Larry Summers - Free Trade Globalist?

[angelatc]

Larry Summers' name is being bantered about for the position of Treasury Secretary; according to Wikipedia:
Summers is an ardent proponent of free trade and globalization, and frequently takes positions on a number of politically-charged subjects. This, along with his direct style of management, made him controversial as President of Harvard.

[Truth Warrior]

Isn't "free" trade and globalization merely yet another classic example of doublespeak? :rolleyes:

[moostraks]

"Summers, 53, and Geithner, 47, are veterans of the Clinton administration who worked together on a series of crises from the Mexican peso devaluation in the mid-1990s to the Asian financial contagion a few years later."

from:Obama considers Summers and Geithner for Treasury
http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews...4A975020081110

Doing some digging on the possible new treasury secretary and ran across this article and found it interesting they were working together on these previous issues. Geesh, these guys are all family in banking. Digging deeper found this interesting article on Summers. Fairly detailed on his associations and not complimentary in the least:


Summers, and his Harvard protégé Andrei Schleifer...began their catastrophic "rescue" of Russia's crisis-ridden economy. It's a complicated story involving corruption, cronyism and economic devastation...
The result was the rise of Vladmir Putin and a national aversion to free markets and anything associated with Western liberalism.
(emphasis mine) from very good article detailing Obama's possible top choice as Treasury Secretary.

from:The Summers Conundrum
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081124/ames?rel=hpbox

So looking into Geithner and found this article:

In Crucible of Crisis, Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner Forge a Committee of Three
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...804211_pf.html

"When Geithner engineered the rescue of failing investment bank Bear Stearns in the middle of a cold March night, he had Paulson and Bernanke on the phone to get their input and blessing." This confirmed my suspicions regarding Michael Alix being a bankster traitor detailed in this thread:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=167099

And how a failure at risk management for bear sterns could become the NY FED's senior vice president in the bank supervision group.

As for the peso debacle look at this article on the Tequila Trap. Interesting view on illegal immigration.

" NAFTA rules had already opened the nationalized Mexican banking system to a number of U.S. banks, with Mexican licenses being granted to 18 big foreign banks and 16 brokers including Goldman Sachs. But these banks could bring in no more than 20 percent of the system's total capital, limiting their market share in loans and securities holdings.11 They wanted the whole enchilada. By 2004, all but one of Mexico's major banks had been sold to foreign banks, which gained total access to the formerly closed Mexican banking market.

The value of Mexican pesos and Mexican stocks collapsed together, supposedly because there was a stampede to sell and no one around to buy; but buyers with ample funds were sitting on the sidelines, waiting to pick over the devalued stock at bargain basement prices. The result was a direct transfer of wealth from the local economy to international money manipulators. The devaluation also precipitated a wave of privatizations (sales of public assets to private corporations), as the Mexican government tried to meet its spiraling debt crisis. In a February 1996 article called "Militant Capitalism," David Peterson blamed the rout on an assault on the peso by short-sellers. He wrote:

The austerity measures that the U.S. government and the IMF forced on Mexicans in the aftermath of last winter's assault on the peso by short-sellers in the foreign exchange markets have been something to behold. Almost overnight, the Mexican people have had to endure dramatic cuts in government spending; a sharp hike in regressive sales taxes; at least one million layoffs (a conservative estimate); a spike in interest rates so pronounced as to render their debts unserviceable (hence El Barzon, a nation-wide movement of small debtors to resist property seizures and to seek a rescheduling of their debts); a collapse in consumer spending on the order of 25 percent by mid-year; and, in brief, a 10.5 percent contraction in overall economic activity during the second quarter, with more of the same sure to follow.

By 1995, Mexico's foreign debt was more than twice the country's total debt payment for the previous century and a half. Per-capita income had fallen by almost a third from a year earlier, and Mexican purchasing power had fallen by well over 50 percent... the U.S. dollar remains strong despite its plunging trade balance, because it has been artificially manipulated up by the Fed. (More on this in Chapter 33.) Market manipulators, not free market forces, are in control."

from:The Web of Debt Chapter 22
THE TEQUILA TRAP:
THE REAL STORY BEHIND
THE ILLEGAL ALIEN INVASION
http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/chapter-22.php

Hope these links help as you dig into his possible choices....

[angelatc]

Isn't "free" trade and globalization merely yet another classic example of doublespeak? :rolleyes:

If you define globalization as one ruler for the world, that's not free trade.

If you believe that free trade would eventually equalize the world, that's very different.

I think the government talks the latter while plotting the former.

[Truth Warrior]

If you define globalization as one ruler for the world, that's not free trade.

If you believe that free trade would eventually equalize the world, that's very different.

I think the government talks the latter while plotting the former. WTO, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, etc. ONLY deals with government "managed, regulated and controlled" trade. :p :rolleyes:

[angelatc]

You know, I just now got around to reading the links that Moostracks provided, and this one is absolutely horrifying for those of us who don't know the players all that well.

http://www.webofdebt.com/excerpts/chapter-22.php