There’s a lot of speculation in Washington that President Obama may soon nominate Larry Summers to be head of the World Bank.
That would be a disastrous appointment, just as it was when Obama picked Summers to head up the President’s National Economic Council.
In that post, as in previous ones, Summers proved himself to be incredibly arrogant and a horrible manager. He sneered at Obama’s economic grasp, he lowballed the recovery package, and he went behind Obama’s back on several occasions.
This insubordination is reason enough not to reward Summers with the Robert McNamara memorial parking place at the World Bank.
But there’s more, because Summers used to actually work at the World Bank, where he was the chief economist in the early 1990s.
There he imposed cookie cutter structural adjustment programs on developing nations, forcing them to open up their economies to U.S. banks and corporations and to curb their public sectors. As a result, the living standards of people around the world were decimated. (See Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctinre.”)
Summers also made the notorious proposal that Western countries should dump their toxic waste on “underpopulated countries in Africa.”
Larry Summers has neither the temperament nor the compassion to run any large institution that affects people’s lives.
So please join the campaign to urge President Obama not to appoint Summers to the World Bank.
You can find more about the campaign at forgetlarry.org.
If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his story “Wis. ACLU Backs Cartoonist over Republican Legislator."
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