Larry Summers So Brilliant He Forecast the Financial Crisis After It Started!

Summers at Davos

Seriously, you can’t make up stupid like John Heilemann’s article in NYMag:

Yet Summers has more than his share of foes, and not just among feminists. Though he was prescient about the financial crisis, forecasting it last fall…

Dude, at that point the crisis had already started. These last couple months are part of a crisis that has been going on for closing on 2 years. Larry Summers ran up to the barn door while the horses were streaming out and said "I think we have a problem". Now admittedly, he had enough brains to recognize there was a problem when it was happening, which is more than some economists can say, but his foresight was no such thing and there are plenty of people who can say they forecast it years before he did.

What else? Is he the best economic mind in the Democratic party? Well, no. After all, there are plenty of people who actually predicted the financial crisis in the Democratic party. That gives them a better record than him. Sure, he’s a very competent technical economist, he’s written some good papers, but in a policy job understanding the consequences of policy actions is rather important. And when he both didn’t call the financial crisis ahead of time and pushed for deregulation over the voices of people wiser than him screaming "this is a bad idea", he proved that, in fact, he doesn’t understand the consequences of the policies he espouses.

Brains aren’t the same thing as good judgment, and while Summers may be smart, I am aware of no evidence that he is wise or even has any common sense.

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1. Larry Summers Explains His Approach to Financial Regulation
2. Larry Summers Aide Luring Veal Pen with Donor Cash at Common Purpose Meeting
3. Peter DeFazio: Geithner and Summers Should Be Fired
4. Obama’s Weekly Address: The Consumer Financial Protection Agency
5. Suicide — Another Side-Effect of the Economic Crisis