http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/10/quelle-surprise-larry-summers-gives-his-economic-policies-an-a.html
Oooh, I can take only so much double-speak in a single sitting. The object lesson today is a Reuters article reporting on a Larry Summers speech, “Obama policies averted economic “abyss”: Summers.”
Let us not forget that “Obama policies” in this case are “Larry Summers policies.” Obama has never displayed much interest in economics; he has clearly delegated this area to his team, which really means to Summers and Geithner, and it is a given that Geithner largely defers to Summers (based on their history, Summers’ aggressive style, and Summers’ nominal expertise). The only parties on the economics team who might have differed with the the Hamilton Project party line were Paul Volcker and Austan Goolsbee. As we noted, Volcker has been marginalized, and Goolsbee had been largely missing from action (perhaps unfairly, we never saw Christina Romer as likely to have much influence). So Summers is evaluating his own work. It isn’t surprising that he’d view it favorably.
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Response by Riversider
almost 17 years ago
Posts: 13573
Member since: Apr 2009
Yves calls Larry Summers out....
In an interesting bit of synchronicity, reader Skippy sent another take on Summers singing his, whoops, Obama’s praise from the Washington Post:
The White House’s top economic adviser took aim at Republican criticism of President Obama’s economic recovery policies on Monday, delivering a sharply worded letter to lawmakers that credited the administration with pulling the nation back from an “abyss” and faulted the record of recent GOP presidents on the economy….
Summers saved some of his toughest rhetoric for Obama’s predecessor.
“The bipartisan commitment to fiscal discipline that existed during the 1990s evaporated during the 2000s. Every major policy enacted during this period violated the principle of paying for new proposals,” Summers wrote. “As a result of these decisions and a weak economy, when President Obama took office in January 2009, he inherited a deficit well in excess of $1 trillion.”
Um, last I checked, the proximate cause of our economic train wreck was not public sector debt, but a massive balloon of private sector debt that started ramping up in the mid 1990 and started going parabolic in 1999. That in turn was in large measure the result the deregulation of the financial services industry, which started under Reagan but got a real head of steam under Clinton thanks to the tender ministrations of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
Yves calls Larry Summers out....
In an interesting bit of synchronicity, reader Skippy sent another take on Summers singing his, whoops, Obama’s praise from the Washington Post:
The White House’s top economic adviser took aim at Republican criticism of President Obama’s economic recovery policies on Monday, delivering a sharply worded letter to lawmakers that credited the administration with pulling the nation back from an “abyss” and faulted the record of recent GOP presidents on the economy….
Summers saved some of his toughest rhetoric for Obama’s predecessor.
“The bipartisan commitment to fiscal discipline that existed during the 1990s evaporated during the 2000s. Every major policy enacted during this period violated the principle of paying for new proposals,” Summers wrote. “As a result of these decisions and a weak economy, when President Obama took office in January 2009, he inherited a deficit well in excess of $1 trillion.”
Um, last I checked, the proximate cause of our economic train wreck was not public sector debt, but a massive balloon of private sector debt that started ramping up in the mid 1990 and started going parabolic in 1999. That in turn was in large measure the result the deregulation of the financial services industry, which started under Reagan but got a real head of steam under Clinton thanks to the tender ministrations of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.