The Boston Globe has published the OpEd piece Larry Summers attuned to both market and middle class by Michael S. Barr.  I thought it was a lot of hooey before I got to the snippet that caused me to comment on the story. Here is what I wrote.

> When Summers came back into government under President Obama, he strongly
> supported tough reform: a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look
> out for the interests of American families;

This one statement is enough to destroy the credibility of the entire article all by itself.  If Summers had been a backer for Elizabeth Warren’s CFPB and had supported her to head it, he wouldn’t be faced with Senator Elizabeth Warren who we hope will continue to be a strong voice to keep him from being nominated to head the Fed.

If somebody has some credible evidence that Summers advised President Obama to go for a much stronger stimulus package than the President opted for, and if somebody has evidence that Summers pushed for a second stimulus package when the first one ran its course, and if someone has credible evidence that Summers advised the President to sell the idea of a second stimulus before the first one ran its course, then I might buy into the idea that Summers was a good economic adviser to the President.  I’d also like to see  some evidence that Summers was on the side of the economic advisers who finally quit the Obama administration in disgust over whose advice the President was really taking. (Kind of hard because I think the disgust was over the advice Larry Summers was giving.)

Later, I ran across the piece by James Kwak on his blog The Baseline Scenario titled The Lame “Uncertainty” Defense.

The indefatigable Brad DeLong has devoted his energies to singlehandedly protecting Larry Summers from the Internet (although, he makes pains to say, he likes Janet Yellen almost as much). Although I’m letting most of the Fed chair sideline debate pass me by, DeLong and others have raised one issue that played an important symbolic role in 13 Bankers and, more generally, the historical background to the financial crisis: Brooksley Born’s proposal to think about regulating OTC derivatives in 1998.

The people who comment on this blog article seem to have deeper knowledge of this issue than the readers of a general interest newspaper such as The Boston Globe. That does not mean that reading their comments settles the argument. It means that they can build points and counterpoints that make your head spin faster than from The Boston Globe.  These commenters at least have more interesting links to back up material for all sides of the argument.