Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry

Larry Summers has withdrawn his name from consideration for head of the Fed. Presumably both he and Obama are annoyed about this. Summers, though, had made lots of enemies in Washington, including feminists, those who thought he was too close to Wall Street, and those who just doubted his temperment. Nobody doubted his intellect, and he had lots of fans among economists, but even liberals who liked him seemed to prefer Janet Yellen.

Mathew Yglesias suggests that Obama might just confound everybody by picking Timothy Geithner. That would probably really piss off a lot of people - especially those who thought Summers would have been a bad choice.

I remain a Yellen fan, but Summers would have been a lot better choice than Geithner. These days, though, Obama seems to have developed a real tin ear for informed public opinion, so who knows.

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