“Larry Summers” on The Daily Caller

Larry Summers, formerly one of the top economic advisors to President Obama, is advocating more government stimulus to jumpstart the struggling U.S. economy. (more)

Peter Orszag shed some new light on why he left his post as White House budget director and brushed off criticism over his decision take a multi-million dollar job at CitiGroup in an interview with New York magazine. (more)

In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, our hearts and thoughts are with the people of Japan. This is a terrible tragedy that has cost thousands of lives and destroyed infrastructure, homes and businesses. (more)

There is nothing good about a natural disaster. The tsunami that hit Japan today is an unmitigated tragedy. Still, there is a certain optimism in the human condition that tries to find the upside even during the worst of times. This is one of our species’ nobler attributes. But sometimes it leads smart people to say dumb things. (more)

1.) White House reporters ask first truly tough questions in two years — Pres. Obama was inaugurated two years ago today, which means it only took the White House Press Corp members one year, 11 months, and 29 days to find their spines. “Could you explain to the American people how the United States could be so allied with a country that is known for treating its people so poorly, using censorship and force to oppress its people?” asked AP reporter Ben Feller. He then turned to China’s Hu Jintao and asked, “How do you justify China’s record and do you think that’s any of the business of the American people?” When a mixup with the translator prevented Hu from hearing Feller’s question, Bloomberg’s Hans Nichols used his turn to ask Feller’s question again. But no amount of tough questioning could force either Obama or Hu to answer honestly. And in front of God and everyone, the 2009 Nobel Prize winner claimed that the country which is keeping the 2010 Nobel Prize winner under house arrest has made “enormous progress” on human rights which has been “widely recognized in the world.” The ensuing cognitive dissonance threw the Washington Post for a spin. Both headlines appeared in this morning’s paper: “President Obama makes Hu Jintao look good on rights”; “Obama presses Chinese leader on rights.” (more)

“Stop the bad stuff” is what John Boehner told a bunch of us at breakfast a few weeks before the election. That’s how he defined the GOP mission. Now he’s speaker. (more)

1.) Big business still Obama’s Achilles heel — When John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan, was named to the head of the Business Roundtable, “one of the first people to call” him was Valerie Jarrett, a personal advisor to Pres. Obama. Jarrett no doubt wished to communicate that Pres. Obama was game to work with the BRT (“We go play hoop!”), a gesture that the White House hasn’t made toward the professional left in ages now! Engler’s not here to play, however. According to The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward, “much of the group’s work on health care over the next two years will be looking for how Obama’s health care overhaul might ‘threaten’ the ability of employers to continue providing insurance.” Maybe the BRT should do what Waffle House and a number of unions did, which is lobby for exemptions from some of obamacare’s requirements? That leaves the issue of the mandate, and prices popping through the roof when healthy people decline insurance while sick people buy it up. Also: the totally unenforceable nature of it all. Back to the drawing board! (more)

For once, top Obama economic advisor Larry Summers got it right. Warning opponents of the big tax-cut deal, Summers told reporters, “Failure to pass this bill in the next couple weeks would materially increase the risk that the economy would stall out and we would have a double-dip recession.” (more)

A top White House economic adviser predicted Thursday that President Obama’s tax-cut deal with Republicans would pass Congress before Christmas. (more)

Two weeks ago, President Obama sat down for an interview with Jon Stewart. During the interview, Stewart said that Larry Summers, one of Obama’s economic advisors, wasn’t doing his job very well. (more)

President Obama was not in a laughing mood Wednesday evening during a 22-minute appearance on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show,” straining to convince the liberal talk show host and his audience that his presidency has been substantial. (more)

“Political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality….I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the Civil Rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” — Juan Williams on “The O’Reilly Factor” (more)

The buzz around Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to the Newark public schools has focused on whether he is trying to offset bad publicity caused by a new feature-length film about him. (more)

Conservative economist Martin Feldstein spoke up Monday during a public meeting with President Obama at the White House, urging him to extend all tax cuts passed by Congress during the Bush administration and set to expire at the end of the year. (more)

Changes to a president’s inner circle often move him in one direction, away from the team that surrounded him through the election and toward a more diverse mix of advisers. (more)

The recent announcement that Larry Summers will be departing as head of President Obama’s National Economic Council (NEC) has prompted rampant speculation about what this will mean for future White House economic policy and process direction. (more)

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod on Wednesday denied rumors that he will leave the White House after the midterm elections, despite whispers from those close to the administration that he may be next to leave. (more)

In front of an overwhelmingly supportive town hall audience that cheered his jabs at Republican lawmakers, President Obama defended his economic policies of the last two years and said he has not yet decided whether to keep Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and top economic adviser Larry Summers on staff after the midterm elections. (more)

We skeptics of free trade are used to being told, “You don’t understand economics.”  In fact, one major reason I wrote the book Free Trade Doesn’t Work was simply to expose, once and for all, that there do exist extremely serious and intellectually reputable arguments, within the confines of accepted mainstream economics, which question free trade.  And indeed they exist. (more)

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs signed up for a Twitter account in February, and since then has used the new medium to comment on current events, make announcements before the press is notified, and even break news. (more)