machina
See, if Hillary had won, she’d have been able to draw upon all the stars of the first Clinton administration, like Larry Summers, and none of this would have happened
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq: You’re really going to double down on the argument from authority here? Using Delong to defend Summers?
I guess that’s your right but it’s more than a little pathetic.
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina: Funnily enough…President Obama actually hired Larry Summers in real life. So we don’t need to speculate.
Thymezone
Is there any sex in the book? Because if there isn’t, fuck it.
geg6
Both Geithner and Summers were terrible picks, both arrogant bankster-sucking assholes. I understand why Obama chose them at the time, but knew it wouldn’t work out well. As for this meme of Obambi getting schooled by the Mean Boyz, cut me a fucking break. Suskind is falling for a load of bullshit CYA. Obama has gotten rid of (whether voluntarily or not) both Emmanuel and Summers. And I have no doubt that he’d dump Geithner, too, if he wasn’t pretty sure the GOP would hold up any appointment that wasn’t Paul Ryan.
Mike G
The financiers who own the Democratic Party made sure that Wall-Street-friendly tools were installed in financial posts to ensure the taxpayer, and not them, would suffer for their vast failures and crimes.
Anyone looking out for the interests of the country would have protected the economy first, the financial system second and specific financial firms third; Wall Street’s tools did the opposite.
some guy
Yves Smith has an interesting take on the Geithner insubordination claim:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/latest-obama-lame-excuse-my-staff-was-insubordinate.html
Mino
@General Stuck: If anything, I’d say they’re trying to push Summers on the sword.
srv
Timmy is just taking the heat for Obama – no way they were thinking of breaking up Citi. Obama was packaged by Rubin & Citibucks. You’d sooner see Goldman Sachs broken up.
Hitlery might have wanted to ratfuck Rubin, given his public ‘misgivings’ about her candicacy. Slick is on record for saying Summers & Rubin’s advice on derivatives was lousy (but of course he defended all that during the meltdown)
Forsetti
@Corner Stone:
Who is “we”? I don’t remember any of “you” whining and complaining about Summers in the Clinton administration. In fact I remember quite the opposite, that the Clinton economic team was the “be all to end all”.
It is easy to sit on the sidelines and kibbitz but as Machina pointed out, if Hillary had won, it is likely Summers would have been hired and the situation would have been the same.
But since you are such a fabulous armchair quarterback, please give me a list of people that Obama could have hired that would have altered the votes in Congress from the Blue Dogs or miraculously made Republicans vote for a single economic policy inspired from the White House.
General Stuck
LOLwut? Maybe you should read it again. They are after Obama, pure and simple.
Corner Stone
@Mino: Why do you think Summers has been so widely quoted after his departure from the admin? He spread his bile and destructive influence while inside and knew when he left they would hang him for it. He’s been burnspbesqishing his legacy ever since.
Corner Stone
@Forsetti: No need to speculate. President Obama hired Larry Summers. Rebuttal?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Forsetti: Pee Wee Herman?
General Stuck
@nellcote:
Yup
BGinCHI
This sums it up nicely.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/ive-never-actually-seen-the-resemblance/
askew
Not surprised that you jumped on this story. There are a lot of bitter Clinton supporters who are desperately clinging to the idea that Obama is naive, or not smart enough to be in control of his presidency. I don’t know if it is because they know if Obama gets a 2nd term, he’ll be considered one of the greatest presidents in a generation and Clinton will be eclipsed or if they are desperate to believe they were “right” during the primaries.
Thymezone (formerly Hey You)
Just wanted to try out my new handle. I’m joining the Formerlies, those of us who are just here to build a legacy at your expense.
Robert Waldmann
Whatever the eventual verdict indeed.
Suskindperformed major public services with “The Price of Loyalty” and “The One Percent Doctrine” but this one is getting some pretty specific denial denial pushback.
Anita Dunn (former communications director) is quoted in the book as saying the Whitehouse was a hostile work environment for women. She said she catagorically told Suskind that it was *not* a hostile work environment. OK so uh “communications” and uh facts are not always the same, but that’s a pretty firm denial.
Brad DeLong (no longer an Obot) notes that Geithner’s failure to develop a plan to take over Citibank is not surprising or evidence of pro banker sabotage. His view is that, since no one Presidential appointee but Geithner had been approved at Treasury, there was no way Geithner could have developed such a plan by himself (note civil servants don’t count … Brad is a former deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury who should know. Summers told Brad he would have a staff of 50 civil servants who, at best, would not cost him extra work keeping track of them).
Notably Summers didn’t deny that he said they were home alone (a very non-denial denial). Romer says she can’t imagine saying “piece of meat” (she didn’t say she can’t *remember* saying that).
I note that Larry Summers was the PhD advisor of Alan Krueger and Brad DeLong (and me). He’s a friend of a friend of mine.
YOu get the picture ?
Corner Stone
@BGinCHI: That. Is awesome.
Thymezone
Hahahaha.
Mino
@General Stuck: Do you think it helps Obama to totally own this fucking economy? 9+%unemployment and a quarter of the real estate under water?
wasabi gasp
Killing Superman is negotiable.
Mino
@BGinCHI: lol excellent and I’m sure it occurs to him at times.
PeakVT
@burnspbesq: I’m dismissive because Delong’s judgment of Larry is clearly flawed, most likely because Delong worked with him in the Clinton administration and confuses friendly feelings with objective analysis.
If you’re going to argue from authority try not to cite somebody who everybody thinks is wrong on the subject.
srv
@Forsetti: Larry was a deputy during most of that, and progressives whined a lot about Rubin.
1999, biotch.
We know you’ve never done anything but bitch, but don’t tell us we thought Larry was the bomb.
General Stuck
@Mino:
Politically speaking, every president owns the economy at this stage of their presidency, even if their powers to affect it are marginal. In this particular situation, at least with the polls, the public largely gets this is an especially bad situation that they still largely blame Bush for. I think it is silly and stupid for Obama, or anyone to lay it on one of his economic advisers. And you won’t see Obama do that.
Obama is doing the healthiest thing he can for his reelection, offering a plan to make things better, and living in the present reality, and mostly owning it. By putting the onus on congress to make his efforts law.
Thymezone
@BGinCHI:
That would be funny, unless you have seen Krugman flayed and displayed by no less a dickhead than George Will on the ABC Sunday morning show. Krugman sounds like Father Mulcahey and Will is dripping with so much condescension that he almost drowns in his own effluent.
Corner Stone
@Thymezone: Krugman has never lost a rhetorical argument to Will on ABC’s This Week and only a blithering idiot would think so.
FlipYrWhig
I can entirely believe that Summers inconveniently and frustrating tacked between roles, partly as a conventional economic-policy advisor (“if we did X, it would help the economy”) and partly as a political advisor (“but we can’t get X past Congress, so that’s out” or “if we tried to do X it would upset interest-group Y, so that’s out”). He seems to think rather highly of himself and be excessively confident that he’ll come out of any showdown looking better — c.f. his stint at Harvard. So it’s very easy to imagine Summers talking A LOT of shit, and burning a lot of bridges in the process.
Thymezone
@Corner Stone:
Funny. I didn’t know you had seen them all and kept a log. It’s good to have a hobby.
Krugman looks like a lost marionette on the show. His pipsqueaky voice and tortured arguments just leave everyone looking at the floor. He is what I imagine you to be like in real life.
Donut
@burnspbesq:
Oh, fucking get over yourself, you twit. I am god damned fucking entitled to think Summers added very little of lasting value to the Obama team and I am god damned fucking entitled to mock you when you try to defend him citing Brad Fucking DeLong as the go-to authority. I don’t even have a problem with DeLong, but citing him to defend Summers is, well, clownish.
Corner Stone
@Thymezone: I wish I were that handsome and manly.
If you think Will makes a more persuasive argument when Krug is there, there’s not a lot more to say to you.
Thymezone
@Thymezone:
Krugman is sort of like a female version of Eleanor Clift.
Well, with a beard.
BGinCHI
@Thymezone: Go back to the MASH reruns. I don’t think you understand that sitcom, much less the other stuff you’re talking about.
Smarter trolls, please.
Thymezone
@Corner Stone:
Oh, not to me and you, two gnarly men of the mountains. But to the average person, they sound like two wards of the state having graham crackers and juice out on the lawn of the asylum.
LosGatosCA
Appointing Geithner, Summers, and reappointing Bernanke were the symptoms of a poor economic policy/strategy choice by Obama. The policy/strategy and appointments are the albatross that have left the economy struggling and will take down Obama.
He deserves the fate he will earn, too bad the American people don’t deserve it.
Corner Stone
@Thymezone: What I imagine you to look like in real life.
Alex S.
I can’t forgive him for killing Christina Romer’s $1,2 trillion stimulus proposal because he thought it couldn’t get passed, so he started with $900 billion and it got negotiated down to $780 million with lots of tax cuts. That and his belief in the powers of deregulation doesn’t really make me a fan of his. I’m not surprised that he thinks that he’s smarter than everyone else. Too bad Obama believed in him for so long.
mclaren
@burnspbesq:
Do you have any evidence to back up the claim that Brad DeLong is especially smart?
Let’s take a look at DeLong’s own assessment of his economic predictions:
Why I was wrong, Brad DeLong, 2008.
Also see DeLong’s column from 5 July 2010, “I Used to Think that Academic Economics Was a Progressive Science. I Now Think I Was Wrong…”
For a more general assessment of the comprehensive failure of the entire economic profession in the wake of the 2007 global financial meltdown, see Paul Krugman’s 2 September 2009 column “How did economists get it so wrong?”
Doesn’t sound like any of these people are especially smart. They were wrong from the start, wrong in their predictions, wrong in their policies, wrong in their recommendations. If guys like Brad DeLong built our skyscrapers, we’d all be living in rubble right now.
mclaren
@Donut:
There. Fixed that for you. (“Lawerly” means the same thing as “clownish,” but sounds ever so much more prestigious and uppah-clahhss.)
LosGatosCA
One of the sadder episodes for Brad Delong and Paul Krugman is supporting Ben Bernanke’s reappointment.
That should be an object lesson for them that crony capitalism has much stronger roots than they realize if two liberal economists are willing to put their collegiality above the ruthless policy shifts needed at the highest levels to get America on a better economic and regulatory path.
Very sad but ver true.
BGinCHI
@Thymezone: It’s too late to apologize.
BGinCHI
@LosGatosCA: Forget about it Jake, it’s the Fed.
mclaren
@some guy:
Oh, absolutely. Remember, Obama is the guy who absolutely refused to tolerate the Wall Street thieves’ decision to give themselves obscenely huge bonuses after they got bailed out with trillions of dollars of public money.
Oh, wait…
But remember! Obama is the tough little lad who utterly refused to take it sitting down when the Joint Chiefs of Staff insurbordinately refused to give him a plan for reducing troop strength in Afghanistan in 2006 as he had ordered them to, and instead gave him three plans, all of which increased troops in Afghanistan — and then the Joint Chiefs leaked a negative assessment of the Afghanistan war to members of congress to force Obama’s hand. Why, there’s just no way Obama would stand for that!
Oh, wait…
But, hey! Obama would never stand for the far-right Tea Party Republicans in congress holding America hostage by threatening to default on our national debt. Obama would never ever reward that kind of political blackmail by negotiating with those thugs!
Oh, wait…
But at least Obama would never stand for his head military man, General Petraeus, sneering “He’s f**king with the wrong guy” when Obama demanded Petaeus wind down the global war on terror.
Oh, wait…
Obama is a vacillating temporizing weak-willed easily-duped gullible academic. He got stellar grades and he writes inspiring books. But if you back the guy against a wall and stick a shiv at his throat, he whimpers like a little girl and folds.
End of story.
Anne Laurie
@askew:
Not sure where your scattershot is aiming, but I wasn’t a Hillary Clinton supporter — Edwards was my choice, because he was the only one talking about the richest one percents’ war against the rest of us. I want Obama to get re-elected in 2012, because out of the available choices, he’s still the least worst.
But Larry Summers has been a known toxin since at least 1991:
The fact that Summers went on to fvck up Bill Clinton’s economic team, and then got promoted to go fvck up Harvard’s endowment fund, just proves that there’s an unlimited career in being a Huge Public Toxin as long as you’ve got the right credentials and the robber barons behind you. If the Obama Administration couldn’t predict Summers was going to fvck up the Bankster Bailout, either they had an overweening sense of their ability to change Summers’ 20-year track record of massive failure, or they wanted Summers to do what Summers has always done. I know there weren’t a lot of Repub-acceptable choices available, but Larry “Toxic Waste” Summers shouldn’t be given any job more responsible than digging latrines at a refugee camp.
Forsetti
@srv:
I make a point about Summers’ popularity and you respond by pointing out something about Rubin? Way to change to topic.
Since I rarely post, I find your “We know you’ve never done anything but bitch…” comment hysterical and another example of trying to change to topic. Please focus.
mclaren
@BGinCHI:
Perfect example of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Forsetti
@Corner Stone:
Rebuttal? You were asked a specific question and instead of a response to it you ask “Rebuttal”? Please explain how thing would have been different had Clinton hired all the Clinonites, including Summers? Until you answer this question, “Rebuttal” is totally meaningless.
Ben Wolf
@Corner Stone:
Thymezone
@Anne Laurie:
It’s clear that Summers would lose a popularity contest to smallpox, but … your post is pretty much just a garden variety hit piece that would be worthy of someone like …. Summers. I mean, “intended as sarcasm” is a little weak considering that the thing looks a lot like sarcasm. Sarcasm … how does it work? And by that I mean, what do people think sarcasm is? It’s mean, and often effective in the right circumstances. And it contains some sort of truth, which is what makes it sarcasm, and not just poo. Some people are better at sarcasm than others. My mother, for example, could cut up Larry Summers like a tomato in a food processor, simmer him up, eat him and spit him out. But the old girl knows nothing about economics. If you know what I mean.
But if the biggest knock on Summers is that he is a nasty sarcast, then … whatever. But if he is a destroyer of presidents, or wants to be … well then, now we have a book.
BGinCHI
@mclaren: This also nicely explains how David Brooks has a paying job.
He literally produces nothing. There is zero material value to what he does. Yet he judges and proscribes for thousands of people who do. And he does so in the guise of a conservatism that is about “producers” and “suppliers.”
His name needs to become a proper noun like Bowdler’s.
mclaren
@Anne Laurie:
Thanks for posting that detail. Was gonna go over that infamous bit of Larry Summers history for the benefit of the “hoocoodanode?” folks. Now I don’t have to.
Larry Summers has failed in every way that matters at every serious job he ever held. Summers is to economic policy in the 1990s and 2000s what Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was to United States military policy in the 1960s. After producing that stunning automotive success the Edsel, Robert S. McNamara went on to do for Vietnam what he’d done for Detroit. And after he mired the United States deep in a hopeless military quagmire for night on 10 years of blood and horror and bombing and mass death, what did McNamara do?
Why, he oversaw the World Bank in the 1980s, and wherever McNamara stretched out his hand, famine and economic collapse and austerity policies destroyed third world nations.
In fact, the similarities twixt Larry Summers and Robert S. McNamara prove eerie. McNamara’s beloved fetish was systems analysis. And what is Larry Summers’ favorite economic tool?
Let’s look at a New Yorker article about Larry Summers to see:
Source: Larry Summers and the White House economic team, 2 September 2009, The New Yorker.
srv
@Forsetti:
Way to change the topic, moron.
We used to have to create fake trolls to be as stupid as you are, but you’re a real natural nick.
Maude
@mclaren:
Other than that, what’s not to like?
Forsetti
@srv:
So your response to changing the topic from Summers to Rubin is to attack me for changing the topic? Classic dumbassery. To add an ad hominem, priceless.
mclaren
Oh, also, let’s not forget that in addition to destroying the entire economy of Russia in 1990-1 and trashing the U.S. economy by fighting against an adequate stimulus in 2007-8, Larry Summers also argued vehemently in favor of jettisoning the Glass-Steagall restrictions on banking during the Clinton administration, and during the Bush administration Summers enthusiastically urged the SEC not to place extra restrictions on derivatives.
For those of you who haven’t been living in a bathysphere for the last 10 years, dumping Glass-Steagall restrictions which prevented banks for getting into the stock market, and grossly inadequate safeguards on derivative financial instruments, were two of the most important economic policies that contributed to the meltdown of the world economy in 2007.
Source: “Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics,” the Chronicle of Higher Education, 3 October 2010.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@wasabi gasp:
Only Mr. Luthor would know that.
And then there’s the other part…
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opal
Gee. Hillbots protecting the queen.
That never gets old.
Thymezone
You aren’t deleting posts you don’t like, there, are you Anne Laurie?
eemom
in the plus column, Summers DID call the Winklevoss twins assholes.
srv
@Forsetti: You remember that progressives saw the Clinton team and Summers as the “be all to end all” (your quote)
We all realize you are making shit up. Or you live in some universe where Larry worked as Rubin’s deputy and all the progressives lurved him and the “be all to end all” economic team so much.
Please provide a link backing up your whacked-out ‘memory’, or grow a pair and admit you’re an idiot and being a pedantic asshole.
t jasper parnell
@SiubhanDuinne: Graeber on debt.
srv
And Forsetti, not that you’ll every grow up and admit you’re pulling ‘memories’ out of your ass, but here’s some shit on Summers’ to accomodate the pendatic stick up it:
http://www.counterpunch.org/1999/06/15/larry-summers-war-against-the-earth/
but I’m sure your ‘memory’ is correct.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Thymezone:
No, no and no. He is only a destroyer of economies. Presidents are just collateral damage. Even though President Obama likes collateral damage well enough.
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Thymezone
@eemom:
Good one. I might have to steal that.
opal
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
Has anyone ever told you how your affectations are lame and tend to undermine whatever point you might have?
Corner Stone
@Forsetti: I understand you are being dense for a purpose. And that’s cool. But as anyone capable of reading knows very well, we don’t have to consider what “might” have happened under HRC. There’s no hypothetical needed. President Obama did, actually in fact and reality, hire Larry Summers.
We need not speculate about the boogeys in the closet. We can see actual real world results. Just by opening our eyes and observing.
Forsetti
@srv:
Ad hominems are the argument of the weak-minded but don’t let that stop you; cause and effect. Statement about Summers is answered with a statement about Rubin. How fallacious can you be in one thread? Have any Strawmen or Red Herring you laying around you want to drag out? Your mental closet must be full of them.
Brien Jackson
Ya know, I’m not really buying it. Summers was talking about fiscal stimulus during the transition, and even if he did think that the stimulus proposal should be tamped down for the Senate, he was still taking a more or less “jobs=success” line throughout his time in the administration. And by most contemporary accounts, he left the administration because Obama was listening to his political advisers and pushing austerity rather than listening to the economics team and pushing stimulus. I suspect a lot of this is just ass covering, using Summers as a convenient scapegoat due to his reputation in the Village as an asshole.
And you know what? I’m pretty pissed off Summers didn;t get bernanke’s job too. Replace Bernanke with Summers and make a real effort to get guys like Peter Diamond appointed to the board of governors, and the country is infinitely better off than it is now.
Corner Stone
@opal: How, and in what world, could a discussion about President Obama actually really totally hiring Larry Summers be turned into a discussion about who HRC would have hypothetically hired?
Djur
Is it really still a thing to accuse anyone who is critical of Obama from the left as being a disaffected Hillary dead-ender? I mean, really?
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson:
Accounts by whom?
lawguy
@Forsetti: Wait, do I understand you correctly? If Obama really screwed up and appointed total incompetents, he needs to stick with them because he needs to look good?
Shawn in ShowMe
Enough of the Hillbot references whenever Anne Laurie posts about the Obama adminstration. The lady’s posting history as an Edwards supporter is there for everyone on the Googles to see. Cheeee-rist.
Thymezone
@Corner Stone:
The world in which it appears that bloggods might be randomly deleting posts and “shaping” threads?
I could be wrong, I was once, about 40 years ago. But … just saying.
lawguy
@askew: Could you please give me the number of your dealer?
Corner Stone
@Thymezone: If you got something to say, spit it.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
This is what a quick Google search turns up:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b3c143b6-952d-11e0-a648-00144feab49a,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fb3c143b6-952d-11e0-a648-00144feab49a.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Feconomistsview.typepad.com%2Feconomistsview%2F2011%2F06%2Fhow-to-avoid-a-lost-decade.html
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/16/138185648/when-a-turn-toward-austerity-turned-to-disaster
I can’t find references to waht I remember reading (I want to say Yglesias linked something about it once but, well, it’s been a long day of football), so maybe I’m imagining it. But in any event, Summers has clearly been sounding the right notes this past year.
Forsetti
@Corner Stone:
No one is disputing about “what did happen”. What is being asked is how would of it of been different if Hillary would have been elected? If the answer is “Nothing”, then it seems ridiculous to whine, complain and say “Should of, could of, would of”. Complaining about things not being “ideal” is only productive if there are better or more likely options. So far, on this thread, I have yet to see or hear an argument where someone other than Summers, Geithner, in place would have produced different results. Of course there are very good reasons for this, the least of which is the political situation in D.C. would not and is not going to support policies and ideas from anyone putting forth a very progressive agenda. I certainly wish they would but the reality of the situation is they wouldn’t so the “but so and so would have been a better choice” seems nothing more than wishful thinking and mental masturbation.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson: Summers has been CYA’ng his balls off. He has been lying about facts on record since he left the admin.
Corner Stone
@Forsetti: Why is anyone asking that? You’re really making the argument that what we should be discussing re: Summers is how President HRC would have handled him in her admin?
Are you insane?
opal
@Djur:
I’ts been the same crew since She lost the primary.
This was no boating accident.
Corner Stone
@Djur: Racist.
Which is to say, ‘hello!’ here at BJ.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
Well that’s a possibility, but this all just seems weird to me. The criticisms of Summers here seem to center around things (he’s an asshole who’s very high on his own opinion) that everyone knew about him going in, and the “insubordinate” tag just seems weird. I mean, Summers was heading the NEC, how exactly was he supposed to be insubordinate? he wasn’t running a department and implementing policy, he was an adviser. How can an adviser be insubordinate?
So I could definitely be wrong, but if I’m really parsing it out it seems a lot more likely that the White House is trying to use Summers as a fall guy than that Summers is trying to cover his own ass here. After all, Summers is a very wealthy, very influential guy who’s going to be just fine. He doesn’t really have much of an incentive to be out there arguing for less austerity now, other than that he knows it’s the right policy.
Forsetti
@lawguy:
No that is not my position. I think under the financial pressures of early 2009 it would have been political suicide to fire Summers or Geithner right out of the block. I also have not heard anyone provide a legitimate alternative to Geithner that is going to get confirmed, get a progressive economic agenda through Congress, etc. The wishing for the ideal does not make it a reality. The pragmatics of the situation often dictate certain people selected and sometimes defended because there are no legitimate alternatives that would get you anything more than you already have.
Brien Jackson
And a big theme of this seems to be “Summers was really mad because he wanted Bernanke’s job and didn’t get it,” and that’s being framed as a bad thing in an implicitly pro-Bernanke sense. No way in hell am I wrapping my arms around that.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Forsetti:
But why? What’s Hillary got to do with this post?
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson: IMO, the ego of Summers is a pretty big factor here.
But let’s stip that the WH is letting background make the story that Summers was a punk and a chump and he’s the boogeyman.
How does that make the WH look? LS wasn’t a fresh faced youngster coming in. He had a well defined record to review.
Thymezone
@Corner Stone:
I don’t have proof, but suspicious that posts have disappeared from threads today. Now that I am alerted to it I can keep an eye out and catch them redhanded if it happens again. Of course, since it is WP, it could always just be shitty software at work.
Emma
@askew: I am wondering that myself. The Clinton nostalgia has been coming thick and wet. Ah… what the hell, I’ll leave it.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Emma:
This is Anne Laurie that posted this, Emma. So it’s really Edwards nostalgia.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
Well, it makes the WH look hoorible. That’s kind of my point. Summers isn’t the problem, Obama’s horrible economic management is. Christ, look at this.
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/06/15/197564/wise-words-from-larry-summers/
That’s Larry Summers, speaking to a writer for the Washington Post, being 100% dead right about the fundamental needs of economic policy. Summers might have his own problems to be sure, but the guy does know economics, in contrast to Barack Obama, who’s been so irredeemably bad he’s made Larry fucking Summers an un-serious DFH by comparison.
opal
@Thymezone:
Most likely WP.
It’s been happening elsewhere.
Emma
@mclaren: I was going to try again to rebut some of your crap but what the hell. Your hatred of Obama’s inability to deliver the magic ponies is unthinking and unreasoning.
Anya
I am just amazed by the level of commitment that Ann Laurie and some commenters have to highlighting everything that’s critical of, or damaging to President Obama. Why are you bent on inciting friendly fires and lowering voter turnout? If you think a republican president will be preferable, then you’re not paying a close attention to what’s happening at the States legislators. This is an election year and it’s suicidal to be filling the front page with this kind of weakly sourced book. Some of the primary sources are already denying the quotes that was attributed to them. So what’s the purpose of this post, Ann Laurie?
Forsetti
@Shawn in ShowMe:
You would of had to follow the conversation and thread. Hillary really has nothing to do with the topic other than it being mentioned that if she had been elected there was a good chance people like Summers would have been part of her economic team. That the choice of Summers and the consequences that followed seemed woven into the Democratic fabric at the time so the situation would be pretty much the same regardless of who was elected.
Emma
@Corner Stone: Dealing with the “alternative universe left” tends to do that to one, I’m afraid.
The need of some people who show how much more intelligent they are than the president, and how much better they would have done if they had been president themselves is downright frightening. Add the kind of visceral hatred that comes across from some of you — McLaren’s little entry — it’s downright sickening.
The fun thing is that none of you have ever risked a bloody thing. Nothing. Not even gone out for a local school board seat. It’s so easy to critizise when you’re sitting down at the keyboard drinking beer and munching on cheetos.
lawguy
@Forsetti: I am really tired of people arguing that whatever it was Obama did and no matter how badly it turned out, really when you look at it and evaluate all the possible alternatives. It could never have been otherwise.
It is indeed the best of all Obama worlds.
Anya
@Brien Jackson: The bigger theme is Obama is a week executive and a sexist prick. Also, too, Lawrence Summers is an asshole.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Anya:
Perhaps there is so much of it that you can’t get out of bed without stumbling over it. Just a thought.
.
.
srv
@Forsetti:
I guess that is your “be all and end all” evidence of Larry’s popularity with progressives. Slam dunk for you and your memories.
You’ve got a lot of growing up to do.
Brien Jackson
@Anya:
Indeed, Summers does seem to be quite the asshole. But based on everything I’ve read from late 2008 to now, he’s an asshole who thinks the turn to austerity is moronic and is otherwise exactly right on his economic prescription for the country. I can live with that trade off. It’s a shame Obama didn’t listen to him more.
Brien Jackson
@Emma:
You know what, as someone whose O-bot credentials would be vouched for by many, you’re out of your mind. And if you want to defend Obama for, say, re-appointing Ben “I’m just fine with 9% unemployment for the next half a decade” Bernanke to the most powerful economic policy making post in the world, more power to you. If you want to defend Obama for embracing economic illiteracy, that’s your prerogative. But pardon me if I won’t jump on that bandwagon.
General Stuck
@Brien Jackson:
WTF you talking about? Obama turning to austerity? He just proposed a sizable stimulus package that pleased even Krugman. And any spending cuts that have been agreed on, are not set to start till 2013. That is long term deficit reduction, not austerity.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Emma:
An excellent summation of balloonbagger keyboarder hypocrisy. Aside from that, according to your theory no one can, should, or have the right to praise anything either, having never even run for dogcatcher. Is that about right?
.
.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I can’t imagine that Mr. “Girls Can’t Do Math” Summers would be so tactless, can you?
I think that some of the objections to Geithner’s and Summers’ appointments were silly and often factually wrong (for the record, Geithner has never actually worked for a bank) but I’m still convinced that they were appointed in large part to appease the Clintonites who are high up in the Democratic Party’s infrastructure and, just as I feared, they went and fucked things up.
Anne Laurie
@opal: Tell us again how The Dread Pirate Hillary stole your pacifier — maybe the 4,563,703rd time will be the convincer.
General Stuck
Jeebus fucking christ. Austerity? you fuckers must miss the 1.5 trillion spending deficits for the past 3 years. Hardly austerity, except for morons and wankers.
Brien Jackson
@General Stuck:
at this point, 2013 does not count as long term deficit reduction. It’s far too early to start cutting government spending.
In any case, if you’re seriously going to argue that Obama hasn’t embraced austerity, even rhetorically, there’s no point in arguing this. You’re no more in touch with reality than the people who think Ben Nelson is a liberal if you want it.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne:
This needs some backfill.
boss bitch
@Brien Jackson:
Show me Obama’s austerity plan.
mclaren
@Anya:
Well, you know, Anya, I am just amazed by the level of denial that Anya and some other obots exhibit by erasing from the historical record and rationalizing and arguing out of existence by means of infantile sophistries everything that’s critical of, or damaging to, President Obama’s policies.
Policies, kiddo.
The policies aren’t the person. Barack Obama seems like a great guy. Personable, charming, clever, interesting, eloquent, inspiring.
His policies, however, are another matter entirely.
Can we please move away from the cult of personality here on Balloon-Juice and onto a sober sensible discussion of the actual policies proposed by the people we elect?
Rhoda
@Alex S.: Can you forgive Nancy Pelosi for coming out with a $500 billion dollar stimulus?
The stimulus that passed was the largest in history and larger than anything FDR did; and FDR got a second bite at the apple. A second bite progressives were sounding the drum could NEVER happen; well because they wanted things there way so they took Republican talking points to attack the administration. (A familiar tactic now.)
Now we know how bad it was in ’08; back then we didn’t have a clue and what did pass was historic and helped save us from a depression. We need a second stimulus; and the President is out there trying to get one with his jobs bill. It’s be nice if people would help him try to get it over the line.
Brien Jackson
@boss bitch:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/united-states-of-austerity
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/president-obamas-debt-ceiling-presser-a
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Obama+seals+austerity+bill+markets+anxious/5197799/story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/25/AR2011012507843.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-to-set-out-painful-budget-plans-for-austerity-in-america-2213876.html
Mnemosyne
@Brien Jackson:
Other than the need of his huge ego to prove that he was right and Obama was wrong. Never underestimate how important Summers’ ego is to him.
Also, the Summers interview is definitely aimed far more at Congress’ inability to pass legislation and not at the administration. Reading it as a criticism of Obama rather than Congress — which is what Summers specifically criticizes in the interview — is a major stretch.
General Stuck
@Brien Jackson:
He has rhetorically embraced the bedrock keynesian point of dealing with long term deficits, short term stimulus, and by extending the Bush tax cuts, not raising taxes during a recession and or recovery. And you are not near smart enough to know what will be the situation in 2013. In the meantime there is increased spending for other initiatives like the HCR. Did you not absorb his recent large stimulus plan? To keep wanking about “austerity” in the face of huge amounts of spending by the federal government going on right now . You’re dropping steamy piles of firebagger bullshit, and are called on it.
Brien Jackson
@Rhoda:
What is this “we didn’t know” bullshit? Some people in policy making positions might not have grasped the depth of the situation, but are you actually going to argue that no one realized the problem was bigger than the stimulus? Because I distinctly remember a Nobel prize winning economist with a twice weekly column in the world’s most influential newspaper saying exactly that damn thing, for starters.
inventor
@General Stuck: We need to go back to the Bush years of self-financing wars and balanced budgets.
Brien Jackson
@General Stuck:
Yeah, firebagger, that’s a good one. And you’re quite obviously confused about matters just from the way you present his position on tax cuts. Obama’s position on taxes is (rightly) that taxes on the rich should go up (though there’s an argument to be made that they shouldn’t now, but it’s a minor quibble) and the extension of those cuts was part of a package (that I supported) to get UI insurance extended. On the other hand, Obama badly fucked that deal up by not insisting on a debt ceiling increase as well, setting the stage for the diastrous debt ceiling fight he also horribly fucked up.
opal
@Anne Laurie:
Could be when she kick-started the birther movement.
But hey, let’s let bygones be bygones.
We’re all in this together. Now.
Brien Jackson
@Mnemosyne:
Well ego or no ego, he’s still right. That ought to count for something coming from someone of Summers’ stature.
And regardless of who it was aimed at, the point that Obama doesn’t seem to have listened remains. Hell even in his ballyhooed jobs speech Obama couldn’t go more than 10 minutes without talking about deficit reduction. Could he mention that real interest rates are negative right now meaning that borrowed money is quite literally free money? Noooooooooo.
Rhoda
This Suskind rollout screams bullshit to me; but I don’t know. I’ll wait til the weekend and after I have a chance to read the book.
We get Obama compares himself to Jimmy Carter stories from this…
boss bitch
Massive egos talking about the massive ego of Larry Summers.
fun.
mclaren
@General Stuck:
We’re talking about facts, General Crackpot Fake Name. Documented facts. Out here in the real world, outside your mommy’s basement, facts matter.
Obama proposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare “
Or see:
Welcome to the United States of Austerity – Polluted water, smoggy skies, crumbling bridges, less education funding, more unhealthy Americans: the impact of the debt deal’s massive cuts. Andy Kroll, Mother Jones, August 2011.
Source: Andy Kroll, op. cit.
Or see:
“President Obama’s Debt Ceiling Presser: Austerity served up fresh with a side of ‘peas'” by John Amato, Crooks and Liars website, July 2011.
While Barack Obama agreed to cuts in child care and nutrition and job training and environmental and food safety, Obama enthusiastically supported increasing America’s 1.4 trillion dollar a year wasteful pointless spending on our military by another 8% this year.
In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s a doubling time of 9 years. So while we’re slashing nutrition programs for kids, Obama has made sure we’re beefing up our worldwide JSOC assassination teams, the better to fund Navy SEALS shooting women and children in the heads. Keep it up for another 8 years, and the real budget of the Pentagon will double! Yay!
Let’s let former JSOC commander and head of U.S. special forces assassination teams sum it up. Take it away, former Gen. Stanley McChrystal!
Slashing child nutrition and consumer safety so we can murder more of the world’s poorest women and children for no reason. Doesn’t it make you proud to have voted for Barack Obama?
Let’s remember, though, that Barack Obama has no choice but to embrace fiscal austerity. After all, austerity is the conventional response of mainstream economics to a massive recession, right?
Wrong:
Source: “Austerity Games, Here and There,” Paul Krugman, New York Times, 30 March 2011.
Mnemosyne
@Brien Jackson:
It’s so weird, I can remember a time within the past 5 years that reducing the deficit was a Democratic position and it was the Republicans running around declaring that deficits don’t matter. Now, apparently, the Democratic position is supposed to be that deficits don’t matter so we shouldn’t even try to start reducing it starting five years from now.
Also, I notice that you’re yet another critic who hasn’t figured out yet that Obama is actually trying to co-opt the Republicans’ talking points. Contrary to what you seem to think, Obama’s deficit reduction plan is not actually identical to Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan, though you are correct that when each of them speaks, they use the words “deficit reduction plan.” Other than that, there’s pretty much zero resemblance between the two.
General Stuck
@Brien Jackson:
It sure as hell isn’t a minor quibble. Obama’s package for extending the Bush tax cuts also included a bunch of other stimulus directed at lower income folks. Besides not raising MC taxes and getting UE benefits extended.
These are not austerity measures, they are potent additional stimulus dollars that also serve to aid the poorest among us during a recession. Plus the UE bennies.
Total of around 800 billion kept in the economy and about half of that to the poor and middle class that will spend it as stimulus.
You mean by getting the crazy wingnuts to let him along raise the ceiling until after the election, for a budget deal that can easily be changed before the cuts start in 2013. I don’t call that fucked up, I call them Obama punking the wingnuts, who wanted to gut SS and medicare and the ACA. And got none of what they wanted, and lost the ability to hold the debt ceiling hostage again till after the election.
Shawn in ShowMe
@boss bitch:
The planned reduction in payments to Medicare insurers and cuts to Pentagon spending in 2013 is enough to send any self-respecting progressive running naked through the streets. And when you consider that the cuts are largely backloaded and won’t start in earnest until several years later, I mean, this guy with the big ears is clearly in over his head.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
Shut up you fucking lunatic
mclaren
@General Stuck:
Magnificent. Once again, we bow before your superb logic and your peerless command of the facts.
With arguments like “shut up you fucking lunatic,” how can the Democratic party possibly fail to win the presidency in 2012?
Corner Stone
Brien Jackson, I hope some things are becoming clear to you in this thread.
eemom
@General Stuck:
don’t worry. Most people know she’s a lunatic and scroll right past her posts.
Elie
i dunno…I read Brien and some of the commenters and it seems that you think Obama is not fixing the jobs problem because he appointed Geithner and Summmers? — that our economic troubles are due to these two and that Obama is two “weak” (read Stupid), to figure out this relatively easy to fix problem that could be fixed by?????? (see second and third step of underpants gnome business model)
We have the combination of severe financial and investment problems of a global nature added to restructuring of the nature of jobs — much fewer jobs with high degress of automation requiring higher levels of education. That said, manufacturing — source of many good paying jobs, has changed for good. We have many lower paying service sector jobs, construction and a very few financial and higher level IT releated jobs which are much fewer in number. We have a crisis of education, a crisis of failed unions and other labor advocacy and changing demographics with the boomers ready to retire but still retaining a fair amount of the historical and experiential workplace knowledge.
You guys seem to be saying (inc Anne Laurie), that if Obama or his appointments had tweaked some financial whoever, we would have avoided the Congressional issues with their votes AND the other restructuring problems we have.
Nice try.
Thymezone
@Mnemosyne:
Hard to parse these things when doing so requires that the proletariat have a functioning cerebral cortex.
The greatest impact on debt reduction would be higher employment …. which costs money to bring about. Therefore the prole head explodes because SPEND SPEND SPEND is just too scary, even if the spending produces recovery, jobs, and then …. higher revenues, which reduce deficits, and steer us toward debt reduction.
The public … and the demagogues on both sides, including the left … can only process one vector at a time. “Cut” means death to a program, even if the cut is just an actuarial adjustment that improves the viability of the program. “Spend” means death to the baby Jesus, because everyone knows that you can’t spend money you don’t have, which is why millions of Americans happily make mortgage payments every month to buy the houses they are living in ……….
Brien Jackson
@Mnemosyne:
That makes the mistake of treating deficits as some sort of a moral position and fixed in ideology, rather than a question of economic policy to which the proper response is dictated by underlying conditions.
But as everyone up to an including Chait, Yglesias, and all of the other dreaded neo-liberals have been saying, embracing deficit reduction as a priority when unemployment is near 10%, inflation is consistently running well below target, and real interest rates have turned negative is just insanity!
Now moves to reduce the long term debt by, say, reducing healthcare costs? That’s fine. If this were 1993 again and interest rates were at a point where deficit reduction could reduce crowding out? That would be fine too. The economy was growing and we wanted to pursue counter-cyclical debt reduction? Fantastic.
But that’s not what we’re looking at right now.
Rhoda
@Brien Jackson: Actually, I pretty sure everyone realized the administration wanted a larger stimulus; the problem was that DEMOCRATS like Bill Nelson, and Evan Bayh, and Mark Warner etc etc wouldn’t want a bill that said a trillion dollars and they made that explicit to the administration. Similarly, it took a party switch and two blue state Republicans to actually pass the damn thing. THEN Democrats very helpful said we aren’t doing shit with stimulus again; and ran away from the recovery act and all those shiny pretty boards at construction sites declaring this was being financed by the Recovery Act.
Now, we have the President out there pushing a second stimulus in this jobs bill to take us through the election year were we can hopefully have a Democratic house and a chance to try again. But are Democrats lining up to support the American Jobs Act; nope. They are not.
So, good for Paul Krugman being right all the time. I don’t have a problem with him. But even he didn’t know how bad it was; because the stimulus he advocated for wasn’t big enough. That was my whole point. That, and that for all the shit the economic team deservedly gets they were facing a world I shit my pants to contemplate being responsible for and they came through it the best they can. I give Summers, and Geithner, and Romer, and Goolsbee a hell of a lot of credit for what they did manage to get through.
Elie
@eemom:
I never read it.. or Uncle Clarence Thomas either
mclaren
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Wait! That’s RACIST! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST!
You referred to Obama’s ears!
Seriously, though, that’s my assessment. Barack Obama seems like a sharp guy, well-educated, charismatic, but he simply seems to have gotten in way over his head.
He simply wasn’t prepared for the magnitude of the job and as a result he’s been rolled and scammed and bamboozled both by his own advisors (Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, et al.) who sold him a bill of goods to keep their buddies on Wall Street from going to the klink and to ensure the banksters kept rolling in green, and by the military-industrial incompetents who convinced Obama that endless unwinnable wars and infinite expansion of the American military until we turn into a garrison state ruled by military police and the rule of goes away would be just hunky-dory and peach-keen ‘n wonderful.
Source: “How Obama Got Rolled By Wall Street,” NEWSWEEK, 29 August 2008.
Or take a look at:
“Obama, an Afghanistan war exit plan, and getting ‘rolled’,” Christian Science Monitor, 22 September 2010.
eemom
@Brien Jackson:
wait a minute, you’re confusing me here. Is your argument that Summers was a disastrous pick for Obama in the first place, but now that he’s out he’s “right” about what Obama is fucking up and we ought to respect his “stature”? Srsly?
Anne Laurie
@Thymezone: I put a notice two posts up — FYWP has decided that Italian greyhounds, tomato plants, and rooting for particular football teams are spammable offenses tonight. Don’t feel too special.
Elie
@General Stuck:
“it”
better all around
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
Um…I’ve basically been defending Summers in this thread. So I’m not sure how you got that from me.
I did say Obama royally fucked up by appointing Bernanke, and if you don’t agree with that, well there’s just no point in arguing with you. Anyone who will defend that is just going to defend anything.
Elie
Hey Brien S and the others..
Any speculation on how well we would be doing now with President McCain and Palin?
Just askin…
You should know since you have all the anwers in every alternative scenario, right?
Brien Jackson
@eemom:
Have I done something to suggest I thought Summers was a disastrous pick? Because I meant to argue Obama should have gone on and appointed Summers to head the Federal Reserve. Either I’m doing a really poor job of stating my opinion, or some people aren’t reading other people’s posts.
Elie
@Brien Jackson:
Hahaha —
BUSH appointed Bernanke…
Mnemosyne
@Brien Jackson:
We’re not looking at reducing the long-term deficit by reducing medical costs right now? Um, what was the ACA about, then? Why are Medicare costs already going down?
It’s so strange to me that people can (presumably) listen to speeches by both Obama and Ryan and conclude that when they use the word “deficit,” they’re talking about the same thing and are proposing the same solutions.
eemom
@Brien Jackson:
correction: I now see that YOU weren’t arguing that Summers was a disastrous pick. But I’m still confused.
opal
@mclaren:
Who do you plan to vote for as president?
Just curious.
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
I don’t understand what point you think your making. You really think my “don’t appoint conservative Republican Ben Bernanke to chair the Federal Reserve and listen to your very smart and highly regarded top economic adviser” alternative is really wacky and way out in “no one coulda knowed” territory? Seems rather straight forward and obvious to me.
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
Yes, yes he did. Then Obama re-appointed him.
Mnemosyne
@Brien Jackson:
Wait, you think that Larry Summers would have been a good pick for the Reserve? Larry Summers?
Well, at least I know it’s useless to argue with you anymore if you think that giving Summers power beyond an advisory role would have been a great idea.
Anne Laurie
@Anya:
Serious answer: Suskind’s book is getting attention, and will be getting more attention. He’s not an established Kocksucker throwing crap from a Wingnut-Wurlitzer vanity press; quite a few of us were happy to run with his less-than-starry-eyed description of the Bush administration. (He was the guy who got the notorious “We create our own reality” quote, which was also anonymous, although the general consensus pinned it on Karl Rove.) I was curious as to whether other people in the Balloon Juice community would be reading the book, and what you all thought about it.
Also, I never pass up a chance to remind people that Larry Summers is a toxic pest.
P.S. My name is spelled Anne Laurie. I know it’s easy to get that wrong, which is why I remind people occasionally.
Brien Jackson
@Mnemosyne:
You think Bernanke would have been better?
Elie
@Brien Jackson:
Bernanke was Federal reserve chair ALREADY appointed by Bush. Geithner had been the New York Fed head. Obama went ahead with the people already familiar with the situation in progress. You would have opted for changing over all the top players (w the exception of Summers I guess), and expected such a handoff to go smoothly. If it hadnt, and there were “issues” during that kind of transition, people like YOU and your brethren would be bellyaching about how Obama should not have made any changes to the key players during a crisis. Or if not you, many others, amerite? And given that it seems to me that a lot of high level fiscal types didn’t exactly know everything about what they were doing either, a cautious approach would probably have been wise — at least to me.
Oh heck, I know you would never agree with that… YOu would have turned it upside down and slept soundly each night — if you were President. ha
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
So you’re out and out arguing for keeping conservative Republican and George W. Bush appointee Ben Bernanke in the single most important economic policy making position in the world, then? The Bernanke who consistently advocates doing nothing for unemployment and more or less pledges to strangle labor market growth if it’s couple with any rise in inflation even to the supposed target level?
Just want to make sure I have this right.
Elie
@Brien Jackson:
Can you read?
I was argueing that in the middle of a crisis, you would advocate for changing all the horses in a situation fraught with a huge amount of uncertainty?
I am intellectually honest enough to say well, it could be a decision that could go either way…some would say swap out, others would say maintain continuity… depending on what you think that the major issue was. If ideology or conceptual/ideas, were deficient, you might want a swap out. If you think that restoring confidence in a situation where confidence was a huge problem, you might stick with the old familiars. I am pretty sure that Obama didnt just make this decision by himself or just by discussing with two or three folks from his family..do YOU?
I have no idea and my guess is you don’t either. We are speculating. Me giving O the benefit of the doubt in an unprecedented, high risk situation . You — well — whatever.
opal
@Anne Laurie:
Suskind’s book is getting “buzz” for all the wrong reasons.
Most of them involve spite.
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
Yes, I would replace the conservative Republican who thinks that keeping inflation ridonkulously low even at the expense of 9% unemployment for the foreseeable future with at least a nominal Democrat who thinks we ought to do at least a little bit to ameliorate the unemployment crisis in the country. That’s radical to you?
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
I mean, if you think everthing should have been kept the same mid-crisis, I assume you must have voted for McCain? Wrote in Dick Cheney on your ballot? Maybe tossed some love to Condi?
Anne Laurie
@Elie:
Obama, goddess bless him, stepped into a neck-deep pigshite lagoon starting the minute he was elected — if not earlier. But asking Larry ‘Toxic’ Summers for a hand cleaning up that pigshite was, IMO, a really really really poor decision on somebody’s part (not necessarily the President’s, but certainly someone on the President’s team) since Larry Summers ain’t a pigshite-remover, he’s a pigshite producer. Even a really smart, committed, pure-hearted expert at 11D chess is going to make the occasional error in judgement, unfortunately. Pretending that President Obama is a flawless god-king instead of a very good leader stuck with some very bad circumstances is, well, Republican.
Elie
@Brien Jackson:
But unlike your bloviating like you would KNOW the outcome, if you had been a decision maker, you would have had all kinds of uncertainty about whether anything would work, wouldnt you? Or would you just KNOW?
Listen, maybe you are right. But this was not a situation that had all known outcomes, and you are treating it as though YOU know what the outcome would or would not be with way less than the information that the Obama team had? Are you saying that you had access to all the information and ideas that he had? If you did/do, what are you doing sitting here blogging with the riff raff? You would have save our and the wester world economies by now.. YOu are a complete narcissist if you believe that…
Elie
@Anne Laurie:
I am by no means asserting that Obama has not made mistakes. Not at all. I am also not knowledgeable about every detail of our economy and the critical path factors that lead from x to Y to make that judgement. My whole shtick, has been to give O the benefit of the doubt and to note that we will not know all of the impacts and rightness or wrongness of O’s decisions in the short term.
I am not a financial expert but I do pay attention. It does no good to revisit over and over, decisions already made unless there is a clear alternative path that we can say with certainty, would result in better outcomes.
I believe that Obama accomplished the most important and imperative outcome — we did not completely go over the cliff in 2009.
We have indeed, high and persistent unemployement and a sluggish economy. I posted upstring on the factors, besides the GLOBAL economic factors that are playing a role in the delayed recovery. We must also bear in mind, that when we say “delayed”, it has been 2 1/2 years — not 4 years, not 6 or 10 years. 2 and one half.
Now I am very aware of how long it feels to be unemployed, just recently myself finding a job 6 months after losing mine. It feels like forever and ever. It will take me a long time to make up that income. Also, my home, is worth piss in the current housing market. Neither of these are happy things (except getting a new job), but its bullshit to think that the singular appointment of one person could be prima facie, irrefutable proof that outcomes would have been totally different than they are now. All this woulda coulda is just that…
Corner Stone
@Elie:
This is some of the best word salad you’ve put out there recently. Kudos.
Corner Stone
@Elie: I spoke too soon. You continue to amaze.
Elie
@Corner Stone:
My toes need sucking.
Did you take out your false teeth? I hate nicks.
Elie
@Brien Jackson:
Okay Brien.
goodnight.
Emma
@Brien Jackson: I don’t give a damn whether you jump into any bandwagons. I was talking about the kind of personal venom heaped on the President. Though it shouldn’t surprise me. Republicans eat other people’s children. Democrats eat their own.
Elie
@Emma:
Brien is just a spoofy boi… making superficial arguments to keep responses to him going…Its just about that. He is not interested in discussion… just posturing.
Emma
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: I promised myself back in 2009 that I wouldn’t answer any of your idiot missives, since they are simply meant to be offensive. But what the hell, today has been a day for breaking things. No. You can criticize. I often have. But the amount of sheer personal venom is discouraging. You’re not criticizing. You’re aiming at destruction.
Elie
@Emma:
Emma — leave IT alone! I tole you when you mess with it its just going to mess all over the floor and stink up the place. Its too late in the day to clean up after it. Just push it out and close the door. Maybe one of the dogs will get it.
Corner Stone
@Elie:
I’m not really a big fan of the Nicks either, tell you the truth.
Corner Stone
This is the height of schadenfreude. Brien Jackson is getting excoriated here at BJ.
This is awesome.
handy
@Corner Stone:
Which ones, the basketball players or the BJ commenter?
@Corner Stone:
Who woulda thunk it.
Corner Stone
@handy: The BJ commenter with a thousand names but only one viewpoint.
“Nothing can be done!”
Brien Jackson
@Elie:
I genuinely have no idea what you’re going on about now. Yes, I would have dumped Bernanke. No questions. That’s just good common sense, but Obama prioritized “comforting the financial markets” and giving the Villagers a happy over that. Derp.
michilines
@Anne Laurie:
Talking down to people will get you nowhere.
I would never in a million years say that to anyone on the nets or not.
But you, AL, seem to think it’s ok.
Well fuck you and you putting words in other peoples mouths.
And then deleting.
opal
@Emma:
Apparently that post was deleted, as was my response.
If UCT doesn’t get an extended timeout, I will be terribly disappointed.
michilines
@opal:
AL is deleting comments that are critical of her view, and she asks that you not contact Cole.
It’s all good, I guess. AL is going to make this a PUMA blog by morning — hoping that all of the others are drunk or passed out due to Football.
Monday may bring another scolding for AL.
The Spy Who Loved Me
@mclaren:
Why do you assume Obama got “stellar” grades? No one knows what his fucking grades are. About the only thing we know about his undergrad years were that he attended Occidental, transferred to Columbia, and did not graduate with honors.
opal
@michilines:
To be clear, Uncle Clarence Thomas was inviting someone to suck his cock.
This had nothing to do with FYWP.
Anne Laurie
Corner Stone, UCT, everybody: Grossly personal attacks on commentors other than me will be trash-canned. We need the space for paranoid theories, tonight.
opal
@Anne Laurie:
Go ahead and try it.
Corner Stone
@Anne Laurie:
That’s kind of a bummer. I was just working up to the frothy spittle flecked stage.
boss bitch
Hillary lost. Stop stinking up the joint with your jealousy.
Hey B-Ri I’m still waiting for you to show me Obama’s austerity plan.
Mnemosyne
@Brien Jackson:
Better than Summers? Oh hells yes. If nothing else, at least Bernanke hasn’t encouraged infighting among his staff and made stupid public speeches while he’s the president of a prestigious research university about how women don’t advance in academia because they’re bad at math. Oh, and then used the JACing off excuse (I was Just Asking Questions!)
I, frankly, was not pleased that Bernanke was re-appointed, but Summers would have been a completely disastrous choice for a replacement. If you’re making me choose between Summers and Bernanke, I’ll take Bernanke, reluctantly, but I would prefer a None of the Above choice over both of them.
(Edited ’cause I felt like it.)
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Also, too, you may want to take a peek at a few Wikipedia details about Summers’ time on the National Economic Council before you decide he would have been a savior. Pay special attention to the whole part where he favored tax cuts over infrastructure for the 2009 stimulus package.
Brad DeLong may be a Summers fan, but Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman are anything but.
priscianus jr
@Corner Stone:
priscianus jr
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: @Uncle Clarence Thomas:
:
priscianus jr
@Corner Stone:
kay
I’ll probably read the book, If only because the excerpt doesn’t make sense to me, in terms of what has happened (publicly).
Why would the Obama Administration cover their ass by pointing to Summers (who, by the way, I think is a completely soulless and self-interested ghoul)?
Why would they do that in such a way as to make themselves look like incompetent dupes (as here)? What possible political benefit could they garner from that?
Also, I never thought Rahm Emmanual was an ideologue. I think that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of everything he’s done (publicly, as observed). I think he racks up “wins” on his little board- I don’t think he cared who ran for Congress, as long as they might WIN. He wanted X number of Democrats, just like he wanted X number of legislative victories. I don’t think he’s a policy person at all.
But, I’m reading excerpts. Maybe it hangs together in some way that makes sense to me as a whole.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Funny thing is that Summer’s PhD adviser was Janet Yellen, now Vice-Chair of the Fed, who is warm, kind, humble, and like your grandmother.* Students adored her at UC Berkeley.
* Only my grandmother wasn’t as nice.