Obama Considering Larry Summers To Head World Bank
The architect of financial deregulation via the dismantling of Glass-Steagall could be rewarded for blowing up the world with a new post as head of the World Bank.
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President Barack Obama is considering nominating Lawrence Summers, his former National Economic Council director, to lead the World Bank when Robert Zoellick’s term expires later this year, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Summers has expressed his interest in the job to White House officials and has backers inside the administration, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the current NEC Director, Gene Sperling, said one of the people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also being considered, along with other candidates, said the other person. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.
Lael Brainard, the under secretary of Treasury for international affairs, is compiling a list of potential candidates to replace Zoellick, who was nominated to a five-year term that began in July of 2007 by then-President George W. Bush. By tradition, the U.S. president chooses the leader of the World Bank while the head of the International Monetary Fund is selected by European leaders. The nomination is subject to approval by the World Bank’s executive board.
White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment. Summers’ assistant, Julie Shample, said he was unavailable. Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Clinton, did not respond to a request for comment.
A nomination of Summers would bring scrutiny of his previous stints in government, both as former President Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and Obama’s NEC director, as well as his tenure as the president of Harvard University.
“Larry is controversial,” said Erskine Bowles, who served as Clinton’s chief of staff. “Anything you appoint Larry to, you know there are going to be some people who are going to take shots at him."
Video - Bloomberg reports on Larry Summers leaving Harvard to head the World Bank.
Jan 18, 2012 at 2:59 PM
Reader Comments (21)
The Larry Summers hall of shame - Great Recession - Salon.com
Why don't we shut down D.C. and let Wall Street run the Government? Quit paying all these useless politicians. Have the guys who buy them to tell them what to do run the whole show. Would save a lot of money. No federal salaries, benefits, retirements, perks and God knows what else those con artists have got us paying for. the industries and corporations wouldn't have to buy lobbyists, politicians, or experts anymore so products and services would be a lot cheaper. Hey, this could work!!!
Glass-Steagall wasn't 'dismantled' and had absolutely fuck-all to do with the incidents in 2008. Glass-Steagall is a Red Herring.
Not that I like Summers, or anything, just tired of this myth being perpetuated by people who can't even bother to research the facts.
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Wrong and wrong.
Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1998. I would consider repealing to be dimsantling. And it most certainly helped cause the crisis in 2008. Read these links and learn a bit before you show up here spewing nonsense.
http://dailybail.com/home/gingrich-repealing-glass-steagall-was-a-mistake.html
http://dailybail.com/home/john-boehners-1998-glass-steagall-flashback-would-you-like-a.html
http://dailybail.com/home/former-ceo-john-reed-apologizes-for-creating-citigroup-monst.html
And while you're at it, read these posts as well:
http://dailybail.com/home/must-see-graphic-how-the-too-big-to-fail-banks-were-born.html
http://dailybail.com/headlines/kyle-bass-bring-back-glass-steagall-eliminate-off-balance-sh.html
http://dailybail.com/home/larry-summers-on-paul-volcker-obamas-banking-proposal-glass.html
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/04/03/ex_employee_says_she_warned_harvard_of_risky_moves/
This is her BLOG
http://www.imackgroup.com/mathematics/archive-201112/
http://www.imackgroup.com/mathematics/archive-201201/
She seems to like Ron Paul!
Back in 2002, a new employee of Harvard University's endowment manager named Iris Mack wrote a letter to the school's president, Lawrence Summers, that would ultimately get her fired.
In the letter, dated May 12 of that year, Mack told Summers that she was "deeply troubled and surprised" by things she had seen in her new job as a quantitative analyst at Harvard Management Co.
She would go on to say, in later e-mails and conversations, that she felt the endowment was taking on too much risk in derivatives investments, and that she suspected some of her colleagues were engaging in insider trading, according to a separate letter written by her lawyer that summarized the correspondence.
On July 2 Mack was fired. But six years later, the kinds of investments she allegedly warned about did blow up on Harvard. The endowment plunged 22 percent last summer, in part due to the collapse of the credit markets. As a result, the school is cutting costs and under criticism that it took on too much risk in its investment portfolio.
Mack, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from Harvard, had been with Harvard Management for just four months when she approached Summers. She asked him to keep her communications confidential, or risk making her life "a living hell."
But on July 1, Mack was called into a meeting by her boss, Jack Meyer, then the chief of Harvard Management.
http://www.imackgroup.com/mathematics/758763-high-frequency-trading-spreads-across-energy-markets/
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High-frequency trading (HFT) is playing an ever-larger role in energy markets, but is it really suited to the nuanced deal sheets of commodities? Stephen Maloney considers this and asks whether HFT is in fact quietly tilting the table to favour those with the technological advantage
The current market environment – increasingly insolvent governments and greater correlation among asset classes – is characterised by high systemic risk, making hedging difficult and speculative opportunities fleeting. Such trends increase leverage and heighten sensitivity to central bank policies, especially those affecting currency pairings. Energy assets, with their dollar denomination and international flows, are directly affected.
Electronic trading is normally separated into two classes: automated trading, in which algorithms and business logic guide computer trades; and manual trading, whereby traders execute trades on an electronic platform. We take electronic trading so much for granted because it is so ubiquitous. Electronic communication networks (ECNs) carry the overwhelming bulk of trades today and provide the platform for direct trading.
Background
HFT is a particular kind of automated trading, typically performed on an ECN, and characterised by reliance on high-frequency data in which positions are held for short periods of time (seconds or less).
Several market and technological factors converged over the past decade to enable HFT, including:
The 1998 US Securities and Exchange Commission decision authorising electronic exchanges.
The 2001 decimalisation of US capital markets and consequential growth, leading to tighter bid-ask spreads, lower trade size and higher volumes.
The New York Stock Exchange’s 2003 introduction of automated quote dissemination, enabling high-frequency price discovery.
The growth in derivatives products in response to higher trading volumes (tripling since 2003), further expanding price discovery and leverage for a broad range of asset classes.
The adoption of the Fix protocol and its growing role as a standard for conveying algo orders among broker-dealers, banks, funds and institutional investors.
The diffusion of advanced technology from the supply chain sector into capital markets, bringing with it low-latency middleware and feed handlers.
HFT’s growth has been driven by self-reinforcement. The Bank for International Settlements reports HFT represents a significant share of turnover in equities markets (56% in the US, 38% in Europe and 10–30% in Asia-Pacific markets).
Brogaard (2011) goes further, reporting HFT’s involvement in around 70% of dollar volume traded, and generally at the best bid and offer. He also estimates HFT trading on US equity markets earns $2.8 billion–4.1 billion in gross trading profits with a Sharpe ratio of 3.6–4.5.
Despite its large volumes, HFT is a very concentrated industry sector. Only 2% of US trading firms (around 400 or so) are active in HFT, with the dominant players including the major banks, Getco, Tradebot, Citadel and QuantLab. Leading HFT hedge funds include DE Shaw, SAC Global Advisors and Renaissance Technologies.
Note: Larry Summers had the woman who writes this blog fired for exposing his fraud at Harvard. Larry has worked for DE Shaw who has an ownership stake in First Wind/UPC, something I have discussed in a little detail in the Green Energy Blues thread.
Furthermore, are the Tax Breaks GE gets and now Facebook makes the news regarding the same,with which Summers had a hand in forming.
http://www.freep.com/article/20120229/NEWS07/120229021/Facebook-tax-loophole?odyssey=nav%7Chead
http://en.rian.ru/world/20120324/172362902.html
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“The Board is pleased to announce that the following three nominees will be considered for the position: Jim Yong Kim, a U.S. national and President of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire; José Antonio Ocampo, a Colombian national and Professor at Columbia University, New York; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian national and Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Nigeria,” the World Bank said in a statement.
Note: Larry is not on the list...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4VGoXV5vYg