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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLarry Summers advising Biden.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/larry-summers-advising-biden-campaign-on-economic-recoveryFormer Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is advising Joe Bidens 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 veterans role will likely roil progressives who view his past work on the 2009 recovery as too favorable to big banks. Thats 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.
Summers was the first name on the Biden do not reappoint list published last month by the American Prospects Robert Kuttner, who wrote that Summers in 2009 not only lowballed the necessary economic stimulus and ended it prematurely, but he successfully fought for rescuing the biggest banks rather than taking them into temporary receivership.
Summerss involvement in Bidens campaign, however, would likely reassure Wall Street that Biden is not moving too far to the left from the centrist positions that earned him his establishment support.
Opposition from the left kept Summers from being nominated for Federal Reserve Chairman by President Barack Obama in September 2013, when a handful of Senate Democrats, including Warren, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester and Jeff Merkley, complained to the White House that he was too lax on financial regulation. Summers withdrew his name from consideration after weeks of debate within the White House about a possibly difficult confirmation fight.
More at link
Yavin4
(35,438 posts)Summers is not the right person for the current situation. The country needs a bold re-structuring plan, not timid stimulus.
Summer got us through the great recession. I trust President Obama's judgement
Yavin4
(35,438 posts)win the congress and statehouses in 2010. It also feuled the populist movements that created Trump.
Summers has an elitist approach to the economy. Help the 1%, and they will help everyone else.
JI7
(89,249 posts)and advances in things like gay rights .
Had nothing to do with the economy.
Yavin4
(35,438 posts)house levels. The sluggish economy of 2010 does.
Summers believes in a top down approach. Help the rich and powerful first, and eventually, the benefits will reach the common man.
JI7
(89,249 posts)minorities or women is why most people who support republicans do so.
there aren't enough wealthy people to win elections based on people voting based on their wealth itself.
It is about bigotry .
Yavin4
(35,438 posts)This is far worse. We are looking at double digit unemployment for months. We need bold re-structuring plans, not incremental steps. We need to rebuild from the bottom up. Expanding the earned income tax credit is not going to do it.
JI7
(89,249 posts)Yavin4
(35,438 posts)We have to keep the crazy party from ever getting power again, and that means giving the people immediate help, long lasting help. Improving their lives as quickly as possible.
JI7
(89,249 posts)which results in things like voters suppression . And now Georgia has the dumbass racist shit Governor when in a fair election STacey ABrams would be Governor right now.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Summer helped President Obama Repair the damage done the Bush administration. The GOP rose up due to the fact that these racists hated having a nonwhite POTUS.
I do not laapreciate attacks on President Obama or his legacy I have no issue with Joe Biden talking to Professor Summer
thesquanderer
(11,986 posts)...it's not surprising that other Dems might as well.
Celerity
(43,358 posts)made the 2007-2009 financial crisis far more likely and also far more damaging.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall (which allowed the massive thrifts to co-mingle customers' deposits with their horrifically speculative trading arms) and the the horrid Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which re-legalised the worst types of derivatives, were both his babies in the Clinton administration.
His (along with aid from Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin) crushing of Brooksley Born (who was warning of huge systemic risk) at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was tragically destructive.
The Warning | Watch S2009 E2 | FRONTLINE | PBS
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/warning/ <<< full video
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-warning-brooksley-borns-battle-with-alan-greenspan-robert-rubin-and-larry-summers-2009-10?r=US&IR=T
"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic power brokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"
In The Warning, airing Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank) unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake." Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.
"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"
Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves." Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one. "It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."
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zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)You mean people like Arnie Ducan? How about Rick Warren?
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)It's really a bad choice considering there are plenty of other options.
mucifer
(23,542 posts)HarlanPepper
(2,042 posts)wryter2000
(46,045 posts)I hope Biden figures that out
DFW
(54,378 posts)I sorta know where Summers is coming from. I met his parents once, and they were smart, elite, and thought their son walks on water. This is not the best background for a finance expert who has a wounded nation with a sudden unemployment rate of 30% to contend with.