WHY LARRY SUMMERS SHOULD NOT BE FED CHAIR

(h/t Atrios)

There are other reasons I could list but these will do for now.

Let’s honor Larry Summers’ disastrous record: Name him Fed chair today!
By Alex Pareene
Friday, Sep 13, 2013 09:26 AM -0700
SALON

In the Clinton administration, Summers, the single smartest human being anyone has ever met, according to the 10 or 12 guys who are in charge of everything, was a relentless and successful advocate for the deregulation of the financial industry. He lobbied for the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and won. He lobbied against regulating derivatives, and won. One of his crowning achievements in the Clinton administration was the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which essentially legalized gambling in derivatives — it literally preempted state gaming laws — and he has never actually apologized for any of this.

Here's another take on Summers the Sorrowful:

Summers has made a lot of errors in the past 20 years, despite the eminence of his research. As a government official, he helped author a series of ultimately disastrous or wrongheaded policies, from his big deregulatory moves as a Clinton administration apparatchik to his too-tepid response to the Great Recession as Obama's chief economic adviser. Summers pushed a stimulus that was too meek, and, along with his chief ally, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he helped to ensure that millions of desperate mortgage-holders would stay underwater by failing to support a "cramdown" that would have allowed federal bankruptcy judges to have banks reduce mortgage balances, cut interest rates, and lengthen the terms of loans. At the same time, he supported every bailout of financial firms. All of this has left the economy still in the doldrums, five years after Lehman Brothers' 2008 collapse, and hurt the middle class.