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Summer has come and is almost gone. Larry Summers, on the other hand has already come and gone. I understand how the end of Summer affect the entire planet, but I am somewhat in the dark as to how the end of Summers is cited as the almost singular reason for world markets to be up and the U.S. dollar to be down, but that’s what appears to have happened today.
At this point some readers may be scratching their heads, thinking, “Who is Larry Summers?” Let’s put it this way – He’s a man who’s time has passed. He’s a “wanna be” who never will be. And he was about to become another Obama mistake as the heir-apparent to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke when the latter retires (actually, Obama has said that he will not renominate Bernanke) at the end of the year. Yesterday, Sunday, September 15th, Larry Summers withdrew his name from consideration for the position for which he had been the leading candidate. Mind you, he had not even been nominated by President Obama yet, but it had been fairly clear that Mr. Obama’s intention was to do so. So now, instead of becoming another Obama mistake, Summers becomes the latest in a long-list of Obama cover-ups. At about this same time next year Hilary Clinton will make a bold statement that “That’s in the past. What does it matter?”
I admit, this is not on the scale of Benghazi or buying the votes of the disenfranchised by offering them free cell phones, but anyone who thinks that the former Obama financial adviser and Secretary of the Treasury woke up yesterday and suddenly decided on his own to withdraw from consideration for a position that he had coveted, has got to be dreaming.
Summers delivered a letter to the president that said, in part, “Any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interests of the Federal Reserve, the administration, or ultimately, the interests of the nation’s ongoing recovery.” It’s pure conjecture on my part, but that sentence sounds like it originated from the White House in a conversation that might have gone something like this: “Good morning, Larry. This is Barry Sotero; I mean, Barack Hussein Obama. I’ve been thinking about that position that I promised you over at the Fed. I want you there, but I’m beginning to sense that any possible confirmation process for you would be acrimonious and would make me look bad. I can’t afford that. Would you mind withdrawing your name from consideration so that I have a reason not to nominate you?”
What we do know is that Summers has historically opposed using the U.S. Federal Reserve to regulate the American (and apparently the world) economy. Knowing that, even Obama’s own Democratic Party members have been opposing Summers as a potential candidate, and they have been quite vocal about wanting Obama to draw a red line to keep the gentleman out of the nomination so that Summers did not contribute to an Obama fall. I expect to hear Obama say, “It wasn’t my red line. It was the party’s.” I guess I would have to agree with him on that one. Democratic Senator Jeff Merkely questioned the administration’s candidate, “If you nominate someone who is a life-committed de-regulator to be in a regulatory position, and if you believe regulation is necessary to prevent fraud, abuse, manipulation and so forth, then there’s a lot of questions to be asked: Why is this person appropriate?”
Apparently stock markets around the world agree.
