Courtesy of Pam Martens
Larry Summers, Official Oil Portrait of U.S. Treasury Secretary by Everett Raymond Kinstler
As Senator Bernie Sanders advocates for $2,000 pandemic relief checks for struggling Americans, Larry Summers is challenging the premise of $2,000 checks using ginned-up statistics that were dubiously published by Bloomberg News on Sunday.
Larry Summers stepped into Robert Rubin’s post as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton after Rubin left to make $15 million a year serving on Citigroup’s board. Citigroup was the Frankenbank that both Summers and Rubin made possible by advocating for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. That seminal piece of legislation from 1933 had successfully banned the combination of deposit-taking banks with Wall Street’s casino trading houses for 66 years until these two men and their ilk got Clinton to sign its repeal in 1999.
At the November 12, 1999 signing ceremony for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the legislation that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, Summers said this:
“Let me welcome you all here today for the signing of this historic legislation. With this bill, the American financial system takes a major step forward towards the 21st century, one that will benefit American consumers, business, and the national economy for many years to come…I believe we have all found the right framework for America’s future financial system.”
Just nine years later, that framework heralded by Summers brought on the worst financial collapse on Wall Street and in the U.S. economy since the Great Depression. Even the New York Times had to admit that it had been wrong to advocate for the repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. On July 27, 2012 the editorial board of The Times wrote:
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