Mr. President, you don’t have to worry about how to pay your rent or where your next paycheck is coming from, so you have the luxury of thinking Larry Summers is a great guy! The rest of us don’t:
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama gave a “full-throated defense” of Larry Summers in a closed meeting with House Democrats Wednesday, according to a lawmaker in the room, but said he’s nowhere near making a decision on who will be the next Federal Reserve chairman.
Summers, along with Janet Yellen, are reportedly the top contenders for the Fed post. White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Wednesday that no decision will be made until the fall, but that hasn’t stopped people from speculating about the frontrunner.
During Wednesday’s meeting, one Democratic lawmaker, who requested anonymity, said the president became agitated and rose to Summers’ defense in response to Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) walking up to the microphone and simply saying, “Larry Summers. Bad Choice.”
In paraphrasing Obama’s response, the lawmaker said the president replied, “Hey, don’t talk sh*t about him because he’s actually a pretty good guy. And then he said, ‘If somebody talked sh*t about you like that, I’d defend you too.”‘ (The lawmaker added that Obama didn’t use the expletive.)
Still, the lawmaker said it didn’t seem like a sign that Obama is about to tap Summers to run the Federal Reserve: “I just think he likes Larry.”The president’s irritation wasn’t just reserved for Perlmutter. According to two Democrats in the room, Obama also ripped The Huffington Post for making Summers, in the president’s words, “a progressive whipping boy.”
Summers certainly has his critics. Some leading Democrats recently jumped on reports that Obama is leaning toward Summers for the Fed post, criticizing his role in the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall financial regulations and the 2000 deregulation of the derivatives market. Others have questioned Summers’ record with women.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told reporters that Obama said he felt Summers has been treated unfairly.
“He gave a full-throated defense of Larry Summers and his record in helping to save the economy from the dark days of ’09,” he said. “I mean, Larry Summers is a very capable person. I think the president showed real moxy in rising to his defense.”
Sorry to be OT but frequently these days when I visit your site (PC, Firefox) it appears as some freaky looking text thing instead of its ‘normal’ appearance w/your Ted Rall header. For example today the front page appears ‘normal’ but selecting the older posts link takes me to the text page. Any thoughts?
Yes, to some degree ‘hippie-punching’ – but even more so why go out of your way to insult women by nominating/appointing someone who went out of his way to explain that women folk just can’t handle the abstract thinking needed to make sense of topics such as science and mathematics?
Really? Obama wants to vigorously defend someone like that? Not to mention someone who made sure that the amount of stimulus funds that were truly needed to get the economy moving again were never discussed.
Horrible nomination if you ever wanted to help people. Great nomination if you think managing the economy consists of watching made up pixels flow around in a computer somewhere – which is probably exactly what Obama wants anyway.
I don’t have a clue. But I can tell you the problems started when I put code in to make it easier to read on phones.
The formatting is blowing out on your splash page.
I’m using safari, too.