Between grossly mismanaging the Harvard endowment, using school funds to bail out a corrupt protege, making Obama’s economic team a cesspool of sexism, his championing the repeal of Glass Steagall, and his suggestion that it might make economic sense to use African countries as toxic waste dumps, Larry Summers has a long and inglorious record.
Now he is making the talking heads tour, claiming that a one time stimulus payment of $2,000.00 might overheat the economy.
Assuming that every single person in the United States got a check, (They won’t, it would probably be less than half that) this would be about $660 billion, or about 3% of GDP.
I do not know how Larry Summers has achieved the positions of authority and prestige that he has, but he may very well be the single most overrated person inside the Washington, DC establishment:
Liberal economist Larry Summers said Thursday sending out $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans would be a “mistake,” making him the first prominent Democratic figure to come out against more direct relief.
Larry Summers is not a liberal economist. He is a a Robert Rubin Democrat.
He has made his career out of carrying water for corrupt finance.
- In an interview with Bloomberg, Summers argued the federal government shouldn’t focus on boosting consumer spending with direct assistance because it runs the risk of a “temporary overheat” of the economy.
- Summers noted he’s not “enthusiastic” about $600 checks either, which both parties in Congress already agreed to, for the same reason.
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- Summers is generally seen as a left-of-center economist—but he’s previously drawn criticism from progressives for favoring policies that helped big banks as well as mismanaging stimulus negotiations during the Great Recession under Obama.
Why this guy is not treated as if he were as radioactive as bottled water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant?
He’s always wrong, he’s is toxic to his co-workers and subordinates, and he’s shown this again, and again, and again, and again.