The Era of Neoliberal Svengalis Like Larry Summers Might Be Coming to an End
From GameStop to COVID-19 relief, the past year has given us an abundance of reasons to ignore the advice of neoliberal economists like Larry Summers. There are tentative signs that the Biden administration might do just that.
Late last year, Larry Summers argued that Americans should not receive more federal money during the worst pandemic in a century. (Wikimedia Commons)
As Doug Henwood recently wrote in Jacobin, the madness surrounding GameStop should serve as a reminder of the uselessness of the stock market — a giant casino where a small number of people get rich from trading trillions of dollars of securities per day, while raising virtually no capital for real investment.
Realizing this, progressive economists have endorsed a financial transactions tax, a small levy on each securities transaction that would raise tens of billions of dollars per year while shrinking the massive volume of pointless trading. It’s a no-brainer policy that would make the economy fairer and more efficient — and at one point during the Obama administration, it was actually being seriously considered.
That is, until Larry Summers intervened to quash the idea.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.