Larry Summers, the Director of the National Economic Council is one of President Obama’s chief economic advisers. So why, in a recession when more people are unemployed than at any time since the Depression era, is he going around making statements like this one which only adds fuel to the fire that Democrats, now that they have the power, don’t give a damn about ordinary Americans who have lost their jobs or fear that their heads are next on the chopping block at their place of work?
“I think recessions like the one we’re suffering now have very substantial costs,” said Lawrence Summers, director of Obama’s National Economic Council.
“Addressing 10.2 percent unemployment is a matter of very great urgency. It is not something that is going to be fixed in a week, or a month, or a year,” Summers said in after-dinner remarks for a conference on innovation and the economy sponsored by Intel Corp and the Aspen Institute.
Tell us more good news, Larry, why don’t you? This sounds a lot like George Bush’s infamous statement that governing was “hard work,” only couched in slightly more sophisticated language than the “former alcoholic I’d most like to have a beer with” would have employed.
Look, I know you were at the Aspen Institute talking to wealthy senior executives of business and the financial industry, and the same intellectual giants of that dismal science known as Economics who got us into this mess (even while lining their own pockets), but don’t you have a clue how this is going to sound to your average American citizen who has lost his or her job, or fears they may in the near future?
I’m sorry Larry, but telling people that unemployment is a tough thing to fix isn’t exactly what America needs to hear right now, and it sure isn’t exactly the message the White House should be putting out. It should be saying that it will do everything and anything to increase the creation of new jobs. Furthermore, it shoukld be backing up thiose pledges with detailed policy proposals to put Americans back to work. Whining about how hard it is to create jobs is the absolute worst thing any Director of The President’s Economic Council should be saying.
Not only does it discourage progressive Democrats in Congress who are fighting to create jobs legislation, but it seriously harms the Democrats’ ability to turn out voters next Fall in the 2010 elections when Republican opponents can point to Summers’ (and Tim Geithner’s) ineffectual leadership and seemingly callous attitude to the plight of millions of Americans with no jobs and increasingly no homes or health care, either.
It won’t matter that the Republican solutions they offer will be the same old warmed over refried beans of “smaller government,” “tax cuts” and “deregulation” that created this disaster. If people perceive that Democrats don’t have a clearly defined plan to address unemployment they’ll either stay home or vote back in the same idiots of the GOP who created the Bush era’s “slash and burn” style of economic development.
Why was Larry Summers hired in the first place to head the President’s National Economic Council? This was a man whose investment decisions at Harvard lost the school’s endowment 1.8 BILLION DOLLARS. To give that number some perspective here’s the budget deficit for the entire state of New York in 2009: $3.2 Billion.
All I can say is thank god Larry Summers wasn’t in charge of New York State’s finances because if he could lose 1.8 Billion at Harvard, imagine what he could do managing a state budget. Oh wait — now he’s one of the chief people responsible for the Federal Government’s economic policies. Mea culpa!
Yet, for some inexplicable reason this inept economist and college administrator is our top economic adviser. So what is the grand plan to create new jobs that he and his fellow advisers to President Obama are pushing? Hold a jobs forum!
The White House has pointed out repeatedly that job creation traditionally lags an economic recovery, as firms squeeze more productivity out of existing workers before adding to their payrolls. As a result, it is eager to encourage firms to boost hiring and is hosting a jobs forum on Thursday to explore ways the process can be speeded up.
Summers said policies to foster science in schools, as well as research and development in the private sector, would be crucial to aiding long-term U.S. productivity growth.
The White House jobs forum will also focus on how to boost U.S. exports, and Summers reiterated the United States would no longer be the engine on which the rest of the world economy could fly.
In my five decades on this planet, I’ve seen lots of “economic summits” and “government forums.” You know what usually happens when they are over? Nothing changes. Nada. Zip. Trust me, this “jobs forum” is just a dog and pony show, and all it will create is a lot of crappy talking points. One thing it won’t do is create a single new job. All a jobs forum amounts to is a public relations event, not a true set of policies or legislation to actually take substantive action to create jobs.
And jobs are what this country needs right now, not more supercilious talk and useless bloviation from gasbags like Larry “I screwed up Harvard’s Endowment Fund and all I got was this cushy job as head of the National Economic Council” Summers. Too bad President Obama got conned into appointing this idiot to be his chief economic adviser. It was arguably one of the worst appointments Obama made, and until Summers is replaced and a new economic team put in place don’t expect much help from the Obama administration if you need a job. Because Larry summers comes from a long line of insiders who “got theirs” and have no clue how to help the rest of us “get ours.”
But hey, aren’t the aspens pretty in the fall, Larry?
Perhaps us that will be losing our unemployment benefits soon could move in with Larry?
Geitner and Bernake also need to go.
Not just Timmy… anyone with Goldman Sachs on their resume should be given the boot.
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Replace Iraq with Afghanistan, what is the change to Bush/Cheney policy for the surge option in
IraqAfghanistan?"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Honestly, I don’t see the problem in what he said.
Unemployment is a matter of great urgency. It isn’t going to be fixed in a week, a month, or a year. The best they can do is get the jobs lost number to start coming down before the 2010 election heats up in the fall.
And frankly, a lot of progressives and union folk are coming to this jobs summit. Couple this with the clear push in the House to get a substantial bill that will WORK since they need this to run on and Harry Reid determined to pass it b/c HE needs this to run on too and I am actually optimistic of the outcome.
Larry Summers should be fired. But not for that comment. Frankly, that seems to be stretching to find offense when really there are a hella lot of things to hit the guy on. On the plus side, the Harvard endowment thing is probably what stopped him from getting Bernanke’s job. Now, we still have Bernanke to deal with, lol. But he is a better bet than Summers.
Jobs are important, expecting the government to completely plug the jobs gap is absolutely insane. How long do we support such things? What do they do? Who employs them, how do we pay them? What happens to the 7 million jobs picked up by the government when the economy returns?
Reasonable people want, and expect, the government to act to decrease the time we spend underneath our trend rate for employment (and Summer’s comment reflects this), but it is pure bafoonery to expect the government to just “fix” the jobs problem. Politics and the realities of governing just won’t allow such an action, nor would I personally support it were it possible.
It’s not the comment per se, it’s the mindset that these guys have. We need some “Main Street” types instead of “Wall Street” guys.
It seems-to me anyway- that the corporations and banks are always protected but we the people are circling the drain at this point.
This isn’t just the economic team. I mean, Sen. Durbin went on the senate floor declaring how the banks own Congress even AFTER nearly wrecking the country and throwing us into a great depression we still couldn’t get cramdown legislation.
The small stimulus and the failure of the White House to make a big deal on cramdown legislation is going to be two of the biggest mistakes this White House had made to date.
We’ll see if the President gives a timeline for Afghanistan; if he doesn’t I’ll consider that the third big thing they’ll wish they could have taken back.
End the H-1B and L-1 programs. Hey, we can end the H-2B program as well.
These programs allow non-immigrants to take hundreds of thousands of jobs from US citizens. These people who take the jobs are no more qualified than US citizens. And the old idiotic crap about “more science and math students” is moronic and totally wrong. We know from many recent studies that there are multiple grads available for each job in this sector.
What is really going on is that these technology companies want an unlimited supply of cheap labor to ensure that there are plenty of workers, and that the workers are limited in their options. Norm Matloff, Professor of Computer Science at UC-Davis, has plenty of evidence to demonstrate that the H-1B program is used for PERVASIVE age discrimination. How old is too old in IT? 35. When you are 35, you are too old in the IT area.
Clarification: non-immigrant non-citizens
Why do you think he was conned? That implies that he didn’t know what Summers was.
There is no evidence of that. Obama loves corporate power. He has repeatedly shown he values them over regular people.
I agree that Summers should be fired! Obama has been in office for a year and despite the fact he inherited a train wreck from George W. Bush, the warts are starting to appear on his administration. Recent events are setting Obama up for some valid criticisms concerning selection of the makeup of key personnel of the White House staff. He certainly can’t blame this on Bush. The two most damming recent events flagging Obama’s apparent poor judgment in the selection process are the poor security situation at the recent White House State Dinner which allowed two uninvited people to not only gain access, but allow them to move freely about greeting and posing with all of the dignitaries present including the POTUS and the First Lady. One additional aspect of this situation at the State Dinner that has been overlooked is the RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT THE GUEST OF HONOR, The Prime Minister of India the head of another Country, whose security was also compromised.
The recent statements by Summers provide the second indication of Obama’s inability to have chosen the best people to serve as his advisors and cabinet ministers. I was shocked and disappointed when I hear that Summers had been been appointed Director of the National Economic council. I would assume that since Obama was a Harvard alumni of great repute that he would have contacts on campus that would give him solid feedback on Larry Summers during his tenure as President of Harvard. Not only did Summers cripple the endowment fund, for which he was not fired, but he got into a highly controversial sexist dispute, for which he was fired. In a similar type of dinner setting while speaking he made an off the cuff negative remark about the suitability of women as tenured professors. This unleased a firestorm throughout the University, which only increased as Summers attempted to justify his remark and continuous refusal to apologize. The uproar finally reached a tipping point and Summers was fired. It is interesting that his immediate successor in 2007 was Drew Gilpin Faust, who was the 28th and first female President of Harvard University.
One of the main reasons that I strongly supported Obama was that it was my hope that he would pick the most INNOVATIVE CREATIVE candidates for his White Staff and Cabinet positions. The press has reported that on numerous occasions Summers has fallen asleep during White House staff meetings on the economy. Chalk up one dud for Obama. Desiree Rogers and her staff were in charge of making up the invited guest list but she freely admitted that nobody from her staff was on station to validate the names of people arriving with names on the guest list.
It’s these seemingly minor gaffs from the White House that begin to reduce public confidence in Obama’s ability to deal with the overwhelming problems facing the nation. It is time for obama to review his staff selections and start getting rid of the dead wood. If he doesn’t do this he may well on his way to being a one term president.