Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Lawrence Summers Painting at the U.S. Treasury
President Obama met in a closed door session with the House Democratic Caucus yesterday and was told that Lawrence (Larry) Summers is a decidedly bad choice for Federal Reserve Chairman. That assessment triggered a strident response from the President. He defended Summers and praised him for his hard work during the 2008 financial crisis.
The President’s praise of Summers has been met with a new volley of press today that is keeping it fresh in the minds of the voting public that were it not for Summers’ brashness and bullying of opponents to deregulate Wall Street, repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, and keep trillions of dollars of derivatives off regulated exchanges during the Clinton administration – there might not have been a 2008 financial crisis. Summers served as both Deputy Secretary at the Treasury and Secretary during Clinton’s Presidency.
It’s tough to convince the public that a man’s a saint for helping out during a crisis he created. That’s like complimenting an arsonist for holding a fire extinguisher on a raging inferno he started.
In an unusual twist, according to The Hill web site, during the closed door meeting the President singled out the Huffington Post as being particularly unkind to Summers in its coverage. The President may well have been thinking of Robert Scheer’s column in the Huffington Post this Tuesday, titled “Gag Me With Lawrence Summers.” It’s not every day you read a headline like that.
Scheer wrote the following about Summers: “As Clinton’s Treasury secretary, he pushed for radical deregulation allowing investment bankers to take wild risks with the federally insured deposits of ordinary folks, a disastrous move compounded when he successfully urged Congress to pass legislation banning the effective regulation of the tens of trillions in derivatives that often proved to be toxic.”
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