Larry Summer decides to leave Obama’s White House
Posted on 22. Sep, 2010 by Bulls Eye! in Politics
Lawrence (Larry) Summers, the White House’s top economic adviser, has said that he will leave at the end of the year and return to his position as Professor at Harvard University. This information comes from press release published in a statement released by the White House today. (This news first was reported by Hans Nichols of Bloomberg News.)
Earlier Tuesday, in attempt to quell the rumors of their departure, White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs indicated that President Obama has been and continues to be “enormously pleased” with the performance of both Larry Summers and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
The Obama administration will likely replace Larry Summers with an unnamed individual from a top corporate executive position in an attempt to fend off claims of being anti-business. Summers, who will continue in his current capacity through 2010 to serve as the director of the president’s National Economic Council has been challenged on his stance of support (or lack-thereof) of corporate America.
As Roll Call stated, at a town hall-style meeting that was aired Monday on CNBC, Obama said he has not yet made “any determinations about personnel” on his economic team, but said that the administration is “constantly thinking … do we have other options and other alternatives that we can explore?”
In a statement issued by the White House, the president expressed his sincere thanks for Summers’s service:
“I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team. Over the past two years, he has helped guide us from the depths of the worst recession since the 1930s to renewed growth. And while we have much work ahead to repair the damage done by the recession, we are on a better path thanks in no small measure to Larry’s wise counsel. We will miss him here at the White House, but I look forward to soliciting his continued advice and his counsel on an informal basis, and appreciate that he has agreed to serve as a member of the President’s Economic Advisory Board.”
Last March, Fox Business Network’s Charlie Gasparino said “Wall Street executives” told him Summers might depart from his governmental position at the White House by year’s end. At the time of that report, a White House spokesperson dismissed the “rumor” as “ridiculous.” In April, Joshua Green of The Atlantic also indicated that he thought Summers would depart sometime close to the midterm elections.
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