Summers is an industry rep who primary task is to ensure the smooth transfer of public wealth to corporate plutocrats. He even opposed the extension of unemployment benefits believing that greater hardship would push wages down even further.
From Summer's point of view, the America Rescue and Recovery Act has worked out just dandy. The unions are getting walloped, 8 million people are out of work, the labor market is in the worst shape it's been since the Great Depression, and the blood-flow of stimulus is about to get choked-off sometime in the next two quarters. Hey, it's morning in America!
But, as we noted earlier, Summers is a good economist, so maybe there is an economic reason for his opposition to more stimulus. Could it have to do with the output gap? Since Lehman Bros collapsed, the output gap (which is the difference between an economy's actual output and its potential output) has been at record lows. That means that there is not sufficient demand to take up the slack in the economy. The only way to resolve that problem (when the Fed is in a liquidity trap and consumers are slashing spending) is to get money into the hands of people who will spend it. That means more government spending, thus, more stimulus.
But there won't be another round of stimulus because Summers and his sniveling companion Geithner won't allow it. They have other plans. Oh yeah, Wall Street and the banking Goliaths will still get as much monetary stimulus as they need (under the phony moniker of "quantitative easing", liquidity swaps, or excess reserves) But as for the working slob -- zilch.
Summers' assignment is to bring the broader economy to its knees; to crush big labor by keeping unemployment high, to force state and local and governments to privatize more public assets and services, and to generate as much human misery as possible. In short, Summers is laying the groundwork for structural adjustment within the US, a policy which reflects his ongoing commitment to multinational corporations and neoliberalism. It's the shock doctrine redux. These people are monsters.
Excerpted from Mike Whitney @ Counterpunch
