>>To be fair to Summers, and god knows why I feel impelled to do that, he
>>didn't actually write the memo he signed (a practice common among famous
>>people, I hear). It was written by Lant Pritchett, an economist at the
>>World Bank.
>>
>>Doug
>
>Still, it is usually good practice to *read* the memos that you sign...
>
>Brad DeLong
>
Hmm, Summers wrote in a letter to the Economist (which I have in front of me, but is not dated), about "an internal memo of mine", that "my memo tried to sharpen the debate on important issues by taking as narrow-minded an economic perspective as possible", and to "clarify what had been a rather vague internal discussion". I guess saying that "I didn't actually write the thing" wouldn't have sounded as good.
The Philadelphia Inquirer (5/13) quoted Summers' brother Rick as saying about Larry that "in terms of the poor and the disadvantaged, when it comes to policy issues, he's got a real heart." It later says that "In 1993, when Summers was splitting his time between Harvard and a post as the World Bank's chief economist, he clashed over environmental policy with Friends of the Earth...", but says nothing explicitly about the infamous memo (which anyway was in 1992, I think).
Incidentally, a few years ago Summers spoke at the Univ. of PA (specifically, Wharton I suppose), where I'm a grad student, and at the time I wrote a letter to the school newspaper about the memo. Somebody told me a few days ago that there was a reponse to my letter, which somehow I missed, by Robert Summers, Larry's father, an economist at Wharton. I've really got to try to find a copy of that. Apparently it was very "tart".
Seth