Summers?

Aside from the fact that he was partially responsible for the deregulation pushed by the Clinton Administration and in that respect just represents the past, why would you want to choose Lawrence Summers for Treasury Secretary and immediately put yourself into a controversy, given his statements about women and science while President of Harvard? This is terrible politics, aside from everything else. He's going to have a bad confirmation hearing and the talk of "early trouble in the first 100 days" will be pounced upon by The Village.

Steve Clemons has a good piece on this. Here's an excerpt:

I have been surprised about the quick rehabilitation of Summers in Obama Land -- particulalry given Obama's promises to the labor community and his strident position during the campaign against the kind of trade deals that Summers and Rubin promoted.

If he is appointed over Geithner, Tyson, and others -- we need to quickly get a sense of whether or not the economic views of Summers have changed. Can he embrace a smarter version of globalization than he helped create? Can he help promote an alternative to the winner takes all capitalism that Summers helped to reify and which made people like Robert Rubin mega-wealthy? Can he embrace a genuine re-write of the American social contract that pushes forward the rights and position of labor? Can he abandon the fiscally conservative ideology of the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project that he and Rubin helped hatch?

We need to know the answers to these questions. I find it strange that Obama is seriously considering someone whose previous work and profile is so at odds with the goals Obama has proffered in his campaign. If Summers is appointed, we have to hope that he is not the Summers we knew eight years ago.

There has been some convergence with the neoliberals of the Clinton years and progressive economists in responding to the present crisis. Robert Rubin and Jared Bernstein penned an op-ed acknowledging that now is the time for a massive stimulus, finding many points of convergence on public investment in infrastructure and health care. The economist's letter in support of a new stimulus package will likely have multiple co-signers from across the political spectrum. It's simply a different environment than it was in 1992. People understand how to meet this historical moment.

But why would you feed a narrative that there's trouble in the early going? It makes absolutely no sense.

...Josh Marshall shares my concern.

...I just signed this petition.

The Washington Note is reporting that former Clinton official Larry Summers is one of the leading nominees to become the Treasury Secretary for the Obama administration. In 1999, Summers was one of the key proponents of the banking deregulation that led to the rise of 'mega-banks' and the current financial crisis. At the time, Senators like Byron Dorgan and policy advocates like Public Campaign were warning the financial deregulation, but Summers did not listen. In addition to this remarkable lapse in judgment, Larry Summers has argued that women are innately less gifted in science than men, that 'Africa is Underpolluted', that child sweatshop work in Asia can be justified, and that energy used to oppose job destroying trade agreements was "very, very badly mispaced".

President-elect Obama spoke eloquently and often about the perils of deregulation and trade agreements that do not include worker and environmental protection, and excesses on Wall Street due to governance failures. Let's ask him to put someone in charge who did not actually help cause the current crisis, who did not contribute to the bleeding of America's industrial base, and who is not part of the corrupted failed elite that has ravaged our country.