Former National Economic Council Director and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers joined progressive icon Ezra Klein last week on his popular podcast. Klein, a hyper-partisan millennial who hoped Summers would be wrong about inflation, grudgingly admitted Summers was not.
“And damn it, he was more right than he was wrong,” Klein confessed. “You can debate, and people do, if he was right for the right reasons or right for some of the wrong reasons … or what will happen next. But things he was saying six months ago are conventional wisdom now. Inflation is still here. It seems in many ways to be getting worse, even as the economy is weakening a bit. The idea of transitory inflation — that is gone. That has been retired. The data now shows that the inflation is pretty broad-based.”
Klein and Biden administration members erred, when Summers — and every Republican — warned Democrats about the peril ahead. Toward the conclusion of their 73-minute talk, Summers advised Klein “you have to look at the facts.”
Another fact is current Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was also wrong. The entire administration should be held to account, but as the head of the department who continues to be delusional, Yellen should lose her job.
By many measures, Yellen was an ineffective Fed Chair, has no practical life experience, and has been inaccurate during her tenure, especially on soaring inflation.
Hard left types like Brian Deese and Cecilia Rouse likely beat down the 75-year-old New York City native. But these are younger people who have never experienced anything in life, such as inflation. Even Jared Bernstein, who’s 66, has been terribly wrong on his predictions.
And the White House still lacks answers or contrition.
GOP lawmaker wants Yellen to admit ‘mea culpa’ https://t.co/4t5vdkhuep @FoxBusiness @MorningsMaria
— Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) April 5, 2022
Sadly, despite being more sensible, there’s little chance Summers or Austan Goolsbee — former Council of Economic Advisers chair — would come on board.
“There are too many young imbeciles running the show,” a financial planner who worked in Washington during the 1970s inflation told Alpha News. “While age normally brings wisdom, the old folks are frequently overwhelmed by the 40-year-olds making a name for themselves and vigorously climbing the ladder. They step on everyone to advance their career while old folks don’t care about fighting back.”
That’s a harsh stance, but it contains merit.
The United States notoriously is not a society that respects elders. We go with the young. This is not a bad philosophy when dealing with literature, movies and music, but when the young have no expertise in economics or child rearing, it can be a disaster.
During Summers’ defenestration of Klein, he hinted that liberals must deal with reality, which is not that their candidate won the 2020 election; the reality that matters now is the economy faces a predicament, and the White House should respond realistically.
Yellen rarely appears anymore and lacks the strength or knowledge of what’s happening in the world; plus she was wrong. So it’s an easy political choice to get rid of her and inject some life into the Biden administration, as Democrats face historic comeuppance at the ballot box in seven short months.
Summers is 67. There is a delicate balance between wisdom of age and younger people’s ambition. The so-called right person to run the Treasury Department is someone younger, with similar views to Summers.
I don’t expect Team Biden to take my advice.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
