Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

There are good arguments against Obama appointing Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary. For one, he is generally thought of as being something of a pain to work with. Not only is he always the smartest person in the room, but he also lets everyone else know. For that, and a few other reasons, I think Tim Geithner would be a good choice. Check out Noam Scheiber’s profile of him for more.

But, seriously, people have to chill the fuck out over Larry Summers. Matt Stoller and Max Blumenthal, you are both not telling the truth when you say that Larry Summers advocated the pollution of underdeveloped countries during his tenure in the World Bank. This claim has been around since the early 90s and has been debunked plenty of times. If Larry Summers were really so horrible, would you need to tell lies about him? As far as more substantive claims against him, they are either tendentious or exaggerated. For instance, look at Stoller’s brief:

Summers was one of the key proponents of the banking deregulation of 1999 that led to the current financial crisis.  In addition, Larry Summers has argued that women are innately less gifted in science than men, that ‘Africa is Underpolluted’, that child sweatshop work in Asia is sometimes justified, and that job destroying trade agreements are good for America.

As far as banking deregulation goes, that’s really more in Robert Rubin, Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan’s hands. Sure, Larry Summers doesn’t come off looking too good, but it’s not like he’s the chief villain of the late 90s. Also, I have yet to hear a good argument that the overturning Glass-Steagall has much to do with our current crisis. And I got Nobel laureate Paul Krugman on my side. As far as his comments about science and ability, he already lost the presidency of Harvard and I’m not exactly sure what his off-the-record, provisional, intentionally provocative comments have to do with his ability to be Treasury Secretary. Is Stoller worried that he won’t hire enough women? And re: the sweatshops and trade agreements, I’ll simply refer yall to “In Praise of Cheap Labor.” The author? Well, you have to read it to find out.

UPDATE: Noam Scheiber has a good defense of Summers here. His concluding point is very good. Summers has a long record of both setting policy and managing large institutions (including the Treasury Department). So, if you want to make germane criticisms of him, there’s a bunch of stuff to work with. The fact that critics are so quickly resorting to the specious (pollution memo) or the marginally relevant (gender/math controversey) proves that they are not making a strong argument. For a good argument against Summers, see here. I should also note that I have a pro-Summers bias. I just love ridiculously overachieving Jews*

*This is one reason why I’m so disappointed, as opposed to indignant, about, say, Noam Chomsky or Alan Dershowitz.