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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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NYT says no to Summers
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| Despite a campaign from allies both inside and outside the White House, the recent drive to install Lawrence Summers as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve seems to be faltering — and with good reason: He is not the best person for the job, as a group of Democratic senators made clear in a letter to President Obama last week calling for the nomination of Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Fed’s board of governors. |
Agreed.
And interesting point at the end:
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| In 1998, Mr. Rubin and Mr. Summers opposed Brooksley Born, then the chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for correctly calling for the regulation of derivatives; in 2009, Mr. Summers squelched the sound recommendation of Christina Romer, then an economic adviser to Mr. Obama, for a larger stimulus. In the first Obama term, Mr. Geithner clashed unhelpfully with Sheila Bair, then the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and with Elizabeth Warren, then the chairwoman of the Congressional panel overseeing the bailouts. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 2:33 pm Post subject: |
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| The NY Times just wants its "historic" female head of the Federal Reserve. It's the same reason a number of websites are freaking out about Summers being a "sexist," as if that were relevant. "Appoint Yellen, because she's a woman and Summers is a big bad sexist." I'm not going to weigh in on the merits of the case itself, but I will say that the suerficial, gender-issues driven bullshit that is fuelling the public dialogue should be ignored. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| The NY Times just wants its "historic" female head of the Federal Reserve. It's the same reason a number of websites are freaking out about Summers being a "sexist," as if that were relevant. "Appoint Yellen, because she's a woman and Summers is a big bad sexist." I'm not going to weigh in on the merits of the case itself, but I will say that the suerficial, gender-issues driven bullshit that is fuelling the public dialogue should be ignored. |
When I posted that link, I was going to say something along those lines, but I do think the NYT made a reasonable case that goes beyond that superficiality. It isn't that he is sexist (which I don't think he is), it's that Summers has been wrong so often and is part of the group that helped make the mess we're in now. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
When I posted that link, I was going to say something along those lines, but I do think the NYT made a reasonable case that goes beyond that superficiality. It isn't that he is sexist (which I don't think he is), it's that Summers has been wrong so often and is part of the group that helped make the mess we're in now. |
Look at the examples they give though:
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| In 1998, Mr. Rubin and Mr. Summers opposed Brooksley Born, then the chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, for correctly calling for the regulation of derivatives; in 2009, Mr. Summers squelched the sound recommendation of Christina Romer, then an economic adviser to Mr. Obama, for a larger stimulus. In the first Obama term, Mr. Geithner clashed unhelpfully with Sheila Bair, then the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and with Elizabeth Warren, then the chairwoman of the Congressional panel overseeing the bailouts. |
In short, "Look at this guy, he's constantly in opposition to all these brilliant, fundamentally correct women." The New York Times piece is not quite as overblown about it as, say, the Daily KOS or Jezebel or the like -- organizations whose demographics allow them to simply be bluntly honest in their narrative crafting -- but it's still ultimately the same thing. The New York Times editorial board does not care about the fine details of economic policy (they probably don't even understand them), they care about the gender politics, which makes me reflexively suspicious.
I'm not saying Larry Summers would be a good head of the Federal Reserve. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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Obama defends Summers
Shit.
I guess I can take solace in the fact that Romney would have increased defense spending and had even worse policies than Obama.
Joy. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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| Yellen is the better nominee. Also, the Obama administration hates her for some reason. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 6:19 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Yellen is the better nominee. Also, the Obama administration hates her for some reason. |
Mea culpa: I should have supported Hillary in '08, although I don't recall if they were still battling it out when the CA primary happened. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2013 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Summers @ Fed is the cherry on the banana republic cake. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 7:27 pm Post subject: |
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Globalization and Technology destroyed the Middle-Class
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| Globalization (in particular, increased trade with China) has opened the doors to more consumers and more cheap workers while labor-saving technology has created more efficient ways to serve those consumers. As a result, the businesses are bigger, but the workers' share is getting smaller. Fifty years ago, the four most valuable U.S. companies employed an average of 430,000 people with an average market cap of $180 billion. These days, the largest U.S. companies have about 2X the market cap of their 1964 counterparts with one-fourth of the employees. That's what doing more with less looks like. |
This trend supports greater efforts at income re-distribution, and undercuts further efforts to promote corporate welfare and other pro-business policies.
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Globalization: The authors found that metros with more exposure to Chinese trade -- mostly concentrated in the swoosh of states extending from Indiana down to the Gulf of Mexico and up through North Carolina -- saw significant job losses, both in manufacturing and overall. For every $1,000 increase in imports per worker, the share of people with jobs declined by 0.7 percentage points -- and more for non-college grads. As manufacturing jobs declined, demand for local services would decline, and thus job losses could extend into areas like retail and hotels.
Technology: The computerization of certain tasks hasn't reduced employment, the authors find. But it has reduced the availability of decent-paying, routine-heavy jobs. Middle-class jobs, like clerks and sales people and administration support, have disappeared as computers gradually learned to perform their routines more efficiently. But as those jobs disappeared, cities saw an increase in both high-skill work and lower-paid service sector work, leading to little overall change in employment. |
This isn't the whole story, maybe its only one-half or two-thirds, as it leaves aside the corruption and recklessness of the financial sector. But this is a significant portion of the story. The decline of skilled labor was caused not by globalization alone, nor is it caused by technological advance alone, but both together. |
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Unposter
Joined: 04 Jun 2006
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| Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2013 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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My gut feeling is it is not technology and globalism and global competition that is the problem, it is our policies about them that are the problem.
IMHO, U.S. policy for the last 40 years or so has been anti-middle class.
If we had a more pro-middle class set of policies, technology and global competition wouldn't be the problem they seem to be. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 9:29 am Post subject: |
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Globalization is a policy (or set of policies).
Free trade and mass immigration diminish wages (and immigration increases costs). Technology does destroy more jobs than it creates now. Maybe it was the case that the transition from horse to car created net + jobs but that does not mean the transition to Google Everywhere and robots will do similar.
The economy does not need 60% labor participation. Huge swaths of our fellow citizens are being rendered useless for the economy. The people who own the machines will reap all gains. A citizens dividend (social credit) would be a very nice way to prevent the grinding of people into the ground, but nothing like it will ever happen.
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| leaves aside the corruption and recklessness of the financial sector. |
True. The economy is looted of wealth daily. The nicest building in every city is a bank. |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 9:32 am Post subject: |
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The choice is i) the guy who is second most responsible for the crisis (after Rubin) or ii) a woman who didn't know what was happening:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/business/economy/careers-of-2-fed-contenders-reveal-little-on-regulatory-approach.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0
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| “For my own part,” Ms. Yellen said, “I did not see and did not appreciate what the risks were with securitization, the credit ratings agencies, the shadow banking system, the S.I.V.’s — I didn’t see any of that coming until it happened.” Her startled interviewers noted that almost none of the officials who testified had offered a similar acknowledgment of an almost universal failure. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 10:14 am Post subject: |
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At least she was honest. From that same link:
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| Chastened by the financial crisis, Ms. Yellen now favors stricter regulation. “This experience,” she told the commission, “has strongly inclined me toward tougher standards and built-in rules that will kick into effect automatically when things like this happen, that make tightening up a less discretionary matter.” |
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Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
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| Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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| She'll fight the last crime spree with aggression but not see the next one under her nose. |
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