UNSORTED MATERIAL
In my opinion....
There are so many contributing or possibly contributing factors to to current financial mess, that anyone with any experience can be linked to some of those factors. What's clear is that the Clinton administration of the 90s cleaned up Bush Sr's mess, changing the biggest deficit (at that time) to the biggest surplus. From the beginning of the Clinton Administration in 1993, Summers was in Clinton's Department of the Treasury, as Under-Secretary and Deputy Secretary, before succeeding Rubin (who has been called "his mentor") as Secretary. As a strong supporter of Bill and HIllary Clinton, I would applaud the choice of Summers. To nitpick about some statements being less than PC (when read on the same level that brought us "Gore said he invented the internet") seems very counterproductive, and likely to bring both Bill Clinton and the feminists into disrepute. Summers was part of the most successful Treasury Department in several decades; let's bring him back and let him direct the next one.
UPDATE: I'll keep adding more info and links as I get them.
Someone posted elsewhere:
You may also be interested in his send-pollution-to-Africa memo:http://www.whirledbank.org/ourwords/summers.html
It was also made an issue in confirmation hearings.
DATE: December 12, 1991 TO: Distribution FR: Lawrence H. Summers Subject: GEP …. The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.
Re Summer’s talk in January 2005
(available at http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html
Someone posted elsewhere:
One thing that is hurting the U.S. economically is that China and India are far surpassing us in terms of science and technology. Many of their physicists/engineers are women. Not so in this country. An economist who does not understand these developments is ineffective, if not dangerous.
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I replied:
IN a quick reading of that Jan 2005 thing, I see that Summers is thinking very hard about the problem of US glass ceiling in those fields and how to approach it. Also he talks a lot about the pattern you mention, that a company(nation/INdia/CHina) that seeks brilliant people who are being discriminated against elsewhere could out-compete the discriminating competition. He’s obviously smart and can put these factors together.
According to the Boston Globe coverage at the time (dateline Jan 17, 2005) “The conference, on women and minorities in the science and engineering workforce, was a private, invitation-only event, with about 50 attendees. Summers spoke during a working lunch. He declined to provide a tape or transcript of his remarks [....]”
The version at the url you gave may have been expanded. But still this began as a “working lunch” talk where “[T]he organizer of the conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research said Summers was asked to be provocative, and that he was invited as a top economist, not as a Harvard official.” So if he does not mention China/India, that doesn’t mean he was unaware of what they were doing as of January 2005.
IN any case I”m sure he’s heard a lot about it by now!
He’s probably leaning over backwards to correct any errors, since he has negative-symbol rep to compensate for, rather than being able to coast on a symbolic status of his own.
Would Bill Clinton have chosen a sexist in the first place, or not noticed such tendencies during the years between promoting Summers on up the ladder to Sec of Treas?
Summers has said that he was ASKED to summarize some research that the organizers provided him from various sources. He was summarizing it as requested — NOT giving his OWN opinions.
Blaming him for this –is like blaming Palin for the wardrobe that the RNC supplied to her.
http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/2008/11/effective-democratic-government.html
All the blogospheric people who have made an industry out of Clinton bashing and demonizing Bill’s administration while refusing to hold anyone else accountable and who have been at the forefront of proclaiming what incredible change The Precious will bring to Washington are now having to deal with the very basic fact that the new preznit won’t be able to do jack shit without using the people Left Blogistan loves to hate.
It’s only The Village and the self-appointed “experts” (often members of the media or else Ivory Tower academics, all of them the worst kind of Stevensonians) of Left Blogistan who hate Clinton and Gore (and for pretty much the same reasons - their joint fantasy that they are opposing white trash racists) and who insist the Clinton administration was a failure.
More on the Harvard Jan 2005 talk. Here is an article at the time analyzing the transcript. Imo the article is shallow; I'll try to do a better analysis when I can.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/02/18/summers2_18
What Larry Summers Said
Bowing to faculty demands, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers on Thursday released atranscript of his controversial remarks on women and science. He did so while releasing yet anotherapology for those remarks and as the head of the Harvard Corporation released a statement