He also had this to say about the so-called antiglobalization protests in Seattle in 1999:

I think the decision to support NAFTA was a crucial one because it was really a watershed as to whether America was going to stand for larger markets, was going to stand for forward defense of our interests by trying to have a more integrated global economy which countries were growing.

I don’t know that the Seattle protest against globalization, how linked are with some of the financial questions. I find them very sad because it seems to me that there’s an enormous amount of very valuable moral energy that is being very, very badly misplaced.

There are children who are working in textile businesses in Asia who would be prostitutes on the streets if they did not have those jobs.

This is sort of a “If you don’t support the Iraq war you’re objectively pro-Saddam” type of argument.

Those poor misinformed protesters in Seattle–which, incidentally, had nothing to do with NAFTA, but the WTO–apparently were expending their energy in a way to help promote prostitution.  The argument is ridiculous on a number of levels that I don’t have time to get into.  It misunderstands what the protesters were protesting and constructs a straw man for the purpose of making seem as if there are only two choices:  accept globalization as people like Summers want it to look, or return to some rabid nationalist economic stone age.  These were never the only choices…

Anyway, the point is, Summers’ flaws are not one-off accidents or inadvertant misstatements on his part. His whole worldview, which he has admittedly to some degree been revising, is highly warped, and part of problem, in my view.

The language is crass, even for an internal memo. But look at it another way: Mr Summers is asking questions that the World Bank would rather ignore — and, on the economics, his points are hard to answer. The Bank should make this debate public.

Now, I completely agree with Ian that Summers shouldn’t be removed from consideration because of a single poorly worded memo.  The memo needs to be put in the context of his whole career and his tenure as the chief of the bank.

The reason the memo was controversial–beyond the fact that people, including those at The Economist, did not believe that it was satirical–was that its reasoning reflected the economic policies and logic characteristic of the Bank. It seemed plausible for good reasons: Summers had been personally involved in the economic destruction of Lithuania and Russia after the fall of communism, and he used his tenure at the Bank to push for neoliberal economic policies around the world, and from what I’ve seen of him (albeit a partial picture) he seems highly ideological.

As I said in my original post, he has to some degree changed his tune now, now that it’s the U.S. suffering the effects of excessive economic liberalization, but his poor track record as a practical economist — in crafting policies to improve the lives of real people — speaks against him, as does his polarizing ideological demeanor and personal history.  We can do better.

“If Obama nominates Summers, he will send a dispiriting message to governments of developing countries — especially in Africa — just as they have begun to look at the United States as a beacon of hope.”

I simply do not believe this assertion of Blumenthal’s. Is there any evidence anywhere to support this argument other than this controversy over Summer’s “UNDER-polluted” quote?  

“I’ve always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.”

People don’t seriously talk about Africa being “under-polluted,” do they? In all capital letters? Is the reference to “welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste” meant to be taken seriously? I don’t buy it, but I could be wrong.