Larry Summers Holds Positions With Numerous Financial Bottom-Feeders

[BeckyDem]

The online, often predatory lending companies benefit from lower-income Americans needing emergency cash. That aligns with Summers’s concern trolling about an ‘overheated’ economy.

BY ALEXANDER SAMMON, DAVID DAYEN AUGUST 2, 2021

Larry Summers has spent the Biden presidency in a state of perpetual concern. He is convinced that the trillions in pandemic relief, with perhaps more fiscal spending on infrastructure to come, will overheat the economy, leaving policymakers unable to contain runaway inflation without triggering a deep recession. In March, the former Treasury secretary described the state of affairs as “​​the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.”

Most economists and experts have signaled reassurance that the recent run-up in inflation, like the 0.9 percent increase in consumer prices seen by the Department of Labor in June, is transitory, buoyed by used-car prices, supply chain problems, and reverberation off of lockdown lows. In fact, core inflation growth has already started to slow down, suggesting that the experts were right, and Summers’s concerns were overblown.

But who exactly is Summers concerned about? The ordinary laborer paying more for a bucket of chicken wings while possibly making more in wages, or the people who have preoccupied Summers for virtually his entire career: bankers and financiers? The answer may be found in his client list. Summers has been diligently laundering his reputation on behalf of “fintech” lenders, real estate startups, and Bitcoin plays, including several businesses that would benefit from an economy that values lower inflation over full employment.

https://prospect.org/economy/larry-summers-holds-positions-with-numerous-financial-bottom-feeders/

[wryter2000]

1. F that misogynist bastard

He's wrong. That's all. I'd love to see what Paul Krugman thinks about this. It's social Darwinism cloaked as economics.

[ms liberty]

2. I'd be concerned if anyone on our side was really listening to Larry Summers

I've found him to be decidedly unimpressive up to now and I am not anticipating my opinion will be changed anytime in the near future.

[Tomconroy]

3. Years ago Time magazine had him on a cover describing him, Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin

As the committee to Save the World. Well, the world has a way of scraping by no matter who is on the committee. Go away Larry. If you were ever relevant, you are not now.

[Probatim]

4. Are there any conservative "economists" who aren't useless and full of shit?

[BeckyDem]

5. I don't know of any but one confessed. I was impressed.

I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong: Tax cuts don’t equal growth.
The best growth in recent memory came after President Bill Clinton raised taxes in the ’90s

Bruce Bartlett was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of “The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks.”
September 28, 2017

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/28/i-helped-create-the-gop-tax-myth-trump-is-wrong-tax-cuts-dont-equal-growth/

[Uncle Joe]

6. A recent Andreessen Horowitz blog post saw opportunities in the massive amounts of consumer debt

(snip)

A recent Andreessen Horowitz blog post saw opportunities in the massive amounts of consumer debt, including that for student loans. Fintech firms could “manage consumer debt holistically,” the blog reasoned, particularly student debt. Cancellation of student debt would eliminate some of these possibilities, and here we have Andreessen Horowitz adviser Larry Summers publicly positioning himself as an opponent of canceling student debt.

All of these outfits are aiming to cash in on the desperation of working Americans, shut out of more formal, fairer credit lines and consumer protection standards, and in desperate need of small amounts of cash. Nearly all of these firms also happen to have been dogged by regulators for misconduct. Coincidentally, Summers’s comment about irresponsible fiscal policy came after the Biden administration extended enhanced unemployment, stimulus checks, and an expanded Child Tax Credit, which combined triggered a record drop in poverty levels.

Americans don’t need to borrow at usurious rates when they’re getting the help they need from the federal government. That fact wasn’t lost on Summers’s Square; the company initiated its low-dollar cash lending program in August 2020, just days after the first round of enhanced unemployment lapsed.

Summers also is a board member of Doma, a “machine learning” firm that claims to simplify the home-buying process, and is an investor in Belong, an online long-term home rental startup. Anything that makes real estate more profitable, like increased interest rates on mortgages, would assist ancillary companies in the space.

(snip)

https://prospect.org/economy/larry-summers-holds-positions-with-numerous-financial-bottom-feeders/

Thanks for the thread BeckyDem.

[BeckyDem]

7. Unfortunately Summers gets a lot of play. If you Google

his name most OP's originate from the predictable crowd. NYT, CNBC, Bloomberg, posting his "concerns."


He needs to be permanently shunned.

Economist Larry Summers has been the kingpin of every economic calamity Democrats have weathered over the last three decades. But Barack Obama’s National Economic Council chair during the Great Recession finds himself as persona non grata this week after penning an op-ed in the Washington Post undermining the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package President Joe Biden is trying to push through Congress.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/02/larry-summers-white-house-joe-biden-stimulus/


Thanks for the article, Uncle Joe