Larry Summers Advising Biden Campaign on Economic Recovery

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/larry-summers-advising-biden-campaign-on-economic-recovery

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is advising Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on economic policy, including its plans to revive the U.S. economy after the coronavirus pandemic, according to five people familiar with his involvement.

The Obama and Clinton administration veteran’s role roiled progressives who view his past work on the 2009 recovery as too favorable to big banks. That’s awkward for the Biden campaign at a time when it is trying to win the trust of former supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Two Sanders-aligned groups, Justice Democrats and Sunrise Movement, said Friday they “hope Biden publicly rejects Summers’s role as an economic adviser to better earn the trust of our generation.” They said they also plan to start a petition calling on Biden to pledge to exclude Summers from his transition team or administration.

“Larry Summers’s legacy is advocating for policies that contributed to the skyrocketing inequality and climate crisis we’re living with today,” the groups said in a joint statement.

[Gothmog]

1. Why is this an issue?

[still_one]

2. It shouldn't be, but for those purists on the far left, he is a capitalist.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. Yeah, it's too bad the Bloomberg article framed this as a Bernie/Warren vs Biden thing, when it

really is bigger than that. It's actually terrible news no matter who you support.

[Gothmog]

17. And what is wrong with this?

[still_one]

22. There is nothing wrong with capitalism as long as there is regulation. He made some stupid

stereotypical statements over a decade ago why women were not represented significantly in scientific fields. That view, and his reasoning for it has been proven not only incorrect, but asinine.

It is doubtful that he still subscribes to those views, however, he is being consulted on economics, not on those views, and economically he is no fool. President Obama initially choose him as his Treasury Secretary, but it stirred up a hornets nest because of his sexist statements regarding women in scientific disciplines, and he stepped aside from accepting the position.

Summers is an "outside" economic adviser, who opposes everything that the trump administration has done economically. He is NOT his go to economic adviser, but is getting other opinions.

Biden has inside economic advisers, such as Jared Bernstein.

This is just an excuse for the far left to spew their purist ideology of all or nothing.

My Governor, Newsom in California, put together a bipartisan group of ex-Governors, and CEOs to discuss how to deal economically with what the health crisis has caused in California.

I have no doubt that the far left are very disappointed that he has Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson in that group.

Larry Summers is not going to have a dominant position in a Biden administration. It provides an excuse for the far left not to vote for Biden, which I doubt they were going to do anyway.

Please note, I am NOT including the majority of Sanders supporters in this characterization. The vast majority of Sanders supporters will vote and support Biden against trump without hesitation.

Biden moving his position on student debt, lowering the Medicare age to 60, along with his already stated position of a public option as part of the Affordable Care Act, is a signal that he is listening to Warren and Sanders.

In my view this report is trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill

[Hortensis]

30. :) Whatever Biden does, Elizabeth Warren will be part of.

Democrats believe in using capitalism to create great prosperity also -- but capitalism on a very strong regulatory leash.

A lot of the anti-capitalists getting air time these days are socialist libertarians and leftist anarchists, as well as old-fashioned socialists. A whole grab bag of extremist whackjobs, none of which have widespread capitalism-enabled prosperity as their goal, but rather universalist societies living austere lives of limited opportunity. As proven by their complete failure to provide a replacement for the prosperity engine of capitalism. A big no to talking about them as if they're respectable instead of extremists trying to trick people into embracing what they would never want.

Our grandparents came together to keep our nation from falling to extremism as so many other nations did in the 1930s. Our time now.

[still_one]

31. Agreed. He is just using him as an outside advisor on the current economic situation. He isn't

Biden’s main economic advisor

[Hortensis]

32. Yes. Real presidents have a bunch of economic advisers,

singly and in battalions depending on what they're working on.

[still_one]

33. and based on Biden's recent statements on student debt, as you stated, no doubt Warren is part of

this

[Hortensis]

34. Yes, though Democrats have always been for subsiding education

as an investment in ourselves and our nation. Moderate conservatives used to also.

Exploiting and discouraging higher education are strictly for the kinds of extremist conservatives who've taken over the Republican Party. Like Scott Walker and company who wanted to eliminate liberal arts and humanities classes and restate the purpose of colleges to meet the needs of industry.

If there never were an Elizabeth (horrible thought! ), we Democrats would still start turning this around as soon as the electorate gave us the power to. I'm so sorry it's not the way it was when I wanted to and did pay my own way through state college. Debt-free.

[still_one]

36. +++

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Do you mean besides the fact that he's a misogynist disaster capitalist whose advice during

the bank bailout screwed vast swaths of people and laid the groundwork for the continuing inequality we see today?

[Yavin4]

7. Which is also fueled the rise of right wing populist movements like the Tea Party and Trump.

Yes, racism was their primary motive, but they could hide behind the sluggish economic growth.

If Biden and the Democrats do not get the economy moving fast, we open the door for the Republicans, and the next Republican president may finish us off.

[Gothmog]

16. You are wrong on this

This claim is simply false. 2010 was due in large part to the fact that the racist base of the GOP was upset with having a non-white POTUS and turned out to vote. In the real world Summers worked with President Obama to restore and repair the damage done by Bush to the economy and did a good job.

Again, I trust President Obama and I find this attacks on Summers to not be credible

[Yavin4]

20. You need to get better educated about Summers

Do your own research.

[Gothmog]

23. LOL

I am amused by your claims. Thank you for the making me laugh

[Yavin4]

24. Start with post #8. n/t

[Gothmog]

39. Again thank you for the laughs

[Hotler]

28. It wasn't that good of a job, no one went to jail.

Bernie Madoff went to jail only because he was stealing from rich folk. Steal from the little people and you get a pass.

[lagomorph777]

9. Yeah, other than those little bitty flaws.

This is really disheartening news, though I must say not very surprising.

[TheNewNumberTwo]

42. no more DINOs!

[bleep] Larry Summers. Setting aside the horrible personal aspects, we need another Douglas at the SEC and Warren calling the shots at Treasury, not another Jamie-"Damien" milquetoast like Summers. No more DINOs!!

[delisen]

13. Summers gambled with Harvard endowment-lost 1.8 bl

Summers has a long history of screw ups and has no apparent concern about middle class or poor Americans.

An ethically challenged big bank. self promoter.

[theaocp]

5. From the Atlantic in 2013

Nobody who has spent so much time working in government has a perfect record, but Summers has rarely shown enough humility to wonder whether his answer may not be the best one—an attitude that has led him to sideline opponents no matter the merit of their arguments. "As everybody knows, Larry is very smart, and he likes to show it," Alan Blinder, who served on Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and later as Fed vice chair, said in an interview a few years back. And Summers's policy errors, when he's made them, have been outright catastrophic.

As deputy Treasury secretary under Robert Rubin in the mid-'90s, he dismissed those experts, such as Blinder and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who wanted a more cautious opening up of global capital flows; in the years since, these rampaging tides of "hot" capital have caused asset bubbles in one economy after another, with too little institutional restraint on the part of deregulated banks. Summers famously—even brutally—fought efforts to regulate derivatives, which are essentially bets on the rise and fall of asset values and which, escalating into the multiple trillions of dollars, helped to put many financial firms at risk. And early in the Obama administration, he worked hard to marginalize a widely revered former Fed chairman, Paul Volcker, who pushed for greater financial regulation.

Summers helped midwife a major series of policy errors dating back 20 years that led directly to what many economists now believe was the worst financial crisis ever. In particular, Summers's opponents—he faces a phalanx of opposition among Democrats on the Hill—point to the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which effectively deregulated the global market in over-the-counter derivatives and was Summers's signal achievement as Treasury secretary. The final report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission convened by Congress in 2009 puts the government's failure to rein in these derivatives at "the center of the storm."

Summers has, since then, engaged in what appears to be an effort to deny or cover up these errors and posture as a champion of regulation—an act of misrepresentation that flabbergasts many former colleagues and congressional opponents. Some progressives who want tougher regulation of Wall Street, such as Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, say they couldn't vote for him unless they heard some kind of mea culpa. "Nobody is going to get my support unless owning up to mistakes of the past," Cantwell told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently. Sheila Bair, the Republican former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and a leading proponent of greater regulation, agrees. "One of the things that bothers me about Larry is that he's never really said he made any mistakes," Bair said in a recent CNBC interview. "That worries me." Over the summer, in an unusual move, 19 Democratic senators and one independent sent Obama a letter endorsing Yellen for the Fed, meaning that a Summers nomination would probably be as tough and controversial as Chuck Hagel's was as Defense secretary.

Read more at: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/the-comprehensive-case-against-larry-summers/279651/

[CrispyQ]

6. Ugh. Summers.

Too bad Joe didn't go with Jared Bernstein again. Bernstein was his economic adviser during part of his VP term. He's a much more progressive guy.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Bernstein is also advising him as part of the team. But the fact that Summers is still in the mix

and taken seriously is disheartening, if unsurprising.

[CrispyQ]

12. I should have read the article, but my first reaction to Summers name was to vomit a little.

Glad Bernstein's on board!

[Mike 03]

8. "When Yanis (Varoufakis) met the Prince of Darkness"

This is an extract from Yanis Varoufakis' book, Adults in the Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment Varoufakis was the Greek Minister of Finance during Greece's extreme financial difficulties in around 2015.

The only colour piercing the dimness of the hotel bar was the amber liquid flickering in the glass before him. As I approached, he raised his eyes to greet me with a nod before staring back down into his tumbler of whiskey. I sank onto the plush sofa, exhausted. On cue, his familiar voice sounded imposingly morose. ‘Yanis,’ he said, ‘you made a big mistake.’

In the deep of a spring night a gentleness descends on Washington, DC that is unimaginable during the day. As the politicos, the lobbyists and the hangers-on melt away, the air empties of tension and the bars are abandoned to the few with no reason to be up at dawn and to the even fewer whose burdens trump sleep. That night, as on the previous eighty-one nights, or indeed the eighty-one nights that were to follow, I was one of the latter.

It had taken me fifteen minutes to walk, shrouded in darkness, from 700 19th Street NW, the International Monetary Fund’s building, to the hotel bar where I was to meet him. I had never imagined that a short solitary stroll in nondescript DC could be so restorative. The prospect of meeting the great man added to my sense of relief: after fifteen hours across the table from powerful people too banal or too frightened to speak their minds, I was about to meet a figure of great influence in Washington and beyond, a man no one can accuse of either banality or timidity.

All that changed with his acerbic opening statement, made more chilling by the dim light and shifting shadows. Faking steeliness, I replied, ‘And what mistake was that, Larry?’ ‘You won the election!’ came his answer.

It was 16 April 2015, the very middle of my brief tenure as finance minister of Greece. Less than six months earlier I had been living the life of an academic, teaching at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin while on leave from the University of Athens. But in January my life had changed utterly when I was elected a member of the Greek parliament. I had made only one campaign promise: that I would do everything I could to rescue my country from the debt bondage and crushing austerity being imposed on it by its European neighbours and the IMF. It was that promise that had brought me to this city and – with the assistance of my close team member Elena Paraniti, who had brokered the meeting and accompanied me that night – to this bar.

Smiling at his dry humour and to hide my trepidation, my immediate thought was, Is this how he intends to stiffen my resolve against an empire of foes? I took solace from the recollection that the seventy-first secretary of the United States Treasury and twenty-seventh president of Harvard is not known for his soothing style.

Determined to delay the serious business ahead of us a few moments more, I signalled to the bartender for a whiskey of my own and said, ‘Before you tell me about my “mistake”, let me say, Larry, how important your messages of support and advice have been in the past weeks. I am truly grateful. Especially as for years I have been referring to you as the Prince of Darkness.’

Unperturbed, Larry Summers replied, ‘At least you called me a prince. I have been called worse.’

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2017/jun/12/when-yanis-met-prince-darkness-extract-adults-room

This is a pretty chilling story, if you haven't heard it.

[Gothmog]

40. This is really is amusing but not credible

[stonecutter357]

11. Good !

[WhiskeyGrinder]

14. Say more?

[HarlanPepper]

15. All I care about is beating Trump

Everything else is just noise. Purity tests. Boutique issues that don’t matter.

We have 50,000 dead and will have many more soon. We have a POTUS who thinks you can kill a virus by injecting bleach. These little grievances over Larry Summers just don’t seem to hold up against all of that.

All that matters right now is beating Trump. Period. I couldn’t give a flying fuck if Hannibal Lector was advising Biden as long as that happens.

[Yavin4]

21. Yes, beating Trump is the priority, but preventing another Trump is the next highest priority.

Biden may inherit an economy that will be absolutely devastated. Think post-WWII Europe. Devastated economies are kindling to populist authoritarians.

[Cha]

38. Larry Summers is awful but if anyone read that Bloomberg piece, they'd know Biden's being advised by

Link to tweet

[rpannier]

43. It's good to know there are others

But, Summers shouldn't be on it at all

[TheNewNumberTwo]

44. bit a problem, that...

we don't have Marshall there with a plan to bail US out, this time - who writes the check, Jeff Bezos? - if idiots like Summers are in charge, we may end up worse than Germany post-Hitler. [bleep] Summers, Geithner and all those pro-bank DINOs. FDR and Truman showed the way once, the data is all there to use once more again, addressing some of the areas that weren't correct the first time around and, let's keep the R's from [bleep]ing it up again this time, too....!

[HarlanPepper]

45. Blah blah blah

Just beat Trump. It’s the only thing that matters. Everything else is noise.

[mvd]

18. He's recycled and not what we need, but..

let’s first get Trump out and then voice our concerns. I just hope he doesn’t give Biden bad campaign advice.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

19. How about work to get Trump out AND voice concerns?

[Yavin4]

25. People need to understand that it's not enough to beat Trump.

You have to prevent future Trumps. Nobody thought that we would do worse than Bush II, but here we are.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

26. Exactly. "Normal" is what got us here in the first place; I'm not interested in "going back" to it.

[Yavin4]

27. Summers is a creature of the 90s

He's a cognitive elitist. Only the super smart get to eat. Everyone else has to prove him/herself to their betters or starve. The problem is that the cognitive elite are not enough to sway elections since they tend to congregate in coastal urban centers like LA, NY, and SF, leaving the rest of the country to the non-cognitive elite which is the Republicans' power base.

The Democrats need to build an economy that serves everyone not just the Ivy league graduates.

[mvd]

35. I think you have a point. As long as it doesn't distract from the main goal

If Biden is going to make overtures to progressives, Summers is not a good advisor. We should say that.

[Hortensis]

29. Good beginning but then degrading to quoting a couple

of fringe groups who're good for yellow journalism and pretend controversy but know nothing about economic policy?

"But some say" journalism quoting anti-democracy lefties who couldn't even get a half dozen of their own elected?

Our next administration is going to face the biggest challenges since we elected FDR and what became his New Dealers almost 90 years ago. Let's talk seriously.

Check out Warren Democrats. Her candidates aren't masquerading as progressive while insidiously claiming that electing Republicans determined to destroy progressivism is no worse than electing Democrats.

Warren Democrats are the real thing, and we are going to need them in the 117th congress. To have good government, we must elect good people. To achieve great advances we must elect people determined to make them happen.

Link to tweet

[George II]

37. Larry Summers was a close adviser in both Clinton's and Obama's administrations. I trust....

...their judgement a LOT more than Justice Democrats and Sunrise Movement, neither of which have accomplished much of anything.

[Gothmog]

41. I like President Obama and I do not understand the people who attack President Obama and his legacy

Link to tweet