Robert Scheer: The Return of Lawrence Summers, Mr. Spectacular Failure

[marmar]

from truthdig:


The Return of Lawrence Summers, Mr. Spectacular Failure

Posted on Jul 15, 2013
By Robert Scheer


Tell me it’s a sick joke: Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, the guy who tops the list of those responsible for sabotaging the world’s economy, is lobbying to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. But no, it makes perfect sense, since Summers has long succeeded spectacularly by failing.

Why should his miserable record in the Clinton and Obama administrations hold him back from future disastrous adventures at our expense? With Ben Bernanke set to step down in January, and Obama still in deep denial over the pain and damage his former top economic adviser Summers brought to tens of millions of Americans, this darling of Wall Street has yet another shot to savage the economy.

Summers was one of the key players during the Clinton years in creating the mortgage derivative bubble that ended up costing tens of millions of Americans their homes and life savings. This is the genius who, as Clinton’s Treasury secretary, supported the banking lobby’s successful effort to make the sale of unregulated bundles of mortgage securities and the phony insurance swaps that backed them perfectly legal and totally unmonitored. Those are the toxic bundles that the Federal Reserve is still unloading from the banks at a cost of trillions of dollars.

But back on July 30, 1998, when he was deputy Treasury secretary, Summers assured the Senate agriculture committee that the “thriving” derivatives market was the driving force of American prosperity and would be fatally hurt by any government regulation of the sort proposed by Brooksley Born, the stunningly prescient chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_return_of_lawrence_summers_mr_spectacular_failure_20130715/

[xchrom]

1. failing upwards -- a right reserved to our corporate elite. nt

[KG]

2. +1

actually he only failed working folks. all the right people still made money.

[xchrom]

3. isn't that right. nt

[KoKo]

4. Recommend....

[sabrina 1]

5. He's a member of the very small club who can be trusted to protect the 1% and their interests

They cannot have anyone in these positions who might threaten the status quo. If he is appointed it will merely be further confirmation of how terribly wrong things have gone and that there is NO ONE protecting the people.

I cannot think of anyone worse, from the people's pov, or women's for that matter, to place in that position, but I cannot think of anyone BETTER to protect the interests of the Ruling Class.

Shameful but we're getting used to it now. The thing is what we the people have to do next to try to change the course of this country, because clearly everything we've done so far, has failed.

[forestpath]

6. Obama isn't in denial. He's one of them.

[byeya]

8. + + +

[byeya]

7. Did what was expected of him at Harvard too