Truth Out has the article The Wall Street Ties of Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner by By Zaid Jilani.

In this article Jilani refers to another article, Speaking To Corporate Execs, Larry Summers Mocks Opponents Of Outsourcing As “Luddites”,

Summers lectured as the closing keynote speaker for the event, and was introduced by Surya Kant, the North American president of Tata Consultancy Services (which is listed on the event’s website as a sponsor of his speech), a Mumbai-based company that specializes in outsourcing. According to excerpts of his remarks released by event organizers, the former chief economic adviser actually championed outsourcing:

For executives planning their strategies in light of the “new normal” economy, renowned economist Larry Summers has some important advice: “There are those today who would resist the process of international integration; that is a prescription for a more contentious and less prosperous world…We should not oppose offshoring or outsourcing.”

With the unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, Summers compared critics of the outsourcing of American jobs to “luddites who took axes to machinery early in England’s industrial revolution.” Unfortunately, the full of text of Summers’ remarks is mysteriously missing from the website — particularly odd given the fact that most of the other keynotes are posted online.

I suppose you could find a benign interpretation of Summers’ remarks, but I cannot imagine other former economic advisers to president Obama making similar remarks, Christine Roemer comes to mind.

While I can agree that, in principle, outsourcing and offshoring could have the beneficial effects expected of international integration, in the current environment, it is less likely to be beneficial.  The current environment includes Republican legislation that prevents our trade negotiators from considering environmental and labor impacts of trade negotiations.  With the war on unions and workers being waged in the US by the Republicans, it is unlikely that any interests other than those of big business will be promoted in any international trade pacts we can negotiate.