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These People Will Fix Your Money

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Clarence Rosario
11/08/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Nice Cal representation, on the eve of playing a pivotal game against USC this weekend. Go Bears!
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Smitros
11/08/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Here's hoping that President-elect Obama at least has a back channel to Nouriel Roubini, and to the older, wiser version of Jeffrey Sachs.
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levari
11/08/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
reich is frikkin awesome and if clinton had listened to him instead of rubin back in the day this whole country would be in far better shape. small packages, man. as for summers, i too was appalled at his alleged remark on the math skills of chicks until i learned of the cowardly machinations behind the twisting of his actual remarks: simply that men and women have different learning styles, which is undeniable, and that this should be addressed, which is devoutly to be wished. anyone in doubt of this should consult the latest lapham quarterly. but what i really wanted to know was, where was warren buffett? and flava flav?
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MissNormaDesmond
11/08/08

@levari: Sorry, but no. I read his remarks. They were indeed stupid and sexist. Here's a good defense of what was misrepresented and what he got dead wrong: [www.slate.com]

And by the way, I do deny that all women learn one way and all men learn another way. I deny that all day long.
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lawyergay
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Worst. A cappella group. Ever.
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Steverino Begins
11/07/08

@lawyergay: Ha. Yeah, they look like they're about to bust into some Rusted Root.
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Multiphasic
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Anyone else flashing back on John Hodgman's bit about the World's Greatest Economists?

[www.thedailyshow.com]
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eatsshootsleaves
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
I love the way Rahm is staring at Obama. It's so hotly menacing. Of course, Rahm can't look at anyone without looking hot and menacing. He's such a scary sexy son of a bitch.
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LilyBlue
11/07/08

@eatsshootsleaves:

Too true. I'd happily go in the Rahm direction.
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BookishLookish
11/07/08

@LilyBlue: He's a bit short for my taste, but easier to tackle and take advantage of?
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twoeightnine
11/07/08

@eatsshootsleaves: Rahm looked like he was ready to kick some serious fucking ass today. Everyone else came out buttoned up, hands crossed. He unbuttoned, put his hands on his hips and stared down everyone in the room.
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LilyBlue
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Dick Parsons??? Are you kidding me??? He couldn't dig Time Warner out of its post-AOL-debacle hole so how is he supposed to help rescue the nation?

That said, he's an incredibly charming man.
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BookishLookish
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Yay, Roger Ferguson! So nice ya had to list him twice!
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SlickaNicka
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Isn't the ? on the right from Clinton's White House? Can't place the name.

Reich is adorably small at 4' 10". I have a slight crush on him after his "chocolate bunny" appearance on Colbert.
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SlickaNicka
11/09/08

@SlickaNicka: Yeah, the right-hand ? is John Podesta, Clinton's Chief of Staff. New he looked familiar.
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NinaHagen
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
I haz a secret crush on Rubin and damn that Reich is tiny.
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MrInBetween
11/07/08

@NinaHagen: Isn't Rubin as old as McRage?
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Multiphasic
11/07/08

@NinaHagen: My brain keeps trying to convince me that is Rick Rubin, which, needless to say... would be fly.
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flossy
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Larry Summers may be really weird looking and a total dick, but the man knows about economics. Okay so he was on the deregulation brigade along with literally everyone else in the '90s, but that's not the point. The point is, is he a tunnel-vision afflicted ideologue, or someone who is really smart and may have learned from his mistakes and is probably eager to help fix them. Do you really think Obama would include him if he were the former?
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flossy
11/07/08

@flossy: Dude. Proofread more or drink less. Or drink more and don't comment. That's the ticket!
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MissNormaDesmond
11/08/08

@flossy: Given that he made an idiotically sexist charge and then, instead of copping to that when several different leading women in science called him on it, whined that he was being attacked for being "politically incorrect", I'm going with "No, he is not good at learning from his mistakes."
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chadnfrood
11/08/08

@MissNormaDesmond: If I recall correctly, Summers was actually taken wildly out of context in the situation that you are referring to. He posited that one of the potential reasons for the under-representation of women in the higher echelons of math/science academia is a difference in cognitive distribution (i.e. the same mean as for dudes, but a lower variability, meaning that guys would be over-represented at both the top and the bottom of a normal curve). This conjecture is still considered feasible by many social scientists because it also explains the higher proportion of males in special education. Given that he only suggested that this was a possibility, and then suggested several other plausible explanations, I'd say that he didn't make an "idiotically sexist charge" but rather was opportunistically attacked because he'd rankled the faculty during his brief tenure. So yeah, let's call him abrasive and politically naive, but intelligent folks like you and Pareene should probably lay off him on silly charges of sexism.
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Shelwood
11/08/08

@chadnfrood: His statement was not taken out of context. Also, the explanation that women are underrepresented in science and engineering because more men are at the end of the bell curve for math assumes both that all scientists and engineers are geniuses and that science and engineering are purely mathematical. If Summers isn't a sexist, then he's merely an idiot.
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MissNormaDesmond
11/08/08

@chadnfrood: I already posted this elsewhere, but here we go again: [www.slate.com]

Intelligent folks like you should know what you're talking about before you get all condescendingy and thus stupid-seeming. I've read Summers' remarks. Some of them were capable of a more or less innocent construction, but some of them were indeed stupid and sexist. Saletan wants to believe that he's more a stubborn, pompous ass than a sexist; I think he's versatile and fully capable of being both. Especially given his subsequent whining about his poor sad victimization at the hands of the hugely powerful and eeeeevil Women in Science cabal.

Plus what Shelwood said.
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chadnfrood
11/09/08

@MissNormaDesmond: Well, um, good to know you're a slate commenter.

Look, I'm of of the opinion that there's more nurture than nature in almost any observable academic outcome. Still, there's plenty of academic discussion about differences in cognitive ability. Being hit with some pat charge like "sexist" or "racist" is, to my mind, far too reductive and stymies genuine discourse.
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MissNormaDesmond
11/09/08

@chadnfrood: Well, it's nice for you that you don't have to worry about whether the charge is accurate, and whether the people against whom it's made are the people who have control over your career and those of your female colleagues, but not everyone has that luxury, you know. It's not academic, you should excuse the expression: it's a matter of people's lives, and livelihoods. When someone who has ultimate hiring and firing power over one of the most powerful academic institutions in the world blithely ignores societal pressures on women and heads straight for gender essentialism as an explanation for inequality, it's not just a stimulating dinner discussion -- it's people's ability to put dinner on their tables.
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MissNormaDesmond
11/09/08

@MissNormaDesmond: Oh, I meant to say, I'm not sure why you thought I was a Slate commenter, but I'm not. I meant that I'd posted that link elsewhere on Gawker -- I'm not a writer for Slate. The piece is by William Saletan.
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dola
11/10/08

@flossy: I've always thought that under-populated countries in Afric...
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MissNormaDesmond
11/10/08

@dola: The interesting thing about this is that while I might buy the idea that the portion of the memo that gave summers a black eye was meant to be ironic, the simple answer to this would be to supply the intact memo, but a cursory look on the Intarwebs has come up empty for that. Moreover, the explanation given by Pritchett in the Harvard mag article cited on Wikipedia seems to be saying that someone snuck in and altered the memo before he distributed it to its intended recipients. So I'm either misunderstanding him, or I'm totally disbelieving him.
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dollywould
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Oh lord, who let Villaraigosa in? Does the entire country need car-swallowing potholes, too?
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mockingbird
11/07/08

@dollywould: Eh. LA's roads are better than many of seen in other parts of the country, especially considering how much traffic they get. If you want to lose a wheel, I'd suggest Baton Rouge. A Honda-sized sinkhole suddenly opened up in the main road near my parents house a couple years ago because of all the increased traffic since half of New Orleans moved there.
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BookishLookish
11/07/08

@mockingbird: Oh, all of Louisiana is the worst, especially the northern part. Try driving out of Texas to Shreveport! Also when you drive over the state line from Tennessee into Alabama your car starts vibrating from the lousy roads.

And of course, there's Jersey City.
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Multiphasic
11/07/08

@dollywould: When it comes to something affecting the nation's very infrastructure, you want at least one person naive to the concept.
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Meg
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Oh, Barack! There's no point in untagging yourself now!
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Multiphasic
11/07/08

@Meg: I just choked on my wine. Also, that was really funny.
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Sproing
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Rahm Emanuel looks like he's a puppet on the fist of Dick Parsons.
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BookishLookish
11/07/08

@Sproing: We're calling him Short Stuff from now on.
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MrInBetween
11/07/08

In reply to These People Will Fix Your Money
Is the little man going to lead everyone to the rainbow and the big pot of gold? If not, everyone grab hold of your nuts and 401(k)s.
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