Fish Guts Summers
Posted on November 17th, 2008 in Uncategorized |
In his NYT blog, Stanley Fish considers Larry Summers, and finds the ex-Harvard president wanting.
It is not a question of intelligence and competence -– everyone agrees that Summers is very smart and very accomplished as an economist; it is a question of tact, patience, poise, self-restraint, deference, courtesy and other interpersonal virtues. Little that he did as president of Harvard suggests that Summers possesses these virtues….
It occurs to me that Summers, somehow, doesn’t feel consistent with the names we’re hearing floated for various Cabinet posts; he feels like part of a different era. That may make him just as incompatible with an Obama administration, with its emphasis on change, as anything about his temperament…..
26 Responses
11/17/2008 9:13 am
People should also take a look at RT’s contributions to this blog under “The Summers Backlash” (below). The problem is that Lawrence Summers supported the kind of deregulation that ultimately led to the current economic crisis.
11/17/2008 9:26 am
P.S. The following article by Lauren Kiel and June Wu in the Harvard Crimson gives an excellent account of what actually precipitated Lawrence Summers’ resignation:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525367
11/17/2008 10:41 am
This is a dumb piece by Fish, who dabbles too much. He makes clear in the last two paragraphs that he has no idea whether these university issues are relevant to running the Treasury Department. If he were serious about addressing the matter, he would make some phone calls and talk to people about how Summers did in a job that is pretty closely parallel to that of the Secretary of the Treasury — that is, in the JOB OF SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. There’s no need to speculate about what kind of Secretary of the Treasury he would be; he has a public record in the job!
If Fish thinks he understands how economists work together he should give some evidence. He strongly implies that he has no idea how economists work together. Moreover, he is too lazy even to look into the question of whether the criticism of West was justified (it wasn’t).
If you haven’t read twice and admired three times Larissa MacFarquhar’s magnificent Profile of Fish, from many yeas ago, do yourself a favor and find it in the New Yorker archive.
Not a Summers supporter, but irked when people claim to be making an argument and then confess at the end that they have no idea whether what they’re saying matters.
SE
11/17/2008 11:04 am
SE, I thought that Fish deliberately chose not to weigh on the merits of the West intervention in order not to get bogged down in an argument over the rightness or wrongness of it, when really his point was that efficacy, or lack thereof, of said action.
11/17/2008 11:30 am
Yes, that’s true. But if he put some work into the piece he wouldn’t have to be agnostic; the facts are pretty clear and available.
My main point is that he’s just tossed this piece out without paying attention to the actual reputations involved, whether Summers’s as an economist and government official or West’s as a teacher.
Lame!
I like your headline on this one, by the way.
11/17/2008 11:41 am
The important thing is not whether Fish weighs in on Summers’ interaction with Cornel West. Fish’s main point is that Summers doesn’t interact well with others, But SE is right to pose the question how relevant this is to the position of Secretary of the Treasury.
Much more significant, however, is whether Summers would continue to support deregulation as he did in the Clinton administration. That’s a question Obama would have to consider carefully (if, indeed, Summers is still in the running for Secretary of the Treasury. Summers is regarded as a brilliant economist, but brilliance won’t help much if he remains wedded to a view of the economy that seems to have taken a beating in recent weeks (cf. Greenspan’s admission that his own view of how markets work was “flawed”). How flexible is Summers, and how deftly can he respond to the new financial realities?
11/17/2008 11:43 am
The comma after “others” in my post above should be a period. Sorry.
11/17/2008 1:37 pm
Judith, I’m surprised by all your recent & uncharacteristic posts on economics and deregulation–always you have stayed on subjects you are quite close to and always you have been extremely sensible… but on this one–and do forgive me– do you know what you are talking about?
11/17/2008 2:09 pm
I take issue with Fish’s assertion that, “everyone agrees that Summers is very smart and very accomplished as an economist”.
Smart people do not make a habit of uttering discredited or highly debatable generalizations on matters outside their own areas of expertise. Summers appears to hold the mistaken impression that his training in economics makes him an authority on everything. Failure to understand the limits of your own knowledge is not smart.
In reference to Alan Greenspan’s recent testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the NY Times noted that “…a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.” Can economists who favored deregulation (and that includes Summers) be considered smart? The failure of economists to reject their absurdly simplistic/reductionist view of human behavior is not a testimonial to their intelligence.
Summers’ failings as President of Harvard could be discussed in terms of “interpersonal virtues”, but I think much of his behavior could be seen as abuse of power. Abuse of power is not smart, or at the very least, it is not wise.
11/17/2008 2:30 pm
So teach us, Anonymous 1:37. Reading up about the effects of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and the ways in such deregulating legislation has contributed mightily to the present situation, it seems pretty straightforward. Here’s your chance to tell us where we went wrong. Oh, and also why Brooksley Born was so misguided in her unheeded advice:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/370925/the_woman_greenspan_rubin_summers_silenced
11/17/2008 3:23 pm
Who said I knew anything about it, RT? Although chivalrous of you to jump in. I don’t think a single article or blog posting from The Nation is quite what I’d base my argument on, though.
11/17/2008 3:33 pm
Read it and you’ll see it’s based on a Times article. Chivalrous??
Forgive me for thinking you were at least an economist, since your wording (”but on this one–and do forgive me– do you know what you are talking about?”) implied a certain, shall we say?, superiority.
11/17/2008 3:35 pm
PS
I put the Nation version up because one of the comments quotes at length Born’s testimony before Congress, which is chilling in the light of recent events.
11/17/2008 6:08 pm
Dear Anonymous 1:37: You’re quite right that I know nothing about economics. Indeed, my original position on this question was that there was no reason why Summers shouldn’t become Secretary of the Treasury because, except possibly for the Shleifer matter, the difficulties he had as president of Harvard had nothing to do with his qualifications for the position. That’s in fact what I said to a Crimson reporter late last week, As my previous posts make clear, however, I feel I’ve learned something from RT’s posts about the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the repeal of Glass-Steagall. I said as much in an earlier post lower down in this blog. The point I was making at the top of this particular sequence was that I thought people should take a look at RT’s post and discuss it. Subsequent posts didn’t seem to make it clear whether or not they had read RT’s post about deregulation, and so I thought I should draw people’s attention to it again. I’m sorry to have made it sound as if I were some kind of would-be economics know-it-all.
But I will now bow out because I am clearly not an economist. Poetry, my main field of specialization, hasn’t a huge lot to say about all this, though these days it is ever more obvious that “the world is too much with us.”
11/17/2008 6:23 pm
Speaking of wordsmiths, Judith, Dylan in Workingman’s Blues #2 (August 2006) saw it coming:
There’s an evenin’ haze settlin’ over the town
Starlight by the edge of the creek
The buyin’ power of the proletariat’s gone down
Money’s gettin’ shallow and weak
The place I love best is a sweet memory
It’s a new path that we trod
They say low wages are a reality
If we want to compete abroad
11/17/2008 6:28 pm
Judith–no need to bow out because of a perceived lack of expertise. (Certainly never stopped me from weighing in.) some if the wisest comments come from non-experts.
11/17/2008 6:29 pm
And sorry about the typos, I’m on the iPhone.
11/17/2008 6:45 pm
Poetry has quite a lot to say about the matters under discussion. Blake, for instance, would have had a lot to say about the human consequences of global capitalism and might have asked what immortal hand or eye dare frame the fearful symmetry of free markets.
I for one would follow old Khayyam “and, in some corner of the Hubbub couch’d, make game of that which makes as much of Thee.”
11/17/2008 8:58 pm
Thanks, Richard T., for the reference to Dylan, and Feste for the suggestion about Blake. Novels, another of my fields, would also provide interesting insights. Today, someone on public radio mentioned Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” (about a disastrous debt). I’d also think of authors like Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser.
Finally, thanks to Richard B. for his tolerance toward a non-expert in economics.
11/17/2008 10:35 pm
Judith, add Pound Canto XLV, Usura, with quite relevant coda (not part of the Canto) in Pound’s weird, interesting reading:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aba1dVLVSFg
11/17/2008 10:52 pm
Actually, you need to hear this version to get the appropriate epigram at the end:
http://www.fisheaters.com/usura.html
11/18/2008 12:52 am
Can I suggest a dollop of Trollope, whose “The Way We Live Now” is inspired by the financial scandals of the 1870s. (This suggestion is in honor of Neil Rudenstine, who, when asked for recommendations for the one thing one should read before graduating, said Trollope.)
11/18/2008 9:09 am
It looks as if we’re all set for a new Gen. Ed. course on financial scandals in literature.
11/18/2008 9:19 am
Let’s team-teach it, Judith, with guest lecturers for the technical stuff.
11/18/2008 10:53 am
I think that class would pack quite a wallop!
11/18/2008 5:07 pm
One of the more significant posts on the Fish blog is a rare reminder of the integrity issue, which Richard and the contributors to his blog early and often pointed out but few others have–and it is surely relevant for a financial crisis that is in large part a crisis of confidence.
Here is the post:
The national press has mostly missed the principal reason that Summers was forced out. Significant numbers of influential moderate faculty, several deans, and even board members came to believe that he had misled them about some important matters (e.g. the Schleifer affair, the firing of a dean, a tenure denial decision ). Whether fair or not, many concluded he was not trustworthy. This is clear from the public record of the faculty meetings and other sources. Here is an excerpt from a column in the Boston Globe by a respected professor who had been a strong supporter of Summers at the start:
“Above all, the power to persuade depends on the capacity to maintain trust. Colleagues need to believe that leaders will not only act honorably but speak truthfully. Once a faculty comes to believe that their president is “less than truthful” (as a former dean reportedly said of this president), the basis for leadership of any kind has vanished.”
Robert Putnam, “Wanted: A Leader for Harvard” Boston Globe (March 5 2006).
— A Harvard Professor
Post 198
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/administrative-virtues-the-case-of-larry-summers/?apage=8#comments