The Case Against Larry Summers

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12. I don't pretend to know everything, as you do

So I can't defend him.

But I also can't condemn him. And you aren't convincing. It just seems that we just swallow this idea whole - talk about requiring others to follow in lock step.

Here's I've at least found something for you:

As Treasury Secretary, Summers led the Clinton Administration's opposition to tax cuts proposed by the Republican Congress in 1999.[16] Also during his stint in the Clinton Administration, Summers was successful in pushing for capital gains tax cuts.[citation needed] During the California energy crisis of 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Summers teamed with Alan Greenspan and Enron executive Kenneth Lay to lecture California Governor Gray Davis on the causes of the crisis, explaining that the problem was excessive government regulation.[17] Under the advice of Kenneth Lay, Summers urged Davis to relax California's environmental standards in order to reassure the markets.[18]
Summers hailed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act): "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," Summers said.[19] "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."[19] Many critics, including President Barack Obama, have suggested the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis was caused by the partial repeal of the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act.[20] Indeed, as a member of President Clinton's Working Group on Financial Markets, Summers, along with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Arthur Levitt, Fed Chairman Greenspan, and Secretary Rubin, torpedoed an effort to regulate the derivatives that many blame for bringing the financial market down in Fall 2008.[21]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

Certainly sounds like a conservative on economics.