An intellectual bully

I follow Michael Mitzenmacher's blog My Biased Coin. Mitzenmacher is a professor of Computer Science at Harvard, and does research on a field completely unrelated to mine (he works on potentially useful stuff: data structures, network algorithms, probabilities/randomness, information theory). In his blog, MM writes about his research results and other general topics related to life as a professor and researcher. As such, he has recently written about the serious financial situation at Harvard: the huge debt they have now, the cut-offs they should do, etc.

By reading this post (and the comments therein), it seems a huge deal of the responsability for the current crisis at Harvard is due to former president Larry Summers. It seems that Summers invested too frenetically on buildings and new faculty, and the effects of that careless debt are only seen now. Apart from that, it seems that Summers is a rather controversial character (described by some as "an arrogant, intellectual bully") who during his administration brought division at different levels in Harvard. Summers resigned to Harvard presidency in 2006, and took a professorship there afterwards.

While I could not care less about Harvard's financial situation, and I am sure universities and corporations in the US are full of crazy spenders such as Summers, there's a detail that concerns us all: early this year, our beloved Barack Husein appointed Summers as Director of the White House's National Economic Council.

The idea of having a guy like Summers in charge of the US financial recovery initiatives then sounds a bit disturbing. Granted: it could be that the guy is indeed an asshole, but a very competent one for economic matters. (After all, Barack Husein appointed him, so he should be good by definition, right?) However, there's compelling evidence that indicates that Summers is an idiot (or, that thinks that everyone else is an idiot). Indeed, Summers recently claimed that US economy is indeed improving because the number of people searching for the term “economic depression” on Google is down to normal levels!

How about that?