No to Lawrence Summers
by Peter Rothberg
The Nation
November 11, 2008
President-elect Obama rightly spoke often on the campaign trail about the perils of deregulation and trade agreements that do not include worker and environmental protections.
The deregulation of our financial institutions has led to our current economic crisis, and it is critical that the next Treasury Secretary discontinue the failed policies of both the Clinton and Bush administrations, a legacy of deregulation of financial markets and trade agreements that dramatically slant toward corporate interests.
Given all this, as Mark Ames asks in a new Nation.com article, and in light of all of the corruption and cronyism that have marked the career of Bill Clinton's last Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, why is Obama considering him for a repeat performance?
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/actnow/382861/no_to_lawrence_summers?rel=hpbox-----------------------------------------
The Summers Conundrum
By Mark Ames
The Nation
November 10, 2008
We all know in the backs of our minds that Barack Obama's incredible victory will eventually be followed by disappointment. But does it have to come so soon, and hit so hard? The answer will be yes, if Lawrence Summers is named treasury secretary in the president-elect's cabinet, as many observers believe will be the case. Summers was one of the key architects of our financial crisis--hiring him to fix the economy makes as much sense as appointing Paul Wolfowitz to oversee the Iraq withdrawal. And when you look at the trail of economic destruction Summers left behind in other crisis-stricken countries who sought his advice in the past, then "terror" might be a more appropriate word than "disappointment."
It's ironic if you expected Summers to be a liberal Democrat--but par for the course in the context of Summers's real record. Some fifteen years after Summers's stint in the Reaganomics war room, he reappears as one of the key villains fighting to suppress the regulatory efforts of a top official, Brooksley Born, who was trying to call attention to the dangers of the unregulated derivatives, such as credit swap defaults, which today are considered the key to the current economic crisis.
In light of all of the corruption, cronyism and devastation that have marked his career, Summers' statements about an under-polluted Africa or intellectually-inferior women no longer seem like provocative eccentricities but part and parcel of the Summers shtick. And now there's talk that President-elect Obama may hand the keys to national treasury to Summers--meaning that he'll be in charge of overseeing a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of the entire financial industry, a process already rife with conflicts of interest, cronyism and corruption--as detailed by Naomi Klein.
The bailout, as currently implemented, threatens to devastate America's economy much as Russia's and Lithuania's were devastated before. The idea that this is exactly the right time and place to put Larry Summers in charge of our economy's future is so frightening that it makes the Sarah Palin vice presidential choice seem almost quaint by comparison. Let's hope the rumors are wrong.
Please read the complete article at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081124/ames
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
