Summers is not a dummy or a tool either. Just was very wrong on some very big things, like most of those in his trade. Not sure he's so much of an indictment of Obama as of his trade.
Geithner is a tool and, apparently, an idiot, on the other hand. The best and the brightest economists and finance professionals of his generation did not go into public service. He did. Case closed. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
As for Summers... if this had been an academic discussion where he had to eat crow (not that he ever did eat any crow, mind, in the official version of history it was all Yeltsin's fault), that would be one thing. But it wasn't. For that matter, if he had yanked the emergency brake on his little experiment when things started going apeshit, it would have been a different matter. But he stayed the course, until he'd accomplished in the space of less than a decade for Russia what it took his friends on the other side of the Pond three full decades to do.
And it's simply not the case that these people are the best Obama could have picked. Just off the top of my head, Bair and Stiglitz have a distinguished history of public service - if not precisely one of stellar accomplishment, then at least one of not fucking things up with such dreary regularity.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
No debate from me on Summers, he is detestable for the reasons you have mentioned. Obama went for the safe, Democratic establishment hands, with him. One gets the sense economics is not Obama's strong suit and he probably relied on Emanuel (the other stiff who isn't mentioned here) to help him through those ill-considered appointments.
But Geithner is in another league. A full-on Wall Street catamite.
Personally I step away from this a bit perhaps, because I am not a democrat, so I think more in terms of the democrats looking out for their party interests, not mine. In that sense, Clinton's appointment still makes sense. Summers no longer does. Geithner and Emanuel never did. The latter three are, today, huge political liabilities to the president.
All four are moral liabilities to me, of course, but then, the party they represent isn't mine...
Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
