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Larry Summers. Sexist. Asshole. Wrong time after time. The next chair of the Federal Reserve?
It seems that Larry Summers is the frontrunner for chair of the Federal Reserve. There are no words.
Summers is famous for three things. One is being kind of a bully and a jerk. One is always being the smartest guy in the room—yet having an astonishingly bad track record when it comes to being, y'know, anywhere in the vicinity of correct on the major issues. The third is believing that there are fewer women in science and math because innate differences between women and men—and, no doubt coincidentally, overseeing a decline in the percentage of women among the professors receiving tenure offers during his time as president of Harvard University.
What's particularly staggering about the notion of Summers as frontrunner for Fed Chair is that there is another candidate with solid credentials and tons of experience: Janet Yellen. Paul Krugman writes of the choice that:
Looking forward, which is better: someone who has already demonstrated an ability to get along with her Fed colleagues, or someone who has a reputation as a tough guy but also a reputation for raising hackles?
And then there’s the question of what kind of signal the appointment would send. Appointing Yellen—the first woman Fed chair, and one with utterly unquestioned credentials—would be an evidently historic act. If it’s Summers, you know what everyone will bring up: his pro-deregulation stance of the 1990s.
But, with Yellen the subject of what Ezra Klein describes as a
sexist whispering campaign against her, Summers appears to be on the ascendant as President Obama considers his choice. So once more we'd be seeing Larry Summers prove that sexism is alive and well and working our government.
Sign our petition urging President Obama not to appoint Larry Summers as Federal Reserve chair.
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