more bad summers news (broken arm blogging)

Paul Krugman writes:

Only a few people warned that this supercharged financial system might come to a bad end. Perhaps the most notable Cassandra was Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who argued at a 2005 conference that the rapid growth of finance had increased the risk of a “catastrophic meltdown.” But other participants in the conference, including Lawrence Summers, now the head of the National Economic Council, ridiculed Mr. Rajan’s concerns.

This is par for the course if you are a Larry Summers critic.

The second item is that my WSJ tells me that Paul Volcker has essentially given up from trying to have any influence... He's completely out of the loop, and so beaten-down that he's not even complaining about it anymore. He's given up. Submissive. Was just completely outmanoeuvred by Larry Summers...