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Noam Scheiber of The New Republic reports that White House National Exonomic Council Director Larry Summers "functions on exceedingly little sleep…"
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In a fawning new profile of White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers in The New Republic, we discover that Summers' tired thinking extends to the way he views being tired.
Noam Scheiber reports that "Summers functions on exceedingly little sleep.... To power through the day, Summers relies on a punishing Diet Coke regimen. The combination of fatigue and extreme caffeine intake can produce the occasional verbal and physical tic: Summers is a chronic foot-tapper and sometimes turns over words and clauses like an engine that won't start."
The notion that driving yourself to the point of exhaustion and chronic foot-tapping is a sign of commitment and achievement is as obsolete as the belief that pumping more money into the same institutions that created the crisis will solve it.
Summers' old boss, Bill Clinton, once said, "Every important mistake I've made in my life, I've made because I was too tired."
Many Wall Street high-flyers could echo this -- if they had any self-awareness. Instead, they subscribe to our culture's veneration of exhaustion. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi describes how Wall Streeters, when challenged, "talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40."
The country would be better off if Wall Street execs and, more importantly, Summers and Treasury Secretary Geithner -- who, we are admiringly told, works 15 hours a day -- knocked off early and came back to work the next day refreshed... and with some fresh ideas.
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Noam Scheiber of The New Republic reports that White House National Exonomic Council Director Larry Summers "functions on exceedingly little sleep…"
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Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
The country will Collapse regardless of his sleep schedule if it is DESTINED ....
He dwelled on it and identified it as a serious threat to efficiency and health.
Here is a link to my original response to Arianna's post including a ink to her "Morning Joe" interview.
http://donkrieger.blogspot.com/2009/03/arianna-huffington-comes-off-tracks-on.html
Here's a big chunk of the article:
This morning Arianna appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe to tout The Post's new initiative to promote investigative Journalism directed at the economy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-tv/arianna-discusses-huffing_b_180680.html
She was critical of The President's efforts to correct our economic problems, basing her pronouncements on the opinions of several economists she trusts. She stated that our government bailouts are not transparent nor accountable. Please excuse that I am speaking from memory and paraphrasing. - Don
How can you form an informed opinion if the information is not available, i.e. there is "no transparency and no accountability?" How weakly reasoned is it to articulate her opinion based on others' opinions, all of which must, per her pronouncement about transparency, be uninformed by the facts?
She finished her comments by criticizing Larry Summers for appearing sleepy in public and the administration in general for being overworked and undermanned. This is the kind of insidious attack which serves no purpose other than to undermine public confidence. Not unexpectedly, one of the panel hosts chimed in with details about Larry Summers' dependence on Diet Coke.
When have we ever had a competent President and adminstration which was not overworked? ...
Dubya was famous for going to bed at 9 sharp and waking at 6, religiously.
What Obama needs is a BIGGER economic team, how would it hurt if Stiglitz and Krugman worked side by side with Summers?
But, here's my personal experience: I currently attend a pretty competitive Ivy League school, and I have always felt that I wasn't smart enough to compete on basis of brains alone. So, I try to make up for that by working extra hard.
Look at what their deep sleep down for the country! Adrianne has become like mainstrean jounalists, complaining about everything (equals nothing) about the current adminstration, while they work hard to fix economy.
They think they can tinker with the quack economics that they helped create.
If that is fixing, I think I know a witch doctor that can heal your cancer.
When you pick the people who either took part/did nothing to stop this mess to fix it, what do you expect to get as a result?
Even the Europeans are say enough already with shoveling money at these crooks.
Break up these financial entities into the separate entities they once were, pre-1980s style.