Home » Ignoring the financial experts: where have you gone, Larry Summers?

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Ignoring the financial experts: where have you gone, Larry Summers? — 21 Comments

  1. I’ve been wondering whether Obama’s failure to seek and absorb new info isn’t tied to his narcissistic belief that he possesses better info because of his unusual life experience. For instance, in Indonesia he learned from his mother how narrow-minded Americans are because she criticized his stepfather for associating with embassy types. Similarly, he would feel superior even to the Ayers types because they really don’t understand what it’s like to be black. Geithner and Summers lack his insight into the working class because his mother was once on food stamps. So Obama would cooperate with people who are in some way on the same wavelength, but he would always figure he knows better. Obama doesn’t see himself as a seeker of truth: he is a dispenser of it–above the crowd and looking down, even at the Harvard types.

  2. expat: Yes indeed, he is looking down upon us all. Not just the Haavaad types, and Billy Ayers. ∅bama gives the impression that his world view has changed little from that of a 1980s college freshman trying to be cool and not a “sellout.” (recall from Dreams From My Father). He had made up his mind by then: no need to corrupt it with new facts and questions.

    Regarding the influence of Axelrod, Emanuel, and Jarrett (whose father-in-law was associated with Frank Marshall Davis in Chicago in the 1940s): I wonder when others will draw out the analogy of Jimmah and all the good ol’ Georgia boys in the inner circle of his Presidency. At the time the press certainly made a big deal of all the Georgia boys in Jimmah’s inner circle. Perhaps one difference this time is that the press is servile this time around.

  3. So people with economic and financial expertise were…uh…basically window-dressing? Color me surprised.

  4. “Listen only to those loyal to you, but appoint and retain the experts for window-dressing, and then ignore and marginalize them.”

    Now we know why there are so many “czars”.

  5. All these czars. Reminds me of an anecdote I once heard, quoting an old Russian babushka as saying, “Best government: Good Czar. Worst government: Bad Czar.”

    Well, yah!

    And I notice that we still keep circling back to. . . trying to figure Obama out.

  6. This is universal for liberals. Do exactly opposite of whatever made America great.

    Free and prosperous peoples molding their own destiny is the pits don’t cha know?

  7. Neo:

    I appreciate your reference here, and in other posts as well, to artfldgr. He’s not easy to read, but I think he has an extraordinary understanding of what’s going on.

  8. Neo, I almost laughed out loud at the “if Stalin only knew” line. I just finished Robert Conquest’s “Stalin” and recognized more parallels to our current regime in his book and recent politics than I am comfortable with. Your comments are right on the mark for my money.

  9. Liberal Economics: Money falls from heaven for everyone to use. But, the immoral and sneaky rich gather more than their share. The government can then step in and redistribute the money the way God intended. Sorry, I mean the way Gaia, or the Tooth Fairy, or whoever intended.

    The Political Dictionary

  10. Think about the millions of dollars Wall Street forked over willingly to Obama during the campaign…silly me, I used to think Wall Street was run by republicans, or at least conservatives.

  11. Neo
    Everyone seems to agree that Obama’s actions point to a profoundly arrogant, self-centered, person driven by ideology.

    The really interesting thing to me is how little basis there is for so much self confidence – as a leader/president that is. He is obviously good at getting a lot of people to THINK he’s a brilliant, gifted leader. But looking at his past achievements as a public and private figure, plus his present mishandling of nearly every issue since assuming office, it’s hard to believe he is anything but a below average intellect with a hyper inflated ego. And more than a little lazy.
    Instead of actually working hard on issues he claims to hold dear, he leaves the thinking and the details of difficult problems for others to solve. He has no health plan of his own, doesn’t even care much about anybody else’s works. He was either lying, or just too lazy to read what was actually proposed. No Iran policy, no Afghanistan policy, no woking energy policy, etc.
    He talks and talks but never really has anything original to say. He can’t prioritize between a war and an over-nighter to Copenhagen to charm more potential adoring fans.
    He ignores experts in their fields, having no education or experience in any of them himself.
    Is this an evil genius, or a lazy, incompetent goof-off who thinks everyone else is too dumb to see he’s got no answers?
    It’s hard to tell – is he too arrogant to believe he’s not a genius, or not smart enough to recognize he doesn’t know everything.

  12. I also wish to acknowledge my respect for Artfldgr.

    Southpaw: How about an evil, lazy, incompetent bullsh*tter? That about covers it.

    Obama=Chavez

  13. Interesting. Tuesday night I distractedly listened to Paul Volcker on Charlie Rose. It seemed odd as I thought his comments were less than “on message.” He directly refused to discuss the financial impact of health care reform with a tone I took to mean the impact would be a deep crater.

    Clinton was successful because he took Republican ideas and smoothed the edges. But also because Rubin keep the finances in order. It saddened me that Bush never found a Treasury Secretary with such talent. Going for fools with no real ideas instead. Obama has some talent on the bench but won’t use it, when it’s needed most. That we are hearing about this is a sign the talent is making their last play to get in the game before going free agent.

  14. The selection and use of advisors is always difficult for a leader, but most of the time a confident person will somehow figure out how to make it work. Obama has two problems. The first is that he cannot rely on his truely trusted advisors from Chicago in public. They are too radical and/or corrupt. Plus he made a public show about surrounding himself with center-left people of experience to bolster his credentials. He doesn’t know these people personally and is not the type of man who can size up someone and create a friendship easily.

  15. Didn’t President Bush have a bad reputation for not listening to experts?

    I’d think that, if you run for office as the anti-Bush, you should avoid making the mistakes your party frequently accused Bush of making.

    Just sayin’…

  16. if only they could get the undivided attention of the leader and plead their case so that he could truly hear, they’d finally have the influence they so rightly deserve.

    this situation is so common that one could pull up the micheal jackson interview as to how he thinks he could have talked to hitler better than chamberlain did and get him not to do what he did.

    obama also mimicks this, for mimic is how you get someon to like you in body language games. mirroring i think its called… i forget.

    so a lot of what obama does at leat on the surface has to do with all these crap games of influence.

    while his actions have everything to do with his goals when they mean something. often he is distracting locally, while otehr chips are moved internationally (and visa versa).

    rather than try to figure him out from a context and weedle his internal thoughts, it is easier to just know the ideology and tht will tell you what action he will take. none of these guys invent a new way to power, they just pick and choose the old parts reassemble them add a bit of their own decoration and plod along with that.

    if it werent for history, they would not know what to do.

    which is why they erase history for the rest of us, that way we dont know what they are doing.

  17. Andrew_M_Garland Says:
    Liberal Economics: Money falls from heaven for everyone to use. But, the immoral and sneaky rich gather more than their share…..

    i think they are confusing economics with a skittles commercial. Come taste the rainbow… 🙂

  18. Daniel in Brookline: I think Bush certainly didn’t always (or even most of the time?) do what his experts said. But I believe (I haven’t looked this up, though, and am doing it by memory) that he certainly heard them out rather than freezing them out as Obama apparently has. Bush’s advisers certainly were not window-dressing.

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