Larry Summers' next job?

[Veritas]

Four years to put Harvard into the tank financially. Two years working his best to administer the coup de grace to the US economy. What's his next move?

I think UT should hire him to manage their finances.

[OklahomaTuba]

Amazing, ain't it, that these ****ups get to go back to their tenured, high-paying, little-work positions after ****iung things up immensely.

So, that makes three of Dear Leader's crack economic team to jump ship.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092110/content/01125107.Par.89380.ImageFile.gif

Who's next to resign in disgrace? Maybe Ogabe himself???

[soonerscuba]

Four years to put Harvard into the tank financially. Two years working his best to administer the coup de grace to the US economy. What's his next move?

I think UT should hire him to manage their finances.So, do you find his work regarding Glass Steagall to be a positive or negative attribute to his career?

[Veritas]

So, do you find his work regarding Glass Steagall to be a positive or negative attribute to his career?
You talking about when he was SecTreas? Negative.

[soonerscuba]

You talking about when he was SecTreas? Negative.So, we are in agreement that his miscalculation of derivatives contracts was, um, foreboding. Taking that further, do you currently see markets regulation as a positive or negative force on the American economy, if negative, how do find a solution to bubble base economies, and if positive, where do we stop?

Not trying to be anything other than curious, and there is no trap. It's a series of questions that I ask libertarians, because sometimes their answers are interesting.

Personally, I read one time about how Summers is the poster child for assuming that prior action leading to positive results can force even the bright into something of a positive feedback loop, and changing environments can cause their process repetition to blow up in their face, for example home ownership based securities are great because the underlying asset has motivation to pay their mortgage and traders have a responsibility to their investors, what could go wrong? I see this most commonly via people who think the cure for cancer probably involves a tax cut, but Summers is guilty of deregulationist policy to the point of corporatism.

[Veritas]

So, we are in agreement that his miscalculation of derivatives contracts was, um, foreboding. Taking that further, do you currently see markets regulation as a positive or negative force on the American economy, if negative, how do find a solution to bubble base economies, and if positive, where do we stop?
Yup, we're in agreement, foreboding to say the least.

With respect to your question, I don't really see regulation as a positive or a negative force on the economy. It's just something that is made necessary due to humanity's lack of virtue. Stated slightly differently, regulation is necessary to the extent that it recognizes mankind's penchant for deceit and ill-gotten gain.

Regulation should stop when it goes beyond that point, or when it get's all Galbraithian and become an instrument of social policy.

The difficulty, of course, is that its damn difficult to forecast all the ways that humans will cheat the system. A decade and a disaster later it's easy to see that reduced lending requirements in conjunction with such sweeping deregulation was a bad combination. Nobody saw it then...hell nobody really saw it four years ago.



Not trying to be anything other than curious, and there is no trap. It's a series of questions that I ask libertarians, because sometimes their answers are interesting.

I'm not sure I'm a libertarian; that's just the least ill-fitting label. :)



Personally, I read one time about how Summers is the poster child for assuming that prior action leading to positive results can force even the bright into something of a positive feedback loop, and changing environments can cause their process repetition to blow up in their face, for example home ownership based securities are great because the underlying asset has motivation to pay their mortgage and traders have a responsibility to their investors, what could go wrong? I see this most commonly via people who think the cure for cancer probably involves a tax cut, but Summers is guilty of deregulationist policy to the point of corporatism.
Economists really suck at factoring in human nature while they're theorizing. The selfishly clever tendencies of bipedal talking primates get diluted into antiseptic phrases like "moral hazard."

Obviously this is a huge personal can of worms. :)