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The Obama administration claims that it was their passage of massive government spending that saved the United States from another Great Depression. Last week, Larry Summers, Obama's top economic adviser, claimed that because of the stimulus: "We have walked a substantial distance back from the economic abyss and are on the path toward economic recovery. Most importantly, we have seen a substantial change in the trend of job loss." And Vice President Biden declared at the end of September: "In my wildest dreams, I never thought it [the stimulus] would work this well." As President Obama and other Democrats have...

Harvard University’s failed bet that interest rates would rise cost the school at least $500 million in payments to escape derivatives that backfired, reports Bloomberg. Harvard paid $497.6 million to investment banks during the fiscal year ended June 30 to get out of $1.1 billion of interest-rate swaps intended to hedge variable-rate debt for capital projects, the school’s annual report said. Harvard said it also agreed to pay $425 million over 30 to 40 years to offset an additional $764 million in swaps. The transactions began losing value last year as central banks slashed benchmark lending rates, forcing the university...

President Barack Obama's top economic adviser said on Monday the United States is on the path toward economic recovery, conditions in financial markets are steadier and there have been initial signs of stabilization in the housing market. "Thanks largely to the Recovery Act, alongside an aggressive financial stabilization plan and a program to keep responsible homeowners in their homes, we have walked a substantial distance back from the economic abyss and are on the path toward economic recovery," Larry Summers said in a letter to be sent to Republican House Leader John Boehner that amounted to a defense of the...

Summers defends Obama economic record WASHINGTON — A top White House adviser is defending President Barack Obama’s approach to reviving the economy and says the new administration inherited a situation far worse than anyone understood. Economic adviser Larry Summers said Sunday that “we didn’t know how bad it was last winter” when the new administration took over. Despite that, he said the administration’s stimulus spending is the right framework to stop an economic free fall. He also said an overhaul of the health care system is key to helping reduce the deficit. Summers appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

New taxes to help address the long-term budget deficit cannot be ruled out, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers admitted Sunday. Summers said during an appearance on CBS that "it's never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what" when it comes to the prospect of new taxes. [snip] President Obama's top economic adviser said that the efforts to restructure healthcare in the U.S. would be chief among its efforts to reduce the deficit over time, characterizing the administration's attempt for a deficit-neutral reform bill as historically responsible. "This is the most fiscally responsible approach to introducing...

The White House has just released excerpts of chief economic adviser Larry Summers' speech on the economy today. Summers, per the excerpts, will also discuss what the administration hopes the economy will look like once it recovers. "The rebuilt American economy must be more export-oriented and less consumption-oriented, more environmentally oriented and less fossil-energy-oriented, more bio- and software-engineering-oriented and less financial-engineering-oriented, more middle-class-oriented and less oriented to income growth that disproportionately favors a very small share of the population."

Of all the statistics pouring into the White House every day, top economic adviser Larry Summers highlighted one Friday to make his case that the economic free-fall has ended. The number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels, Summers said. Searches for the term were up four-fold when the recession deepened in the earlier part of the year, and the recent shift goes to show consumer confidence is higher, Summers told the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Summers continued the administration’s push-back against critics of President Barack Obama’s handling of the recession,...

The best evidence that Larry Summers is headed to the Federal Reserve is the enormous amount of new power the Obama Administration wants to hand over to the Fed. Are they really doing this so that it can be handed over to the relative outsider, Ben Bernanke? Not likely. This is a power play by the ultimate troika, President Obama, Rham Emanuel and Summers. Of course, there is a reaction to this power play from the corners of Wall Street and beyond that don't have significant influence at the table of the troika. A report, by an alliance including two...

Lunch with the FT: Larry Summers By Chrystia Freeland July 10 2009 Larry Summers, director of the US president’s National Economic Council, usually eats at his White House desk or sitting around a nearby table with other members of the economic team. But today, for Lunch with the FT, Summers’ aides have persuaded him to walk down the stairs to the Ward Room, a windowless alcove near the White House mess. The dark-wood panelling and nautically themed paintings are meant to evoke a naval officer’s dining room but these grace notes are muted by the plastic cutlery, paper plates and...

One of the great dangers in dealing with a crisis is making major, long-term decisions based on the immediate circumstances unique to the problem you're trying to fix. In the case of the current financial crisis the conventional wisdom is that it is the result of poor oversight and loose regulation, so the Obama administration's answer is to layer on more regulations and greatly expand the role of the Federal Reserve. But the cure may be worse than the disease. It's not often I agree with Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, but he hit the nail on the head when he...

WASHINGTON — President Obama was getting his daily economic briefing one recent morning when a fly distracted him. The president swatted and missed, just as the pest buzzed near the shoes of Lawrence H. Summers, the chief White House economic adviser. “Couldn’t you aim a little higher?” deadpanned Christina D. Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers. ..... By all accounts, much of the tension derives from the president’s choice of the brilliant but sometimes supercilious Mr. Summers to be the director of the National Economic Council, making him the policy impresario of the team. The widespread assumption,...

Ninety years ago the Chicago White Sox intentionally lost--dumped, to you sports fans--the World Series. Legend has it that a young fan implored the team's star, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, as he emerged from the court house, "Say it ain't so, Joe." The Shoeless one allegedly responded, "Yes, I'm afraid it is, kid." Let's hope that chief White House economic adviser Larry Summers wouldn't respond similarly if someone were to charge that he sat silently when the administration's political types decided it would be just fine to submit a budget that will take the ratio of debt-to-GDP from around 40 percent...

Surprising, but true. He also burbed during the interview - as the tape clearly shows (third item on page).

“If you got health insurance, then you can keep it . . . and we won’t do anything about that,” at least that was what President Obama promised during the campaign last year. Well, add that to a very long list of broken campaign promises, including: cutting government spending, reducing the deficit, and “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.” Just as bad, on Friday it was revealed that Obama and the Democrats have no problem pushing through Senate votes on these radical health care changes that strip away normal procedural protections...

For that or some other reason, as President Obama spoke to reporters inside the White House Thursday following a meeting with credit card company executives, Summers was photographed clearly asleep at the end of a table in the Roosevelt Room. Here's a link to a gallery that has some of these images. This isn't the first time this has happened. Summers reportedly fell asleep during an economic summit at the White House in February, but there were no cameras at that event.

It doesn't matter what your doctor says; the Obama administration plans to decide if you will have cancer treatment or heart surgery. Appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama's chief economic adviser, stated, "Whether it's tonsillectomies or hysterectomies ... procedures are done three times as frequently [in some parts of the country than others] and there's no benefit in terms of the health of the population. And by doing the right kind of cost-effectiveness, by making the right kinds of investments and protection, some experts ... estimate that we could take as much as $700...

Watch the protesters demand Summers' resignation: http://www.butasforme.com/2009/04/09/larry-summers-protest/

No text......but this is priceless.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The economy's steep plunge appears to be ending, a top presidential adviser said Thursday, but he refused to predict how high the unemployment rate will rise before a sustainable recovery begins. Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council, said there have been some encouraging signs the dive in economic activity that began late last year was drawing to a close. "There has been a substantial anecdotal flow over the last six to eight weeks of things that felt a little bit better," Summers told the Economic Club of Washington. "The sense of a ball...

There are so many conflicts of interest in the monied few I am starting to lose track. Paul Volcker was our one hope to stand above the fray, but from all indicated reports, Larry Summers has been doing an excellent job keeping him in some dusty closet. As more and more time passes, you will see how there is a small club of gentlemen, as The Atlantic most kindly pointed out - [Weekend Reading: 2 Stories Only] who intermingle... let's call the The Club. It's the club of The Connected.