Lawrence Summers: Africa Is
Lawrence Summers is on a very short list of possible nominees for Secretary of Treasury. His selection has been complicated, however, by his destructive performance as president of Harvard University, a rocky term he finally sabotaged by revealing his opinion that women lack the mental aptitude to succeed in science.
But there is a lesser known episode in Summers' past that further highlights his reckless tendencies, and foreshadows a politically nettlesome nomination process.
On December 12, 1991, while serving as chief economist for the World Bank, Summers authored a private memo arguing that the bank should actively encourage the dumping of toxic waste in developing countries, particularly "under populated countries in Africa," which Summers described as "UNDER-polluted." Summers added that public outrage over the heightened rates of prostate cancer caused by his proposed dumping would be mitigated by the fact that poor people in developing countries rarely live long enough to develop prostate cancer.
Read the full Summers memo here.
When the Summers memo leaked to the public in February 1992, Brazil's Secretary of the Environment, Jose Lutzenburger, responded with an indignant missive. "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane," Lutzenburger told Summers. "Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility."
If Obama nominates Summers, he will send a dispiriting message to governments of developing countries -- especially in Africa -- just as they have begun to look at the United States as a beacon of hope.
Back in the U.S., Summers' nomination would prompt a reexamination by the media of the countless controversies he has fomented. Even an episode as tangential as Summers' romantic fling with right-wing hatemonger Laura Ingraham could become a source of political embarrassment for the White House. Summers should be left to write his memoirs, not memos.
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Lawrence you are too polluted to take this job. O DO NOT pick him!!!!
"His selection has been complicated, however, by his destructive performance as president of Harvard University, a rocky term he finally sabotaged by revealing his opinion that women lack the mental aptitude to succeed in science. "
Larry Summers never said that women lack the mental aptitude to succeed in science. Please stop perpetuating this myth. The transcript of his controversial speech is available here: http://www
We actually need people in the administration who are willing to speak honestly, even if their opinions may be controversial. The last thing we need is another administration where people only tell the President what is politically acceptable.
We need people like Larry Summers.
Thanks very much for the link. We've seen the outcome of total agreement within an administration. Absolutely, Obama needs people like Larry Summers.
I remember studying this very memo in grad school. It is an example of how neo-classical economists think - strictly compartmentalizing individual factors as if they exist in a vaccum. This is NOT how the world works, which is why it is at our peril that we assume that anyone from the "Chicago School" of thought will help usher in "Change." (mind you, I'm not knocking U. of Chicago - I was born on their campus when my father was a Poli Sci prof there) We've tried their silliness. It's time for us to look toward an institutional economist and a realist. We cannot afford someone like Lawrence Summers to have any role in this administration.
Lawrence Summers thinks like a Nazi. This is Nazi logic:
"On December 12, 1991, while serving as chief economist for the World Bank, Summers authored a private memo arguing that the bank should actively encourage the dumping of toxic waste in developing countries, particularly "under populated countries in Africa," which Summers described as "UNDER-pol
Only a Free market fundamentalist [which he had to have been at the time to have held such a postion at the World Bank] and a practically ignorant person who has never set foot in Africa would make such an absurd comment or hold such a vile opinion.
This guy is POSION, and needs to be kicked to the curb ASAP.
We need to see Keynesian/
Word! That's what I'm sayin', RoloTomassi (well, except the Keynesian thing, I'm embarrassingly uninformed about economic theorists).
Of Obama's candidates, who are the Perkinsian Economic Hit Men? Where do "black economic ops," and black psy ops (the use of weapons-grade propaganda more than automatic weapons, for example), fit in contemporary analyses? Why don't we see more consideration of them?
NAOMI KLEIN: "And so, the Chicago Boys were born. And it was considered a success... [H]undreds and hundreds of Latin American students, on full scholarships, came to the University of Chicago in the 1950s and ‘60s to study here to try to engage in what Juan Gabriel Valdes, Chile's foreign minister after the dictatorship finally ended, described as a project of deliberate ideological transfer, taking these extreme-right ideas, that were seen as marginal even in the United States, and transplanting them to Latin America. That was his phrase--that is his phrase." http://www
"Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane," Lutzenburger told Summers. "Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibilit
http://www
Who are these 'economists,' and their brethren wolves in academic clothing? Who's giving them their marching orders?
Here ya go:
http://en.
John Maynard Keynes was the economic driving force behind FDR's New Deal.
If you haven't read Klein's SHOCK DOCTRINE, do so ASAP; it's a great read and will definitely open your eyes.
My conclusion is that free market fundamentalism is the driving force at the core of NeoConservatism and all of the horrors such cretins have wrought in the last few years under BushCo. IMO [based on a lot reading], it all stems from a transmogrified synthesis of neoliberal economists and warmongering conservatives during the Reagan administration; neither could make the headway they wanted alone [Friedman had been driving economic destruction in South America for over a decade], so they embarked on this unholy marriage that has resulted in the modern US approach to war and economics.
I think Naomi Klein and her work are indispensable in understanding just what it is we've been subjected to, and what we have to fight against going forward.
That's pretty sick. Thanks for informing us Max.
Thanks for helping PRESIDENT ELECT (It feels so nice to say that!) Obama with the vetting process. I'm sure he will competent enough not to appoint any spur-of-the-moment Sarah Baracudas on a bet before the vet. I rather suspect that huffpo is daily required reading for some of his staff. So keep on writing.
Nice work, Mr. Blumenthal. Let's hope Summers begs off the short list today, to...spend more time with his future grandchildren.
Like the well of the soul, o brother my Brother, your archives must be bottomless.
Lutzenberger was right. We humans need to be explained, studied, comprehended AS HUMANS. Reductionism and the Newtonian Mechanism metaphor for life are dead.
http://www
"From its late 17th century inception in modern form, science has strongly privileged the reductionist mode of thought that breaks overt complexity into constituent parts and then tries to explain the totality by the properties of these parts and simple interactions fully predictable from the parts. ("Analysis" literally means to dissolve into basic parts). The reductionist method works triumphantly for simple systems -- predicting eclipses or the motion of planets (but not the histories of their complex surfaces), for example. But once again -- and when will we ever learn? -- we fell victim to hubris, as we imagined that, ***in discovering how to unlock some systems, we had found the key for the conquest of all natural phenomena.
These aren't "'economists,'" they're feudalists.
"Noble" white men are converting our Commons into private property in the context of a "holy" war. The mythical war on terror is the cash cow today that the Crusades were in Medieval Europe. We do our work AND theirs. We fight and die while they reap the profits and socialize the costs.
Summers did not say that women lack the mental *aptitude* to succeed in science. Surely anyone familiar with Marie Curie, for example, would reject that. All he said was, when evaluating the uneven representation of men and women in the hard sciences, we have to consider that different biology and brain chemistry may result in different *inclinations*; i.e., women may, on average, have less interest in being scientists than men. Summers listed this as one of several reasons for unequal representation, the others being discrimination and cultural influences.
It's possible that biology plays a role, isn't it? Shouldn't researchers at least consider the possibility, either to prove or disprove it? Summers was just saying what anyone who considers the problem objectively was bound to conclude. He was crucified for being sensible, but politically incorrect. Good for Obama that he's willing to listen to people with unorthodox ideas.
Wow, good to know. Thanks, Max!
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