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Larry Summers Resumes Exercises In Pontificating Sophistry
Over the weekend, just because apparently someone really needed content at any cost (in this case zero), we got a new intellectual stillborn from none other than the man who more than anyone is responsible for the global economic collapse the world has been in for the past 4 years, and from which it is nowhere even close in escaping. The man of course is Larry Summers, who first crushed global finance, then Harvard, and finally Obama's economic platform, whom the FT saw fit to give the chance to pontificate on such concepts at growth and austerity, because apparently, growth through austerity, whereby banking sector debt is written down in parallel is not growth, but there is some subsegment of "growth", heretofore unknown, that Europe has not tried before, and will instead focus on that going forward. To paraphrase Lewis Black: don't think about that sentence too hard, or blood will shoot out of your nose.
Once again Europe’s efforts to contain its crisis have fallen short. It was perhaps reasonable to hope that the European Central Bank’s longer-term refinancing operation to provide nearly $1tn in cheap three-year funding to European banks would halt the crisis for a while if not resolve it. It is now clear it has been little more than a palliative. Weak banks, especially in Spain, have bought more of the debt of their weak sovereigns while foreigners have sold down their holdings. Markets see banks grow ever more nervous. Again, both Europe and the global economy approach the brink.
In any policy sphere a great debate always follows signs of failure. The architects of the current policy and their allies argue that the problem lies in insufficient determination to maintain the existing strategy. Others argue for a change in course, a view that seems to be taking hold among European electorates – and rightly so. There is a good chance that much of what is being urged is likely to be not just ineffective but counterproductive in terms of maintaining the monetary union, restoring normal financial conditions and government access to markets, and re-establishing growth.
Unfortunately, Europe has misdiagnosed its problems and set the wrong strategic course. Outside Greece, which represents only 2 per cent of the eurozone, profligacy is not the root cause of problems. Spain and Ireland stood out for their low ratios of debt to gross domestic product five years ago with ratios well below Germany. Italy had a high debt ratio but a very favourable deficit position. Europe’s problem countries are in trouble because the financial crisis under way since 2008 has damaged their financial systems and led to a collapse in growth. High deficits are much more a symptom than a cause of their problems.
And here is Dr. Larry with his best Greg House impersonation:
Treating symptoms rather than causes is usually a good way to make a patient worse. So it is in Europe. Its financial problems stem from lack of growth. In any financial situation where interest rates far exceed growth rates, debt problems spiral out of control. The right focus for Europe is on growth. In this context increased austerity is a step in the wrong direction.
Keep the previous in mind as you read one of ours quotes of the week (month, year, and maybe even decade) from October 2011, which also happened to come from the same corpulent creature:
Presented without commentary:
"The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending."
- Larry Summers, source
And somehow this individual is seen as fit to opine on symptoms and underlying causes, on cause and effect.
...
!!!!????
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Slick Larry to the rescue!
Wanker..... what a fat, sweaty, slobbery, useless excuse for a cunt!
I'm sorry for my language but I get a little sick in my mouth everytime I hear that twats name and remember what he's done and said in the past
what a tool.
Tenured Douchewoggle Extraordinaire. With a Magna Cum Laude PhD in BOIL.
Bullshit, Obfuscation, Incompetence, and Larceny.
Thanks for the resize. First time that pic took up most of my monitor. Skeery, it was.
In other news, I'm now wondering if it was Summers that Lewis Black overheard.
"If it weren't for that horse, I'd never spent that year in college."
This picture is all wrong. The fat is in the head and concentrated in the ego.
I think the morale of the story here is that we need to think happy thoughts during the election year. Another 2008 style election year will be bad for Obama, so we got to put on the smiles again. We can have our collapse (and inflation excelsior moment) after Obama's been reelected.
Well said sir. Well said indeed.
Zalando Gutschein
Idiot.
Faily fail FAIL.
Makes sense though.
Obama: "I'm going to fix the economy by injecting taxpayer money and debt into the economy, and then taxing it again."
I have used that exact quotation many times to demonstrate the insanity of these individuals.
Dear Larry,
There is no good news today.
Can you please go off and die some where and make us happy?
with slight regard
slack
He’s the “drink until you sober up“ guy, right?
Summers is the Sociopath that said Africa's economic Comparative Advantage was being a chemical and nuclear waste dumping site as the governments were too weak to stop illegal dumping by the rich western countries - who could simply threaten to cut off aid if Africa bitched about said illegal dumping.
So Summers said let's embrace that -
Predatory Sociopath.
Too bad summers and cheney can't get together for a mass suicide.
Didn't we hang a bunch of these types after WW 2?
Didn't we hang a bunch of these types after WW 2?
Obviously not enough of them. Appears their fucking genes still keep turning up in the pool
i thought people of Summers type were being exterminated during WW2, not by us, though
I am so tired of economists, their false platitudes and their cousins the lawyers, I am about ready to puke.
One management consultant put it in very easy terms to remember. It's whats in your checking account that is important. You either have money or you don't.
I'm so tired of going to the bank and having tellers ask me why I don't have (or want to) open a checking account that gets 1% interest.
My response is always, "What good is a savings account when the interest doesn't exceed inflation?"
I love the deer in the headlights look they always give me. Priceless.
Obviously the problem lies not with the tellers, generally, they're very nice helpful people just doing their job. Don't shoot the messangers, aim for the ivory tower, if you can find it.
because Banksters are ...................................................................
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fMO2twAkAo&feature=related
If anyone could make me puke just by seeing them,it would be lawrence summers.
Fuck off and die old man,.
Does Austerity ultimately mean, "the shit you should have been doing that would have kept you from being in this mess in the first place?"
If so, wouldn't that mean that the U.S. had "austerity" measures in place after the Great Depression and then removed them to "focus on growth?" Look were we are now because of it.
Where is Mitt Romney on this? Oh yeah, "growth" is his answer too.
Growth people, it was right in front of our faces all along!
You just need to apply for new cards and do a balance transfer every six months to keep the low promotional rates. Try to keep each card under 50 percent, so you can keep getting more cards. You can keep spending more and more, as long as you keep getting new cards and using those promo rates.
lulz larry lulz summers lulz
You mean Jabba the Hut?
He can doo for Amurka what he did for that Harvard Endowment. :snark:
Looks like my Jabba the Hut image was declared verbotten.
Nevertheless, the image shown would be appropriate for shoving in slick larry's face.
In any policy sphere a great debate always follows signs of failure. The architects of the current policy and their allies argue that the problem lies in insufficient determination to maintain the existing strategy. Others argue for a change in course, a view that seems to be taking hold among Fed Reserve Members – and rightly so. There is a good chance that much of what is being urged is likely to be not just ineffective but counterproductive in terms of maintaining the monetary health of the US, restoring normal financial conditions and re-establishing growth.
Larry couldn't get worse even if he drank brake fluid. Then again wasn't he the guy that lost Harvard University $1.8 billion with rotten advice? Such a darling. The whole family must be proud as peaches to have him.
Great ... Get a greedy fat loser socialist like Larry Summers to preach about growth and further disregard the enormous deficit his administration created here in the US.
A short reminder is that this lead economic advisor to the Obama administration led the economic team to the downgrade of the USA's AAA credit rating and never once did he or the administration pass or operate with a budget. This guy is one sick man. There only solution is inflation. Inflation. There is no growth because when you look at the real inflation numbers there is zero if not negative growth. So Summers, Krugman, etc. solutions are all simply inflation.
I had a dream this AM while snoozing and waiting for Chicago to come oit. I was back at HBS and we were discussing whether this new focus on growth would solve the crisis. Everyone was fawning over it like the MSM is doing. I asked the question - I thought the problem on Europe is that no one would lend to the PIIGS except the pols desparatr to save their own asses. Has anyone heard a bank say the reason they wouldnt lend Greece money was becausr they werent spending enough and if they would only run a bigger deficit cheap money would be avalible.
Then shit got weird.
Would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
With the stock market on track to break pre 2008 highs, it seems confidence, borrowing, spending and lending are again the watchwords of the hour. Only a man of Mr. Summers perspicacity would be able to discern the trends, and utter such telling and pithy remarks, thus demonstrating his truly remarkable powers of intellect, nobility, and taste.
well, isn't he right? can anyone present an alternative???
Their solution is inflation. They'll call it growth but it's not. Inflation is a hidden tax on all that is never going to fix the problems here or in Europe and is especially problematic to the very poor. The solution is smaller government and smaller government spending.
BTW the inflation number the government announces is not even close to reality. The reason the governemnt announces a smaller inflation number is primarily because they do not want to have to pay more in social security payments that are tied to the inflation figures.
He is wrong. His prescription is precisely Japanification. His statement that great policy debates accompany signs of failure is horribly disconnected, given that the actual policies considered and implemented in the 1930s are forbidden from current discussion, let alone debate (look up the Reconstruction Finance Commission and the outright seizure of collapsing banks, the 'Shut Michigan' article from Time Magazine c. 1933 when the Feds flew in to set the terms with the rich families and bankers, etc. etc.). Why are public officers not behind the bankers' desks right now mirroring their hard drives onto the Internet? Bad idea? Oh, but where is the POLICY DEBATE? The Fed or White House memos discussing in dispassionate terms whether or not to break up Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan? Where are the POLICY memos, Larry???
Policies that actually worked for the Nordic crisis, and entire elements of the debate in the Latin American and Asian crises are OFF THE TABLE and you will not see them talked about. Because of corruption. Such options, including writedowns and structural changes to major financial institutions, are not profitable or convenient for the global financial elites.
So, of course Larry is full of shit and of course the present state of 'informed debate' in the financial rags is exactly the primary indicator of exactly how bad things are and how much worse they are going to get. As in zero real returns across all asset classes for the rest of our lives, as noted by Bill Gross and others. If we're lucky.
.
No, not ever.
Dump him in the sea near a Japanese whaling ship.
Sure. Stop printing fiat money. Blow up the Fed. Machine gun execute the bankstas, and imprison Corzine, Summers, Jarrett, Emanual, Sunstein, Chu, and many others too worthless to even mention.
Crop dust Congress with DDT. Drop kick Obama back to Java. Exile Biden to Delaware - never to come out/ankle montior him.
Imprison the enitire Bush cabal, the Koch Brothers, and Warren Buffet for tax evasion.
SHOOT George Soros in every single area of his body, to make sure he's dead.
...and that's just for openers....
Never go full retard.
Advice given far too late to help Jabba the Putz.
I thought he was dead? Didn't he choke to death on the lies from his Clinton days when he set out to destroy the world? This is a man that should be killed, dead. I know, I know - sorry. He is the most evil of the evil, you can thank him for derivatives and the lack of regulation as he beheaded Marcy Kaptur (THink thats her name) when she suggested that the derivative markets are really, really unsafe since there is absolutely zero regulation - she got fucked for thinking like that by Summers and the other dick Rubin.
They will get theirs, I'm sure of that. Once things get rolling here in America (May 1st?) guys like Summers and Rubin will be heading to Asia or somewhere else out of the USA. We will hunt them down and find them and not in the Osama timeframe but more like the Khadafi timeframe. I will be exceedingly happy to see them hung or shot or beheaded or just locked up forever and ever...and ever.
Fucking scum of the Earth these guys are, damn I thought I was done thinking about Summers and Rubin...
I think you mean Brooksley Borne...she was the wisest of the wise...too bad that doing the right thing gets one kicked out or ignored.
Yes, both Alan Greenspan and Artheu Levitt (head of SEC) are both on record as admitting they were wrong on the derivatives market.
And Summers bad bets on those at Harvard lost them a cool billion.
Summers is a liar and a delusional asshole.
Yep, that's right - Thanks.
'of the opposing genealogy, that doesn't guite fit the quasi-genome map of BlueBlood`purification?'
"CFTC" ___ Brooksley Born http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/marapr/features/born.ht... http://www.cftc.gov/LawRegulation/DoddFrankAct/index.htm
Ready for the Jeb Bush/Condi Rice 'Maximum Evil 2012' GOP ticket? Cheney and Baker rubbing their hands together and cackling audibly, just offstage....
as he beheaded Marcy Kaptur (THink thats her name) when she suggested that the derivative markets are really, really unsafe since there is absolutely zero regulation - she got fucked for thinking like that by Summers and the other dick Rubin.
I think you mean Brooksley Born. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/born.html
In a way, he's right. Lack of growth is the problem, but demographics and government waste are a bitch. His biggest flaw is not comprehending this is why there is no growht. Markets, and even more granularly, people create growth. Governments never have and never will. Central planning does not work.
Spot on. Typical of hacks. Start with reasoned principles then invert them such that the result is a ridiculous parody of truth. No humility. The achilles of Summers and his ilk. All great thinkers are tempered by human fallibility. And reaping what you sow.
I don't blame "Phat Larry" for the collapse. I think he is just a tool (in more ways than one). IMO, there is a global agenda and that agenda is to make the world a nicer place for those who believe that they own the world and that all of the rest of us, just occupy THEIR space and consume THEIR resources.
From this perspective, the masters of the world on Wall Street are simply the foot soldiers of the regime in power, who have somehow managed to come to terms with each other after soooo many years of infighting. Ostencibly the reason for them coming together is so that they can irradicate the greater threat (us) and hopefully undo what has been foretold through the millenium. They are motivated.
As for the current minor trifle of manipulative financial slight-o-hand, I still contend that the acceleration happened in 2000 with the passage of Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This cleared the path for re-bubblization ... and the set-up for whatever is coming next... amd while Phat Larry had a hand in those pieces of legislation, I would put them squarely in the hands of Greenspan and Ruben, with Phil "it wasn't my fault" Gramm as the willing tool.
Wrong. Summers was front and center on that process with those two. Rubins right hand man at the UST.
Not only that, Summers was confronted in New Orleans by Ed Steer at a conference a few years ago and basically admitted to the interventions in the gold market.
This guy is directly responsible for much of what has happened over the last 10 to 15 years.
You cannot build what you want until you have destroyed what you want to replace.
Whenever I need sound financial advice, Larry Summers is who I think of first...NOT!
What a d-bag...sheesh.
To paraphrase Lewis Black: don't think about that sentence too hard, or blood will shoot out of your nose:
"If It Weren't For My Horse...I wouldn't have spent that year in college."http://www.squidoo.com/IfItWerentForMyHorse
ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Logic error, my brain just froze, I am on floor in seizure with foam....
Who can argue logic with the highly esteemed Lawrence Summers?
“There are no... limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind any time in the foreseeable future. There isn't a risk of an apocalypse due to global warming or anything else. The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit, is a profound error and one that, were it ever to prove influential, would have staggering social costs.”
What about the derivatives market Larry? LOL.
I really thought after Harvard, Larry would be shunned by polite society. Clearly, he should be.
You have to imagine him leaning forward and pointing his finger at you, saying "Look..." at the beginning like you're a moron, or it just isn't The Full Larry.
We have a debt problem, and we don't intend to pay any of them back. we don't want to default, and that will make a lot rich people holding those debt (wealth) poor. we cannot do that. You have to grow out of it, and keep the game going. So we try to inflate them away.
"we got a new intellectual stillborn"
Classic.
DOA.
The Keynesian trap: "We need debt spending to stimulate economies, and austerity for the plebians (wait, that would reduce spending), austerity is the wrong approach, more spending to solve a debt crisis, more debt to solve a debt crisis, so we can increase spending (wait...). We must bail out the TBTF banks and sovereign nations and impose austerity (wait...that would decrease spending...). We must...um..." Lather, rinse, repeat.
Well at least Larry is focusing on Europe, so he hopefully wont fuck up US policy any more than he has.
May he be forced to room with krugman at the insane asylum.
Why the markets are unaffected by "the fundamentals - which are now irrelevant in predicting the future of financial affairs:
From Bloomberg, "Occupy Wall Street plans global disruptions" -
"Five banks -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) together held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, compared with 43 percent in 2006, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve."
Think about it - just 5 banks!! They have legalized collusion by meeting as the shareholders of the FED (you have to admit - that's brilliant!!). They get together for lunch at the NY FED building and plan out what they are going to do, and how they are going to protect themselves from failing. De jure they run the FED, de facto they run the government, and they will continue to run the WH - the only difference between Obama and Romney is that maybe Romney will chase out the Black and Hispanic Racists running the "Just Us" Department. Outside of that, the GS-JPM duopoly will continue to call the shots worldwide just as they do today, and these five banks will continue to take over ever higher percentages of the financial world.
This is why the collapse never comes for the TBTF banks and the TPTB - the influence of the 99% continues to decline as a factor in the economy.
I want to thank all of you for opening my eyes to this. I sensed the system was criminal, but reading ZH has shown me just how criminal it is, and how deep the rot has eaten into the body. It is a hopeless situation that will only change when the civilizations go to war with each other, and either the Islamic or Oriental civilizations overthrow the other, and the Western civilization.
I'm betting on the Orientals - they embrace technology, and the Islamics don't. The backward Islamic civilization is too interested in being End Timers - which they will bring about unto themselves. The Orientals will milk them for their oil, and then burn them in a nuclear fire when they don't need it any more.
Meanwhile, the West will continue its decadent plunge into multi-multiculturalism, fueled in America by Black and Hispanic Racism, and in Europe by Islamic Radicalism. As the endless greed of the Western Financial Ruling Elite bankrupts the Middle Class entirely, and the demands of the Underclass become unfinancible, the Western Financial Ruling Elites will find themselves with no one to populate their military and their para-military protective services who have the brains, or courage, to defend them. We see the seeds of this already with the rejection of the discipline formerly associated with the president's, and Congress', protective services brought about by being silent witnesses to all the corruption, sexual immorality, and drug use that occurs within these segments of society daily.
What an exciting time in history - the changing of the Rulers of the World!
And we will be among the survivors because we wouldn't lie to ourselves about what is happening in the world.
-30-
"And somehow this individual is seen as fit to opine on symptoms and underlying causes, on cause and effect".
Quite.
DavidC
These people (Larry Summers, et. al.) are vile. They are their own worst enemies. They should jsut STFU. Every time they speak they remind thinking people of how bad they are.
Summers, Rubin et al
Not their own worst enemy...
Our (the Public's) worst enemy...
Timmy G should hang with Larry, who is one of the very few with a record of failure that exceeds even the Poster-Boy for homo-failures... Add Krugman and the Bernank for a really good circle-jerk...
.
Be sure to use a stout rope. You don't want to have to lift his ass back up on the scaffold. Now that I think about it, be sure to build a sturdy scaffold.
I actually admire Larry. He is a blunt straightforward guy who says what he thinks. Back in 2009 he said," we need a weaker dollar" and "the only way out of this recession is a weaker dollar to stimulate exports."
In the meantime, Timmy claimed "American wants a stong follar." I prefer the truth what someone thinks (even if I disagree with it) then a bold face lie.
May had arrived in Spain, the flowers, after one whiff of the air, decided to give up and try again next year. Then summer arrived and fouled the air and crushed the flowers and Spain decided it had had enough. They got together and had counsels and meetings and opted to render the fat bastard into plant food.
I wanted a happy ending to that novel.
Can this motherfucker just go away already?
And try a salad while you are at it, you condescending fat fuck.
Burn the bankers!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I wanted to read a bunch of idiot babble like this, I'd go to the Ritholtz blog...
When Obama hired Larry Summers to lead his economic recovery group, I started selling my securities and used the $$ to buy physical PM's and paid off the house mortgage.
Asking Summers to fix the economic problem he helped engineer is like hiring Louis Camilleri (Phillip Morris CEO) to head a stop-smoking campaign.
Complete absolute nonesense...........
"When the Useful Idiot Obama Bin Lyin' was ordered to hire Larry Summers by his owners and controllers..."
There, fixed it for you...
Larry Summers
Paul Krugman
OK ladies, who's more repugnant?
Fat Fucking Larry Summers...
Makes Timmay Jeethner almost look smart... almost...
Summers is the epitome of lets drink until we are sober
inflation disguised as growth is the only thing they have left, most of these fucking wankers have shot their wad
Summers, Gramm, Rubin, Geithner, Bernanke, and Krugman should all be pictured holding hands, while tiptoeing through the tulips.
Lots of talk today about inflation. Two years ago it ws about deflation. Ever wonder why we do not have wild inflation today? Maybe because inflation always involves comparing the currency with some other unit of value, and the greenback is being compared to what? Euros, BP, Yen? China values their currency to ours, so no use comparing there. I submit that prices of gold and oil, and yes, food, are all good measures of true inflaiton, and we are seeing the beginnings of what may prove to be more than just wild.
Unless of course all of the value is let out of everything. I believe that if / when the US holds a genuine auction (where the Fed does not scoop all the treasuries up with phoney money / credit), there will be no takers, and rates will go through the roof. Of course, price will go to nothing, just as rates today are nothing and prices are through the proverbial roof (you may think they are not so high, but as compared to value... not so much).
Of course we won't see that in the near term, b/c the Fed will keep doing its easing trick, the sheep will say, bah bah bah, and Larry will say blah blah blah.
Enjoy.
he's a changeling. He got Clinton to take away the last pillar
of financial control. THen he went to hide somewhere between the TCTF banks
and Harvard, until Obama came along.
He's just talking out his ass.
And, he knows that relativistic bafflegab will keep civilised
people from lynching him.
There's no downside to pro-banker economics.
It's all Squid now, baby.
They're just talking to themselves
Malcovich, malcovich
summers, summers