Voices
PETER S.
GOODMAN
HUFFINGTON
08.04.13
AP PHOTO/FENG LI, POOL
Larry
Summers
Is an
Unrepentant
Bully
IN THE FALL of 2008 — just after
many of the nation’s largest financial institutions teetered toward
collapse, prompting the government
to unleash a taxpayer-financed rescue — I called Larry Summers at his
Harvard office to ask him whether
he had any regrets.
Specifically, I wanted to know
how Summers had come to view
his actions as Treasury secretary in
the Clinton administration, where
he had joined then-Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan to dismantle the government’s authority
to regulate trading in derivatives —
the very financial instruments then
playing a central role in the crisis.
Summers immediately took
charge, barking that we were off
the record — a directive that I
rejected, prompting him to raise
his voice. He accused me of conducting a “jihad” aimed at unfairly implicating him as a cause
of the financial crisis.
I promised to call him again
before my piece ran, giving him
time to reflect. I left messages
but didn’t hear back, so I left
one more, reminding him of my
previous calls. When he finally
called, his legendary condescen-
U.S. National
Economic
Council
Chairman
Larry
Summers
meets with
Chinese
leaders in
Beijing, in
2010.