‘Democratic Wing’ of Democratic Party Takes on Wall Street
Perhaps the strongest demonstration of this was the barrage of “friendly fire” that greeted the White House’s trial balloon on nominating Lawrence Summers to head the Federal Reserve Bank. More than one-third of Democrats in the Senate signed a letter supporting Janet Yellen, now vice chairwoman of the Fed. More than half of the elected Democratic women in the House of Representatives signed a similar letter. Many were appalled at the notion of passing over the superbly qualified Yellen for Summers, with his notorious record of denigrating and dismissing women.
But, as Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation wrote in the Washington Post, Summers also drew opposition because he was the “poster boy for the Wall Street wing of the party — literally.” (Summers joined then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on the now risible 1999 Time magazine cover celebrating the “Committee to Save the World” — before the global financial collapse exposed the folly of their policies).
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