To display the most relevant entries to you in priority,
vote for the stories you are interested in
()
and reject those that you are not interested in
()
The Wall Street Journal is
reporting early this morning that an individual with strong ties to Silicon Valley is set to
be named by President-Elect Barack Obama to one of the nations top economic advisory positions.
Lawrence E. Summers, who served as cabinet secretary under President Bill Clinton and former
Harvard President, is set to become head of the National Economic Council.
The Wall Street Journal says that the news comes from “Democratic officials” late
last night, but a quick scan through our RSS archives at Mashable showed us that he’s no
stranger to Silicon Valley.
Sheryl Sandberg, the current COO of Facebook, once served as Summers’ chief of staff during his
stint the Clinton administration’s Treasury Secretary. Beyond that, Summers himself is an
investor in the startup we termed the “YouTube for Smartie Pants,” BigThink. From our initial review back in January:
Big
Think is a new network that as officially launched today, with some pretty big backers,
including Peter Thiel. At first glance it appears to be a YouTube for the mature
crowd: go to the site and you’re immediately met with video clips from industry experts,
analysts and other notables of some sort, such as Mitt Romney speaking on the issue of using the
state of Iowa as the bellwether it has become...what Big Think has done is gathered
professionally produced video content ripe with commentary from analysts and connoisseurs across
an array of topics in order to get the ball rolling on a worldwide discussion of anything and
everything under the sun. It’s up to you as a user to finish the discussion. What
you’re left with is a weighted crowd-sourcing model.
Politically, Summers is an interesting choice for Obama. I’m not familiar
enough with his personal partisanship to have many pre-conceived notions of the man, but were it
not for the fact that he is being named to the top economic slot for the White House, I’d
find him to be a delightful contrarian.
To understand what I mean, witness his position on our current economic woes in this video from
the BigThink website:
Positivity not-withstanding, as CNet noted in March of this year, he spoke at a Valley-area economic summit,
and warned of the Wall-Street financial crisis we’re now living through:
“I believe we are facing the most serious combination of macroeconomic and financial
stresses that the U.S. has faced in a generation–and possibly, much longer than
that,” said Summers, adding that the country has “never been in more need of serious
economic thinking than we are now.”
[...]
“The current estimates of mortgage losses are $400 billion,” he said. “Those
estimates are substantially optimistic.”
To that end, he’s made headlines from time to time with his sometimes eye-popping
soundbytes. He attracted no small amount of outcry from women’s groups by suggesting that
“innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in
science and math careers.”
Certainly, Summers has ties to a wide variety of powerful organizational infrastructures spanning
from banking to education to inside-the-beltway politicking. Still, his ability to elucidate with
outrageous headlines what are in essence common sense observations (combined with his Valley
connections), in my book at least, tells me that he might be one of us.
---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:
A website that sorts everyday the most relevant information to you.
Vote for the news and Matoumba will learn your tastes and the information that you like the most.
It is all FREE!
Find here the history of the stories you found interesting.
Show this to people who share the same interests as you,
and if they use Matoumba, their own votes will fine recommandations to you.
Big
Think
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
