Free Republic

President Trump will be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. Inevitably, attention will focus on whether the president projects a commitment to internationalist values or reiterates his truculent nationalism in the name of making America “great again.” Attention will also focus on the durability of the current economic and market upswing that has buoyed the spirits of businesses and investors around the world. While Trump will probably try to take credit for all the economic good news, it is unlikely that he deserves it. He is president of the United States, not the world. And the economic...

Since the end of World War II, a broad consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been a pillar of the international order. From global trade agreements to the European Union project; from the work of the Bretton Woods institutions to the removal of pervasive capital controls; from the vast expansion in foreign direct investment to major increases in the flow of people across borders, the overall direction has been ... ...more successful than could reasonably have been hoped. We have not had a war between major powers. Global standards of living...

The White House official whom Bob Woodward charged had crosssed a line by saying he would "regret" printing his version of a set of Washington negotiations was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, a source familiar with the exchange told BuzzFeed Wednesday. The email from Sperling to Woodward, which Woodward read to Politico Wednesday, has transfixed Washington, with Republicans and some in the press charging that it embodies a White House lording it over a cowed press corps. Woodward, Politico reported, called the top official — identified to BuzzFeed as Sperling — to tell him that...

Larry Summers, chair of the White House National Economic Council when the 2009 stimulus was developed, suggested that President Obama will eventually tax and regulate junk food to drive people to eat more healthily — although he dinged First Lady Michelle Obama’s healthy foods initiative.“I think there is no question that the way Americans eat and what Americans weigh is a big contributor to health problems and it’s a big contributor to health costs,” Summers said on Morning Joe today.It’s not the agenda now, but I think at some point you’re going to see tax measures and regulatory measures that...

Obama’s former chief economist Larry Summers thinks that one way to break America’s fall off the over-reported fiscal cliff is to raise taxes to the level they were under Clinton’s administration. Echoing Paul Krugman’s 90% tax rate nostalgia and pointing out that it was conservative icon Ronald Reagan who cut taxes to 50%, he said, “It’s hard to believe that raising the top tax rate to 39.6 percent — where it was under President Clinton — will do grievous damage to the economy.” Of course, Reagan also cut the top tax rate to 28% in his second term, but that’s...

I need a quick list of all the Communist and Marxist ties in the Obama administration for use at a meeting tonight. Something beyond his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, and appointee Van Jones. I know this topic is rich, and I hope other FReepers can help me tie it altogether in one neat package. Thanks in advance.

Former White House adviser Lawrence Summers, diplomat Susan Rice and PepsiCo Inc CEO Indra Nooyi are on a "short list" of possible US candidates to head the World Bank, a person with knowledge of the Obama administration's thinking said today. -snip- Nooyi, the Indian-born chief executive of PepsiCo, has been under pressure from investors for a stagnating stock price. She recently laid out a plan to turn around the company's North American soft drink business and took responsibility for management missteps.

When Larry Summers was president of Harvard, a woman by the name of Iris Mack was fired from Harvard Capital Management. The problem with this? A month before she was fired she sent Summers an email warning him about the quality of the portfolio managers at HMC and also about the dangerous derivatives positions that HMC was taking on that ultimately resulted in huge losses for Harvard. {snip] The story of Summers' mismanagement of Harvard's finances appears to be a story that won't seem to die. Most recently showcased by Bloomberg. Now focus appears to be picking up on Mack,...

Raising $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 is challenging, but possible through mechanisms including carbon markets, domestic carbon taxes and a variety of international transportation taxes, a United Nations advisory group said in a report Friday. Earlier this year, the UN's Ban established the panel, which includes U.S. National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and Deutsche Bank vice-chairman Caio Koch-Weser. The financing will be used to support mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries--in particular, for the poorest and most vulnerable communities.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has helped pull the U.S. economy back from the "abyss" with aggressive efforts to spur growth and stabilize financial markets, a top White House adviser said on Monday. Defending policies that Republicans have attacked as ineffective, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers argued measures put in place by the administration, including a $787 billion stimulus package, had helped turn back the deepest U.S. recession since the Great Depression. "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...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received more than five million dollars last year from the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and collected 2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street firms benefiting from government bailout money, The New York Times reported Saturday. Citing new financial information about top officials in the administration of Barack Obama, the newspaper said Summers had made 40 paid appearances, including a speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, for which he was paid 135,000 dollars. Summers, a former president of Harvard University and treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, leads...

(04-04) 13:50 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- Lawrence Summers, President Barack Obama's top economic adviser, earned millions over the past year as managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group and through speaking fees, some from financial institutions now at the center of the government's rescue program. Financial disclosure reports released by the White House show that Summers received $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw. He also reported payments for appearances before institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. Overall, Summers was paid $2.7 million for more than 40 appearances before different organizations and companies, including financial...

Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions. A financial disclosure form released by the White House Friday afternoon shows that Mr. Summers made frequent appearances before Wall Street firms including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He also received significant income from Harvard University and from investments, the form shows. Financial Disclosures In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms...

President Obama's senior economic advisor made clear Sunday that any idea of renewing the Bush tax cuts, set to expire in 2010, is a dead issue. Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary and head of the White House's National Economic Council, made clear to “Meet the Press” host David Gregory that Obama is committed to allowing the tax cuts to die. Summers also left open the possibility that the administration may revoke the tax cuts early, an idea pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But he emphasized that the Obama administration is dead against extending the tax cuts, an...

Round two of the economic crime of the century has begun. On January 12, Lawrence Summers, President Obama's designee to become director of his National Economic Council, sent a letter to congressional majority and minority leaders seeking the second half of the $750 billion approved by Congress last October.   Citing Obama's economic speech of January 8, Summers wrote: "As the President-elect recently stated, 'we start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any other we have seen in our lifetime.'" As you no doubt recall, last September Congress, fearing the wrath of constituents, rejected a bailout scheme put together...

As financial storm signals appeared the past 18 months, some Bush officials urged drastic reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But, according to internal government sources, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson objected because it would look "too political." The Republican administration kept its hands off the government-backed mortgage companies that are closely connected to the Democratic establishment. Paulson is a Republican, but as head of the Goldman Sachs investment bank he had close ties with Democratic-dominated Fannie Mae.

SAN FRANCISCO -- As someone who studies brain development and regeneration, Stanford University neurobiologist Ben Barres feels qualified to comment on whether nature or nurture explains the shortage of women working in the sciences. But it wasn't just his medical degree from Dartmouth, his Ph.D from Harvard and his research that inspired him to write an article blaming the persistent gender gap on institutional bias. Rather, it was that for most of his academic life, the 50-year-old professor who now wears a beard was once known as Dr. Barbara Barres, a woman who excelled in math and science. "I have...

The forced exit of economist Larry Summers from the presidency of Harvard is proof that liberals can also be the victims of the academic left. Harvard’s most identifiable conservative offers insights on how the putsch transpired, in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books. “In no way could it be said either that he had completed his mission, and thus deserved retirement, or that he had failed in it and so deserved to be booted,” Professor Harvey C. Mansfield writes in the Claremont Review. “The event is demeaning to all involved, but especially to the three main parties—the...

In the grand scheme of things, the recent resignation of Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, was a small episode. But its implications are large and reach beyond Harvard -- and well beyond the academic world. David Riesman said that we are living in the cathedrals of learning, without the faith that built those cathedrals. We are also living in a free society without the faith that built that society -- and without the conviction and dedication needed to sustain it. The faith came first. Centuries ago, farmers and others scattered throughout New England made whatever small contributions they could, whether in...

The resignation of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard University tells us a lot about what is wrong with academia today.When he took office in 2001, Summers seemed like an ideal president of Harvard. He had had a distinguished career in and out of the academic world, including having been a professor at Harvard, so there was no obvious reason why he would not fit in.His fatal flaws were honesty and a desire to do the right thing. That has ruined more than one academic career. Dr. Summers' problems started early on. He called in Cornel West for a private...