Gene Sperling Reportedly Obama Pick To Replace Larry Summers

President Barack Obama will appoint Gene Sperling, currently a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, to replace Larry Summers as director of the National Economic Council on Friday, the Washington Post reports.

Sperling will return to the same post he held under the administration of former President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001.

NBC's First Read reports:

The president will make the announcement tomorrow during his visit to Thompson Creek Manufacturing in Landover, MD, a window manufacturer. While there, the president will also tour the facility and comment on the monthly employment report.

Prior to news breaking on the president's appointment decision, HuffPost's Will Alden reported:

By appointing Sperling, the president would fuel perceptions that his administration is overly close to Wall Street, installing a policymaker who has not only overseen monumental deregulation of the financial sector, but has also collected hefty paychecks from its leading firms.

The next NEC director will help determine the administration's economic policy over the next two years. Summers, who last week left his White House post for a Harvard professorship, met with the president almost daily to discuss economic decisions. Long sympathetic to Wall Street interests, Summers pushed for deregulation of financial instruments under President Clinton, a policy that experts -- and Clinton himself -- now say was misguided, contributing to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Sperling, if appointed, would be expected to take a stance similar to that of Summers and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, said those familiar with his history. (Rubin became chairman of Citigroup after leaving the Clinton administration and later resigned from that post in disgrace.) Sperling worked under Rubin in the early Clinton years, when Rubin was NEC director. In Clinton's second term, during Sperling's own tenure as NEC director, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, prompting a rule-easing that allowed Citigroup to become the world's largest financial services company.

This story is developing... More information to come...

Comments

[Radx28]

04:52 PM on 01/07/2011

Where do you find an 'untainted' financier with a resume and track record capable of dealing with these big numbers and complex politics..........and how do you disassemble the pile of pickup sticks that represents US finances without taking down the whole pile. Obama is walking a balanced beam. He can watch the appointee, but he can't go with some green horn just because he wants to defy the establishment. This is a long game and unfortunately it is delicate surgery that needs to take place across two or three administrations. Under current politics, we can't hold out much hope for the patient.

[Debbie McPherson]

12:12 PM on 01/07/2011

To me, the Obama adminstration has been one long, slow trainwreck and the man is so NOT ABOUT his campaign platform that it's just about unbearable to watch him go. I realize now that he is and always had been little more than a Govt Sachs employee. Forget about America and Americans - just serve the lords of greed. Fine. I am over it. I don't want to watch any more and I can't stand the sight of the President, much less listen to any more of his blatant lies.
The bottom line to all of this simple - in 2012 Americans will go to the polls and vote their pocketbooks, just as they always do. The GOP is too full of crap to recognize that the November elections were about people voting their pocketbooks - not about AMERICANS THINKING THE GOVERNMENT  needs to do more for Big Business.
The proof will be numbers come 2012. Without a significant inprovement in the lives of middle class Americans, Obama will have NO 2ND TERM. It's as simple as that, it really is, there had better be a lot of job creation between now and 2012, because Goldman Sachs and GE and all his other BIG CORPORATE sponsers will not have enough money to get this man re-elected if the stats prove Middle Class is still totally screwed.
Until then, I say "whatever" - let Obama employee all Goldman Sachs employees and continue to give subsidies to the likes of GE and other MNC to offshore our jobs...go ahead, have a great time with all the backroom dealing, because without significant job creation, Obama has slightly less than two more years to go on nailing the entire middle class to the cross.

[Matt Herren]

10:06 AM on 01/07/2011

Hope. Change.

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

10:01 AM on 01/07/2011

Nothing like recycling old pols and current advisers to Turbo Tax Geithner to take us in a new direction. Total misfire here.

[Chicagofan1]

09:54 AM on 01/07/2011

O wants the second term badly.

[mikeVA]

02:58 AM on 01/07/2011

Time for a constitutional convention. Pathetic. Yale. Thief. Guy talks "market forces". Translation the public gets left holding the bag of garbage, and we bail out his pals money. Should have put the tranches in a court.

[Siebenstein]

02:00 AM on 01/07/2011

A counselor to Geithner?

LMAO

Pathetic, this guy (Obama) is pathetic, he truly is. Nothing but a slicker.

[JoeMentia]

01:56 AM on 01/07/2011

The Wall Street Party wins again! I guess that's not too difficult when you run unopposed

[syllepsis]

01:17 AM on 01/07/2011

"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."

-FDR, Speech to the Democratic National Convention, 1936.

Imagine what would happen if any politician today spoke the truth!

[Jack Mahoney]

08:02 AM on 01/07/2011

Great stuff.

[sheoples]

01:10 AM on 01/07/2011

MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE
SWEET LAND OF CORP0RATE GREED
OF THEE I SING
LAND WHERE THE WORKERS DIED,
LAND OF THE CORPORATE PRIDE,
FROM EVERY FORECLOSED HOUSE,
LET GREEDOM RING!

[Inkosi]

10:36 AM on 01/07/2011

F&F - I LOVE it. Very creative. Our new national anthem.

[sheoples]

01:10 AM on 01/07/2011

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE CORPORATE RUN PARTIES OF AMERICA,
AND TO THE CORPORATIONS FOR WHICH IT STANDS,
ONE NATION UNDER CORPORATIONS,
WITHOUT LIBERTY OR JUSTICE FOR ALL.

[Inkosi]

10:37 AM on 01/07/2011

Fanned - to be recited at every public/private meeting lest we forget to whom we owe allegiance.

[itiswhatitmaybe]

12:58 AM on 01/07/2011

This country is bought and paid for.

[JoeMentia]

01:58 AM on 01/07/2011

Nope. They stole it, didn't pay for it.

[Debbie McPherson]

12:17 PM on 01/07/2011

Joe
 
Actually they really did pay for it - it's called bribes, aka campaign contributiuons - Congress takes the bribes and then the lobbyists write all the bills to suit their business.

[Inkosi]

10:39 AM on 01/07/2011

Boehner wants to take back America to the land he grew up in. So I guess he wants us all to live in a one bedroom house shared by 11 - 12 other people! In this case, they might not all be family members. Din't he cry over his deprived childhood? If so, why does he wish that on everyone. Our Government has been bought and paid for and delivered to Wall Street.

[z-truth]

12:56 AM on 01/07/2011

"This man helped create one of the biggest budget surpluses this country's ever seen under Clinton and created millions of middle class jobs during the 90's."

---

ha what blissful ignorance - the roaring 1920 created a lot of jobs too....

at least they prosecuted some of those bucket shop thiefs

[syllepsis]

01:02 AM on 01/07/2011

Teapot Dome.

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

10:02 AM on 01/07/2011

Internet bubble was CLinton's claim to fame. It burst and Bush saved us with the tax cuts.

[fugmo]

12:14 PM on 01/07/2011

hahaha, that's funny stuff there

[syllepsis]

12:56 AM on 01/07/2011

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.

Oops, that was FDR....

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

10:03 AM on 01/07/2011

What is a living wage?

[z-truth]

12:52 AM on 01/07/2011

ha

the truth really bothered someone....