Tim Fernholz wonders whether progressives should celebrate if Larry Summers steps down:
National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers has been in the news more than usual after a particularly catty piece in National Journal portrayed the veteran Democratic wonk as a status-obsessed complainer. It raised the inevitable Washington parlor-game questions: Is someone trying to oust Summers? Is he frustrated and leaving the administration? Summers won’t say, and neither will anyone else, but predictions of his departure continue to surface.
To progressives, that may seem a boon. This is, after all, one of the architects of financial deregulation, whose support of letting derivatives remain unsupervised played no small role in the financial crisis. Progressives have never trusted his association with their bête noir, Robert Rubin, when they both worked for President Bill Clinton. Summers also worked quite lucratively for a hedge fund after he resigned as president of Harvard University, which came in part in response to an offensive remark he made about the scientific abilities of women. (Academic politics played no small part.)
