John Nichols — The Populist Rebellion That Tripped Up Larry Summers

The Summers withdrawal was a shocker. But it came for a reason.

Though he had friends in the White House, Summers faced mounting opposition from Democrats in the Senate and from grassroots progressive groups. The prospective nominee was criticized by women’s organizations for controversial statements made during his tenure as president of Harvard. He was criticized for revolving-door Wall Street ties. And in the most dramatic show of anti-Summers sentiment, key Democratic senators began to signal in recent days that they could not confirm a man who has so frequently opposed needed regulation of the financial sector of the US economy.

“The truth is that it was unlikely he would have been confirmed by the Senate,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats. “What the American people want now is a Fed chairman prepared to stand up to the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, not a Wall Street insider whose deregulation efforts helped pave the way for a horrendous financial crisis and the worst economic downturn in the country since the Great Depression.”...

“I start from a position of being extraordinarily skeptical that his background is appropriate for the role of the head of the Fed,” said Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat on the Banking Committee. “If you nominate someone who is a life-committed deregulator to be in a regulatory position and if you believe regulation is necessary to prevent fraud, abuse, manipulation and so forth, then there’s a lot of questions to be asked: Why is this person appropriate?”

If a Summers nomination were to come to the Banking Committee, it was expected that Merkley would vote “no.”

The Nation
The Populist Rebellion That Tripped Up Larry Summers
John Nichols