>
> I realize this is extremely counter-intuitive, but that's why I bring
> it up.
>
> Prodded by a comment by someone at EPI, I just went back and read
> through Summers' collected columns at the FT. I looked at them when
> he first started, and the first few seemed so utterly jejune that I've
> skipped over them ever since. But he not only got better, I found it
> jarring how different some of the ideas he expressed were from
> anything I would previously have associated with Summers. A couple of
> these columns sound like they could have been written by somebody on
> our side.
>
I've been reading his FT columns. There's no doubt they take on a more leftish tone than the Summers of old. I still think a lot of this was due to the impending election. Even though US libs don't read FT, the reporters who write "Who is Larry Summers?" pieces for the mainstream media do. True, some of it was a genuine change in belief because the world was changing. On fiscal stimulus, it was never a question that he would be for something big, since unless you're an extremist believer in things like Ricardian equivalence, any back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that's what's needed. But when push comes to shove, on the things that really matter - financial re-regulation being the most important, in my view - I think he'll be to the right of Volcker. Once the issue starts being considered, the financial industry will muster their lobbyists and locate the most prestigious economists to make the most plausible arguments against real change. Summers is not dumb; he can already recite the most persuasive arguments on both sides of any issue. In the end, he'll come down on the side where he sniffs power and popularity, i.e., the side his patron Robert Rubin will be on. Whereas Volcker, for example, is too old and eminent to care, and already skeptical of financial engineering.
SA