Apparently former Clinton Administration Treasury Secretary and recently-deposed President of Harvard University Larry Summers is on the short list of people being considered for that same position (Treasury Secretary, that is, not President of Harvard) by Barack Obama.
This particular piece of news hasn’t exactly gotten a lot of positive response, since Summers, along with Clinton’s first Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin (who is also on Obama’s short list), is persona non grata in Washington these days. Summers and Rubin were both big supporters of Alan Greenspan, who is the Scapegoat-In-Chief for the current economic disaster we’re in. One pundit I read yesterday said appointing Summers back to the Department of Treasury was like appointing Osama bin Laden as Secretary of Homeland Security.
Frankly, I think Obama’s going to have quite a hard time filling his Cabinet slots with people who have adequate experience but who don’t come with a lot of political baggage left over from the Clinton years. This piece in Slate today by Tim Noah basically demands that Obama dump anybody and everybody who’s been publicly discussed, leaving me to wonder just who the hell Noah thinks Obama can find for these jobs.
But that’s a bit of a sidetrack… What I wanted to share with you in this post is an article Summers wrote for the previous issue of Harvard Magazine which spells out what he thinks the biggest economic issues facing the incoming President are. The article was published before the Wall Street implosions, but someone as far on the inside as Summers absolutely knew those were coming when he was writing this article. He lays out a six-point agenda that focuses on the “real” economy rather than the financial sector’s crisis, but which would have greater direct impact on the lives and well-being of Americans and the rest of the world. (Here’s some good reading on the distinction between the “real” economy and the “phony” economy from the June issue of Harper’s)
Given Summers’ present political black mark, I’d be very surprised to see him be asked to sit in the Obama Cabinet, but I do suspect he’ll continue to act unofficially as an economic adviser to Obama, which he’s already been doing for some time. So this article may give us some clues as to where the new Administration might be looking to take action soon.
