Quote of the Day
Posted on April 4th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
“There was considerable interest in hearing his economic insights.”
—Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, on the millions of dollars Wall Street banks and others paid to Larry Summers in speaking fees in 2008.
10 Responses
4/4/2024 8:23 am
Here’s the one I like: “A White House official added that the speeches “long pre-date Summers’s work as an official of the Obama administration or even the Obama transition.”
No, I’m afraid that is not the case.
4/4/2024 8:41 am
Thank you Sam. What are your views on the possibility that the firms paying Summers profited from transactions with HMC?
4/4/2024 8:45 am
Harvard should take the leadership in establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to establish what caused the financial meltdown and to establish which individuals made which decisions which caused this crisis. This is essential knowledge to help the nation at this time of crisis, and it is essential knowledge to teach at the College and at the Business School.
Is Jay Light prepared to lead this effort?
4/4/2024 9:05 am
Any gits from Jeffrey Epstein to Summers?
4/4/2024 10:32 am
This link is pretty much everything I could possibly say at this point (but perhaps not in the future) and says it much better than I could. Forget about 1999… but only for a second.
Look at the part of the long article around this part for it is spot on.
Here is the link http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/04/summers/
Black: “Absolutely, because they are scared to death. . . . What we’re doing with — no, Treasury and both administrations. The Bush administration and now the Obama administration kept secret from us what was being done with AIG. AIG was being used secretly to bail out favored banks like UBS and like Goldman Sachs. Secretary Paulson’s firm, that he had come from being CEO. It got the largest amount of money. $12.9 billion. And they didn’t want us to know that. And it was only Congressional pressure, and not Congressional pressure, by the way, on Geithner, but Congressional pressure on AIG.”
4/4/2024 10:46 am
Here’s another quote for you: “Times Co. Said to Consider Closing Boston Globe “
4/4/2024 1:48 pm
Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out if Summers was making money off speeches in 2007 or earlier… a good journalism student could get the job done.
4/5/2024 10:16 am
Thank you Sam for the link. It is indeed revolting. But what is more revolting is the complete silence on the part of the the Harvard community, students, faculty and administrators. Do they not care about this massive fraud?
On September 25th President Drew Faust led a panel in Sanders Theater to discuss the economic meltdown. Now is certainly a good time to lead another panel on the same subject. It is especially a good time because it is Harvard graduates and faculty who are now inextricably linked to how this financial crisis is being managed. Is President Faust interested in leading a little self-examination of Harvard’s responsibility in this crisis? Or would she prefer future historians to describe her as the leader who chose to be a bystander to the worst Suffering of this Republic in her lifetime?
Perhaps the faculty convened this time will actually have intelligent and responsible things to say, as opposed to saying ‘we don’t need to worry because we have tenure’ as one of them did back in September.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=524253
from the link provided by Sam:
“think about how this works. People like Rubin, Summers and Gensler shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting. When in government, they ensure that the laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall St. firms, literally abolishing all safeguards and allowing them to pillage and steal. Then, when out of government, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented when in government. Then, when their party returns to power, they return back to government, where they continue to use their influence to ensure that the oligarchical circle that rewards them so massively is protected and advanced. This corruption is so tawdry and transparent — and it has fueled and continues to fuel a fraud so enormous and destructive as to be unprecedented in both size and audacity — that it is mystifying that it is not provoking more mass public rage.”
4/5/2024 11:56 am
Harvard’s Bailout
A tale of a civilization whose leaders worshipped Mammon
A group of loyal Harvard graduates is working on a plan for a massive economic bailout of Harvard University. The steering committee of the initiative includes former Harvard University President Lawrence Henry Summers and Robert Edward Rubin ’60. The economic recovery package would transfer to the Harvard Management Company government secured non-toxic bonds equal to the balance between the present value of the Harvard Endowment and the value of the Endowment in June of 2006. The economic logic of such bailout is impeccable. The smartest people in the world, because they will make the most money in their lives, should be supported with taxes paid by people whose lives value considerably less, because many of them will be unemployed, working for subpar wages or living lives of considerably less worth.
In exchange for this much needed support, the Harvard Corporation will agree to the following conditions
1. The Harvard Seal will be replaced with the words ‘Corruptio Pulchra’ replacing ‘Veritas’. The three books on the Seal will be replaced by three wads of cash.
2. All the books in Widener will be burnt in a large pire in the middle of tercentenary theater.
3. Widener will be renovated and turned into a gigantic arcade for a virtual reality game. The game will be a novel version of Monopoly where players buy all the land in Allston, trick the Mayor into supporting this expansion offering development and support, seduce and bribe public officials to change regulations for land use, then halt all construction and support a Harvard graduate as candidate for Mayor who campaigns on a platform that blames the current Mayor for lack of leadership in standing up to Harvard.
4. A major underground development in Allston builds a large structure in which all Harvard graduates are plugged in units that harvest their bioelectrical energy and body heat while their brains are connected into an illusory simulated reality of a never ending video game in which they save the world.
4/5/2024 2:41 pm
Professor Warren certainly gets it. Exactly what is needed.
From The Guardian:
“Elizabeth Warren, chief watchdog of America’s $700bn (£472bn) bank bailout plan, will this week call for the removal of top executives from Citigroup, AIG and other institutions that have received government funds in a damning report that will question the administration’s approach to saving the financial system from collapse.
Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp), is also set to call for shareholders in those institutions to be “wiped out”. “It is crucial for these things to happen,” she said. “Japan tried to avoid them and just offered subsidy with little or no consequences for management or equity investors, and this is why Japan suffered a lost decade.” She declined to give more detail but confirmed that she would refer to insurance group AIG, which has received $173bn in bailout money, and banking giant Citigroup, which has had $45bn in funds and more than $316bn of loan guarantees.
Warren also believes there are “dangers inherent” in the approach taken by treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who she says has offered “open-ended subsidies” to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions without adequately weighing potential pitfalls. “We want to ensure that the treasury gives the public an alternative approach,” she said, adding that she was worried that banks would not recover while they were being fed subsidies. “When are they going to say, enough?” she said.
She said she did not want to be too hard on Geithner but that he must address the issues in the report. “The very notion that anyone would infuse money into a financially troubled entity without demanding changes in management is preposterous.”
The report will also look at how earlier crises were overcome - the Swedish and Japanese problems of the 1990s, the US savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the 30s Depression. “Three things had to happen,” Warren said. “Firstly, the banks must have confidence that the valuation of the troubled assets in question is accurate; then the management of the institutions receiving subsidies from the government must be replaced; and thirdly, the equity investors are always wiped out.”
From Ian Welsh at Huffington: “I also think that bondholders need to take a haircut as well, not just shareholders, though they may not need to be wiped out in all cases. However, if the value of a company if it was liquidated is less than zero, then yes, non-secured bondholders (those whose bonds aren’t attached to specific assets with value) should be wiped out.
I don’t have much hope any of this will occur. Warren’s not part of the boys club of Summers, Geithner, Bernanke and Obama who’s making the decisions. But one can hope…”