Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Who Has the Knives Out for Larry Summers?

You have to love Joe Weisenthal. He's always on top of a story, weeks later, but on top of it. In bringing up the rear, he does add good filler.

Last year, I wrote, after noticing several mainstream media hit jobs on Larry Summers:
So what is going on now? To me it looks like the start of an anti-Summers campaign...It is always tough to determine who is behind these kinds of things, but the timing for Summers could be very bad. With Ben Bernanke's re-nomination as Fed chairman wavering a bit, Summers' name will most certainly surface as a likely candidate to replace Bernanke, but with more details emerging as to his disastrous handling of Harvard's finances, and now increasing interest in the firing of an African-American female who warned about the reckless method derivatives were bought at Harvard, Summers chances for becoming Fed chairman are being marked down faster than the crashing derivatives Harvard Management bought for Harvard. He'll be lucky to survive keeping his current White House position.
This year, weeks later, Weisenthal adds some filler:
Now Bloomberg columnist Al Hunt says insiders are grumbling, and Slate's Mickey Kaus wonders if Summers is being "Greg Craiged" -- getting pushed out by anonymous sources, as has happened to Greg Craig earlier this year.

If 2010 emerges as the year of the elephant like so many expect, get ready for a major shakeup, including the end of the line for both Summers and probably Geithner.
Who is behind the Summers hit jobs? My guess is that it is a slick Bernanke-Volcker tag team operation. Summers has completely frozen Volcker out of any serious input at the White House, so Volcker has his knife out. And Bernanke, I'm sure, believes that Summers is behind a lot of the negative press he has been getting.

But if Obama ditches Summers it will be a grave mistake. I am a harsh critic of Summers, especially when he plays good soldier and publicly backs up a lot of economic nonsense coming out of the White House, but I have to think that behind closed doors he has killed or raised objections to some of the more wacky ideas coming out of the left wing Obama mind. With him gone, who would be the one to stop any of the mad economic proposals coming out of the White House? Summers is the last link to sanity. It's like hanging over a 100 foot ledge with just your fingertips holding on, it's not a pretty position to be in, but it is not the time to decide to cut your fingernails. We need our fingertips and Larry Summers just where they are.

1 comment:

  1. Sometimes your blog can be so scandalous!

    ReplyDelete