Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Larry Summers, Sooper Genius, Innocent of Sin

The Hill:
Larry Summers, who was Treasury secretary in the latter years of the Clinton administration, said policies enacted by George W. Bush’s administration had more to do with the financial crisis than Clinton’s policies. “I don’t believe that the decisions made in the 1990s went to the issues that were important in this crisis, unlike a number of decisions that were made in the post-2000 period,” Summers said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” …

Uh huh. Not to let Bush of the hook, here, but seriously.
Summers then said it was much more important to put in place legislation to prevent a future crisis than to find fault with the past…

Well, that's certainly a surprise move.
Clinton administration critics on the left have said the administration was wrong to lift restrictions that prevented banks from offering commercial banking, insurance and investment services. The Glass-Steagall Act prevented banks from offering all of these services, but key provisions were repealed in 1999. Summers and the administration supported those moves at the time.

Indeed.
Former President Bill Clinton recently said he received bad advice from Summers on derivatives, another key part of the financial reform legislation now under consideration. Clinton said it was wrong to think rules on derivatives did not need more transparency. “I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take” their advice, Clinton said in an interview last week with ABC’s “This Week.”

Too little, too late, of course, but good for Big Dog. Now can we please retire the flabbergastingly vile, self-important, one man wrecking crew Larry Summers to the goddamn porch already, before Obama takes still more advice he will later regret from him as well?

No comments: