Dial 911 for Summers

31 July 2013 By Martin Hutchinson

Like other Fed contenders, Summers is a top economist with a career of public service, including calamity management for Mexico and Asia, where he pushed the limits of U.S. action. Should things go awry Summers is also unwedded to current policy and capable of finding a new one.

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Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers are considered to be the front-runners to succeed Chairman Ben Bernanke when his term ends in January 2014. Neither White House officials nor the Fed have confirmed that Bernanke will leave his post at the end of his second term.
Lawrence (Larry) Summers’ work as an economist emphasized the analysis of empirical economic data in order to answer well-defined questions. In 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark medal by the American Economic Association. He was the World Bank’s Chief Economist from 1991 to 1993.
Summers was undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs from 1993 to 1995, deputy Treasury secretary 1995-99 and Treasury secretary 1999-2001. He played a lead role in arranging a $20 billion U.S. contribution to the Mexican bailout in 1995 and in the Asian bailouts of 1997-98, during which he insisted on full repayment of Western bank loans, and through conditionality in the IMF support packages imposed a regime of higher interest rates on Korea and worked for regime change in Indonesia.

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