Yesterday, the Washington Post‘s excellent Sunday Outlook section featured a “Spring Cleaning Special” in which ten writers were given the chance to make the case for something that deserves to be thrown out this spring.
Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo argues for television’s demise. Reporter Thomas Ricks calls for shutting down West Point. Blogger Ana Marie Cox insists we should put the White House press corps out to pasture, and author and Nation columnist Naomi Klein says we should banish Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser Larry Summers from public life.
Klein’s argument is that Summers is the embodiment of an often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is “the process wherein the intelligence of an inarguably intelligent person is inflated and valued beyond all reason, creating a dangerous accumulation of unhedged risk.” Especially in the case of someone like Summers, who, as Klein rightly points out, “has been spectacularly wrong again and again.”
Then tell the Washington Post which of the ten things on offer you think should be tossed first. I just voted and the results are showing a strong consensus around Klein’s choice.
As Klein writes at the Common Dreams website, “You never voted for him anyway. In fact, chances are that you voted for a presidential candidate promising to reverse the elites-first economics that Larry Summers — the ultimate Brain Bubble — has championed his entire career.”
So add your voice and vote out Summers here. It’d be a nice symbolic victory and, who knows, maybe Obama reads the WashingtonPost.com.
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