The Return of Larry Summers?
Lawrence H. Summers, Director, National Economic Council (NEC), Executive Office of the President, USA is captured during the session "The US Economic Outlook" at the Annual Meeting 2010 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 29, 2010. (Photo: World Economic Forum / Flickr)
According to accounts in the business press, there is a campaign among Washington insiders to get Larry Summers appointed as Ben Bernanke’s replacement as Federal Reserve Board chair. This could end up being the scariest horror movie of the summer.
It is bizarre that Summers would be seriously considered as the next Fed chair if for no other reason that there is an obvious replacement for Bernanke already sitting at the Fed. Janet Yellen, the vice-chair, has in the past served as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, a member of the Board of Governors in the 1990s and head of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also has an impressive academic background, having been a professor at both Berkeley and Harvard.
No woman has ever served as chair of the Fed and Yellen would be an obvious choice to break the barrier. She also has been a consistent advocate of expansionary Fed policy focused on reducing unemployment. In terms of people who could plausibly make the short list for Fed chair, it is difficult to imagine a better choice than Yellen.
But even if President Obama were to decide for some reason not to promote Yellen to Bernanke’s position, it is difficult to see why Summers would be the alternative. Memories tend to be short in Washington, but those of us removed from elite circles know that Summers’ policies played a central role in setting up the economy for the crash that got us where we are today.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17565-the-return-of-larry-summers