2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumObama Seen Delaying Fed Choice Until After Syria Vote
By Mike Dorning - Sep 6, 2013
President Barack Obama will likely wait to announce his nominee to lead the U.S. Federal Reserve until after Congress votes on military action in Syria and probably until the immediate outcome of a strike is clear, according to several people close to the White House.
Syria right now has kind of paralyzed the town, said David Plouffe, a former senior Obama adviser. Theyll wait until the dust clears.
An administration official said Obama hasnt yet decided whom he will nominate for the Fed chairmanship. The official, who requested anonymity because the deliberations are private, declined to discuss the potential timing of an announcement.
Obama is mounting a full-court press to win support from members of Congress for authorization to attack Syria over what the administration says is the regimes use of chemical weapons. Even as he traveled overseas to meetings with leaders in Sweden and Russia, he was making phone calls to senators and canceled a planned trip to California next week to focus on lobbying.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-05/obama-seen-delaying-fed-choice-until-after-syria-vote.html
flpoljunkie
(26,184 posts)http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/summers-and-the-banks/
Summers and the Banks
Aug 28, 2013 at 11:31 pm
Beyond pointing out that I dont want either of them to mow my lawn, Ive remained neutral in the debate over Yellen vs. Summers for Fed chair. I continue to think theyre both fine choices and that the differences between what they bring to the job and how theyd run the Fed are far more narrow than youd think from the frenzy of the past few weeks. So far, the main thing weve learned is that Washington really loves a horse race and that the White House has misplayed this (I cant imagine they wanted this public fight right now).
If Ive put any bit of my thumb on the scale, its as follows, as quoted in the Times the other day: All else equal, I would not lightly dismiss the opportunity to break a glass ceiling, said Jared Bernstein, a former Obama economic adviser who lauded both Mr. Summers and Ms. Yellen on their merits.
But in the interest of fairness, I also wanted to weigh in briefly on ways in which Larry Summers views on financial market oversight, a critical part of the job of Fed chair, have been misrepresented in some accounts. I am well aware of mistakes he made in the Clinton years in this regard, but he learned from those mistakes, and frequently quoted Keynes line: When the facts change, I change my mind. In his subsequent writings and in my work with him on these issues as a member of the Presidents economics team in 2009 and 2010, I heard views quite different from those now being ascribed to him.
First, before he joined the administration and well in advance of the collapse of Bear and Lehman, Summers made an observation and a suggestion that might surprise some of those who see him as representing Wall St. Regarding the proliferation of securitization and hedging through derivatives, he wrote in late 2006 that innovations that contribute to risk spreading in normal times can become sources of instability following shocks to the system as large-scale liquidations take place.
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blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Zynx
(21,328 posts)It is a pretty insiderish sort of position. You put in a politician or an activist and you really could have a lot of trouble.