Geithener is a distraction. It is probably Summers that has to go.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

By all accounts it is Larry Summers that is most driving the deficit-hawk, no further stimulus needed, unemployment benefits cause unemployment, bond-bubble-hawk school of thought in the administration that runs the risk of wrecking our whole national and political situation.

And Summers knows better, or should. Sometimes he talks like a modern democratic-socialist. Sometimes he talks like Daddy Warbucks.

Is he gun-shy, having been SecTreas during what was, at the time, the biggest bubble inflation in history? (The pre-2000 stock market bubble)

I am getting the impression that Summers is pre-cooking political considerations into his economic analysis.

If that is the case it is double-plus un-good.

Ideally, economic advisors should advise on the economy without preshaping everything in light of their opinion of what will poll well or what will pass congress. It isn't that economists are incappable of shrewd political calculations. Many are. But if economists pre-limit their policy thinking in light of politics then that political stuff gets cooked in TWICE, since all policy will be analyzed through a political lens by the WH political people.

Devil's advocate: On the other hand, it is always possible that Summers has insights into global bond trading that make his advice sensible. I think the bond-bubble deficit-panic stuff is absurdly exagerated but I must at least entertain the possibility that Summers has serious economic reasons for his seemingly disasterous advice.

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. They're both worthless

Fire them both and replace them with people who have absolutely no ties to Wall $treet, the "federal" reserve, or the DLC.

[Honeycombe8]

2. Geithner has more power, tho....correct? People listen to Sumners, but Geithner actually

has the power to act. For instance, wasn't he intimately involved in the decisions regarding the stimulus plan (filled with pork, and light on infrastructure-creating jobs) and regarding the now infamous bail-out plans (the second wave) that handed money out with no strings attached?

Sumners I guess opined about these things, but Geithner whipped out his pen and authorized things. In addition to having the President's ear.

Unless I'm misunderstanding.

[AllentownJake]

4. Sumners is Geithner's mentor

and has more access to the President than Tim on a day to day basis.

[Honeycombe8]

22. But Sumners has no real authority to enact anything, right? Yes, I know Geithner used to work under

Sumners. And I agree that both are dogs. I said so when Geithner was appointed and Sumners brought into the inner circle. "What?" I said. "Appoint people who were partly responsible for the crash of the economy? That doesn't make sense!"

I loved, and love Obama, and think highly of him. But I disagreed with the Geithner-Sumners thing from the start. As well as Rahm Emmanuel.

Who knew that in my innocence, I'd turn out to be right? Looks like common sense is common sense.

[hulka38]

3. They both must go. I still marvel at the audacity of appointing those two in the first place.

[Zynx]

5. I have enormous disdain for Larry Summers. He spent his academic career legitimizing

Reaganomics and somehow Democrats took him in. I don't get it.

[avaistheone1]

10. He is also a fucking misogynist.

Ask Harvard women.

[Raineyb]

6. Why settle for one when you can toss both of them?

Neither one of them have impressed me and I was willing to give Geithener a chance.

[appal_jack]

7. k&r for tossing both Wall St. thieves

However, I see that the un-rec'ers are also at it. Hopefully more DU'ers will agree that Wall St. thieves such as Geithner AND summers have no place in a Democratic Administration, and rec this back up.

-app

[chill_wind]

8. "Wrong man for the job. "

The right gatekeeper.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5389801&mesg_id=5389801

The Summers Bubble
Nov 2008 (American Prospect)

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_summers_bubble

(link edit)

[waiting for hope]

9. They both need to go - I give them equal

culpability.

[avaistheone1]

11. They do. Geither and Summers are a pair of lousy bookends.

Toss them both and quickly.

[girl_interrupted]

12. They both should be replaced by Elizabeth Warren

Bank Buster : "Elizabeth Warren Wall Street's Worse Nightmare" http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/bank-buster-elizabeth-warren

[avaistheone1]

14. She gets my vote in a heartbeat.

Warren is smart, and has integrity. Warren puts the interests of the American people above those of the banksters. She would excel in that role. Yes! Yes!

[depakid]

13. Seeing as how so much of what Summers has advocated strongly for has FAILED

it impresses me that people still listen to the guy.

Must be some powerful sophistry going on there.

[vaberella]

15. Ugh, you don't know who needs to go.

No economist is really their worth in gold---and you'll hear everything by each one of them from one time or another. And in this nation---everyone is gonna choose someone to blame until furthr information and you'll move to the next then--just like you're doing with this post. It's whatever.

[depakid]

16. Actually, there are track records

so to speak.

For my money- I tend to like the ones who get it right.

[girl_interrupted]

17. Yes and Warren's is quite impressive

when you compare her to those other two. I've been reading and watching a lot of what Warren has been advocating. She may be part of the administration, but it seems no has been listening to her, and she seems very frustrated. She is itching to go after the banks. Why they won't let her, is beyond me. Foolish, since a lot of voters are very angry banks have been getting away with everything.

[depakid]

19. Agreed

[vaberella]

20. She's not an economist. She's not. She's a lawyer.

How in God's name do you put a lawyer in the same field as an economists. I'm speaking about Economist and you're speaking about lawyers. Each of them have respective fields of expertise. I would NEVER put Elizabeth Warren to fix the economy. That would be the stupidiest thing. She'd be out of her debth. She's an oversight person that's fine, and she makes common sense statements. But I can bet you she doesn't have a full grasp swaps and derivatives and how this relates on the world scale.

[AllentownJake]

18. I don't know

Amazed people want to defend a guy who wrote a paper while at the World Bank advocating exporting toxic waste to the third world because the people there would notice the ill health effects less because they have lower life expectancies already.

[vaberella]

21. Am I defending him? n/t

[Zynx]

25. Economists advocate crap like that a lot because they get so wrapped up in their

measures of "utility", which are based off of willingness to pay (which inevitably becomes ability to pay). These can be used to rationalize doing awful things such as that to the less fortunate because they are "less willing to pay" for their lives.

[waiting for hope]

26. +1

But expect that to go ignored.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

23. you will not hear everything from each of them.

There are many economists who have never proposed that tax cuts be narrowly targeted at the rich, for instance. (And some have never said anything BUT that)

Summers is putting his weight behind some ideas that are the opposite of other peoples ideas. If we cannot differentiate between opposite views then I guess we shouldn't have economic advisors at all, or pick them by sticking a pin in a phone book.

It is a vague and inexact science but that doesn't mean there cannot be better and worse.

[tabbycat31]

24. fire both of them

[Odin2005]

27. I can tolerate Geithner, but Summers has to go.