James Devine wrote:
> wasn't it Summers who gave a superpatriotic flag-waving talk at an
> ASSA/American Economics Association convention a few years ago?
Yes. I chaired the session. We had Robert Eisner, Robert Pollin and Benjamin Friedman. Summers went ballistic saying he was sick and tired of left wing anti-patriotic crap, or some such thing. His target was Ben Friedman rather than Robert Pollin, because Friedman worried about debt. Friedman was on the panel to represent a more conventional perspective.
I think everybody was surprised by his demeanor. He may have been tired and stressed. I was having trouble with a computer. He let me come up to his room after to try something with his laptop. He was involved in a hectic series of phone conversations concerning some World Bank matters.
Summers strikes me as someone who is quite bright and thus who can see through the B.S., as in the article on speculation, which Doug mentioned. He can be blunt as well, giving him a rather unpolitic persona. I don't know him personally, except for this brief encounter, but I suspect that he also enjoys power, which might create a tension with his intellectual analysis.
I should drop the pop psychology. I only fall into that sort of thinking because his behavior at the panel struck virtually everybody as a bit bizarre.
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu