10 Things You Didn’t Know About Lawrence ‘Larry’ Summers

President-elect Barack Obama named Summers head of the National Economic Council.

By Jennifer L. O'Shea

November 24, 2008 RSS Feed Print

1. Lawrence Henry Summers was born on Nov. 30, 1954, in New Haven, Conn. He is the oldest of three sons born to economics professors Robert and Anita Summers, who were teaching at Yale when he was born.

2. Summers's extended family also includes other very distinguished economists—he has two uncles who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Paul Samuelson of MIT is his father's brother (the older Summers changed his name as a young man), and Stanford economist Kenneth Arrow is his uncle on his mother's side.

3. Summers left high school after his junior year to study at MIT. (He had applied to Harvard as well but was rejected.) He intended to study math, but changed his field to economics after he found that he enjoyed analyzing real-world problems. He also excelled on the debate team. Summers graduated in 1975.

4. After earning an economics Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982, Summers took a job in Washington, working for a year on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers.

5. Summers became a tenured professor of economics at Harvard in 1983, making him, at age 28, one of the youngest professors in the school's history to reach that status. The same year, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, which was successfully treated with months of chemotherapy.

6. Summers became chief economist for the World Bank in 1991. In that post, he was criticized when a memo he had signed said that developing nations were "underpolluted."

7. In 1993, he was appointed under secretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department. That year, Summers received the prestigious John Bates Clark Award, given to the best American economist under 40.

8. After Robert Rubin's departure in 1999, Summers became treasury secretary, serving through the final year of the Clinton administration.

9. Summers became president of Harvard University in 2001.

10. Summers is married to Elisa New, a professor of English at Harvard. He has a son and twin daughters from a previous marriage.

Sources:

  • Boston Globe
  • Boston Magazine
  • Business Week
  • Chronicle of Higher Education
  • New York Times
  • USA Today
  • Washington Post
Tags:
Larry Summers,
Obama transition,
Obama administration,
economy

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One thing I can say, for an economist with his credentials it is hard to understand how he can be such an idiot. The principles of a sound economy, and that goes for any country, is THRIFT, without it a country cannot survive and a good example of it is Rome. Marco Tulio Ciceron on 55 B.C. said:

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury must be replenished, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of public officials should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to other countries must be removed so Rome does not go bankrupt. People must learn to work again, instead of living off the state. "

A good example that “debt” is an evil is our economy and people living on “credit”; there is what in economic terms is “The point of diminishing returns”; in other words, a point when people or governments can no longer survive and everything is lost. Good example are the millions of people in the USA living on credit and loosing their jobs resulting in loosing their property and possessions. The same can be said about any country. Money is power and a good example now days is China, they have plenty of hard money to finance any super project which create thousands of jobs for people with different levels of education, from professionals to blue collar labor. Any economist who does not see that is an idiot and our government is full of them.

Something which puzzles me is how Larry Summers has obtained all of his qualifications and jobs without even knowing the principles of “Classic Economy” such as “thrift”.

Remember, always save for a rainy day!

Cicuta of CA 5:59AM January 29, 2012

he is also one of the chief architects of the global recession

oel 5:50AM September 24, 2011

For any economy to be sound it must PRODUCE something. We as a country are producing less and less. Jobs follow the production line. AS yet I dont see jobs coming our way in nthe volume that we as a country need. By summer time we may see the results of so many people having nothing to do but cause trouble in the larger cities. In our old west history if we needed something we made it ourselves. Now we wait for china to make it for us.

harry koschorreck of OR 6:32PM May 25, 2009

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