Tag: Larry Summers

One more reason to skip Summers for World Bank

| February 29, 2012 | 0 Comments

Robert Zoellick will step down as head of the World Bank this year, and there’s already lots of chatter about who might replace him. While many acknowledge that the world has outgrown the decades long tradition of having a European head the IMF and an American head the World Bank, it’s likely that another American will get the nod. (Otherwise Congress might take their ball and go home — i.e. they might cut American funding for the institution.) Continue Reading

Weekend wrap-up: 1/23 to 1/27/12

| January 28, 2012 | 0 Comments

Here were the Finance Addict’s top stories this week. Plus, check out our GIF of the Week after the jump!

  1. Davos shocked to hear that poor people exist. When you start hearing the language of Huxley and Orwell on the slopes of the Swiss Alps, then you know that something has shifted.
  2. Trust in business and politics reaches critical point. We don’t really trust corporations or government. Can we reverse this? And if not, then what?
  3. Germany seeks permission to drown. Germany and France want to ignore a key lesson from the crisis and play fast and loose with Basel III.
  4. More tangled tales from TARP. As the Special “Pay Master” for TARP, is Ken Feinberg a legal laureate gone rogue? Or is he being railroaded?
  5. A White House nudge towards strategic default? A 2008 memo to President-Elect Barack Obama contains a counterintuitive endorsement for strategic default.
  6. Trusted advice? Hardly. Dale Westhoff is the Global Head of Structured Product Research at Credit Suisse and apparently the firm’s chief propagandist.
  7. Saying “No” to the yes-men on fiscal stimulus. Does recent research from Virginia Tech shed light on why the fiscal stimulus debate went wrong? Continue Reading

A White House nudge towards strategic default?

| January 25, 2012 | 0 Comments

By kyle flemming on Flickr

Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker Magazine has a lengthy piece out on the trials and tribulations of the Obama administration. It makes for very interesting reading and I’d be curious to hear what you make of it in this election year.

But what I’m most interested in is one of the source documents on which Lizza based his piece, and which he has made available to the general public here. It is, as he describes, a 57-page ur-text of the administration of the 44th president of the United States. It was delivered by Larry Summers, Obama’s former #1 economic adviser, on December 15, 2008 — after Lehman, after Bush’s TARP, after the victorious election, but before Obama’s inauguration. Continue Reading