The Nation: "Biden vs. Summers"

[amborin]

<snip>

" ....The main players in Barack Obama's economic team can be cleaved roughly into two groups: (1) center-right neoliberals like Larry Summers, head of the National Economic Council; his deputy, Diana Farrell; and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; and (2) progressive labor-liberals like Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council; Biden's chief economic adviser, Jared Bernstein; and labor secretary nominee Hilda Solis.

In the Clinton administration über-neoliberal Robert Rubin famously won against labor-liberal Robert Reich, pushing privatization, deregulation and balanced budgets over a more robust welfare state. But in the intervening years wage stagnation, rising inequality and this financial crisis have pushed the neoliberals in a more progressive direction. It's hard to imagine the Larry Summers of 1993 saying that income inequality is the "defining issue of our time," as he recently did, or, for that matter, advocating a stimulus package that may run as high as $900 billion.

The problem is that Summers and Geithner seem to have retained their dispositional trust in the market and skepticism of public sector involvement. So instead of nationalizing banks, as many economists urge, they're reportedly busy crafting a plan for TARP II similar to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's ill-fated attempt to purchase bad assets from the banks. According to The New Republic's Noam Scheiber, whenever someone proposes a policy that crosses Summers's delicate threshold for Big Government, he derides it as "Putinesque." Unfortunately, reviving the financial sector may require measures that would make even Putin blush. On top of that, Summers has already come to dominate the White House economic policy shop. One person close to Obama's economic team told me that on economic policy, "it's looking like it's Larry's show."


This leaves a disconcerting vacuum in the White House for a labor-liberal voice equal in stature and clout. Enter, perhaps, Joe Biden. In December he named Bernstein, formerly of the labor-friendly, stoutly progressive Economic Policy Institute, to be his chief economic adviser, a position with no recent precedent. Bernstein then co-wrote the first economic report released by the transition team, which attempted to quantify the benefits of the president's proposed stimulus. He is one of the people present for the daily economic briefings to the president. In the weeks before inauguration, Biden reached out to labor leaders, including the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney, confirming that he would be a strong advocate for them in the White House....."

<snip>

<http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/hayes?rel=hp_currently>

[Mojambo]

1. Bernstein is top notch. The more influence he has, the better. n/t

[Runcible Spoon]

2. I wish Summers and Geithner would go eat some fucking peanut butter.

Maybe catastrophic diarrhea would stop them.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Summers Hates The Middle Class

At least he acts exactly like a person who hates the middle class:

Ship jobs to micro-wage countries? Sure!

Deregulate banks? Why not!

Lower taxes for the rich than for the middle class? Of course!

[amborin]

4. and, he depises the poor....remember his, 'let 'em eat pollution'

campaign?

to ship the U.S.' toxic wastes to a poor, undeveloped country, whose average life expectancy was about 55 yrs of age

his idea was, folks there would be dead before they'd reach the age where they'd develop the type of cancer caused by the carcinogenic waste we'd ship there

[jillan]

5. I was very excited when Biden picked Bernstein - and since Biden is going to be the head of

"A Stronger Middle Class", I am hoping that he will present Obama with a more progressive economic policy.

[girl gone mad]

6. Word on the street is that TARP 2.0 is DOA.

Sorry, Larry, the people have had ENOUGH.

[Triana]

10. Gawd I hope so. I have never seen such a blatant looting of the national treasury. n/t

[democracy1st]

7. K & R thanks for posting

[Hippo_Tron]

8. This is essentially the "Team of Rivals" idea at work

I knew that Melody Barnes and Hilda Solis would provide a solid voice for the progressive side against the centrist views of Summers and Geithner. What I didn't realize was that Biden would give them a clout to have an equal voice. Obama is at the end of the day more of a pragmatist than anything so he will go with whatever he thinks is going to work best both politically and policy wise. But he is getting advice from both sides for a reason.

[Triana]

9. Summers = useless. But he's all we hear about on the news. The old narc has

already snatched the message, power and limelight from anyone else - unsurprisingly. And he's an idiot who CAN'T DO MATH.

I HOPE TARP II is DOA after bu$hit's major f-up of TARP I (not to ignore Bernanke, et al's role in that supreme rip-off) - the banks need nationalizing - period.

[Muttocracy]

11. sounds good. nt