4-2-00|Analyze|In Depth|Introduction|Contents

These are interestting but quickly added and need work to accurately represent a quality structure and coherent analysts.

Could it be that men's and women's brains evolved from a different set of survival needs and their brains tend to work differently including differences in diagramming how the brain organizes experience?

	From the symbol of Mars (U+2642 ♂). The symbol for a male organism or man.The ASCII code for windows is ALT+11.
	From the symbol of Venus (U+2640 ♀). The symbol for a female organism or woman.The ASCII code for windows is ALT+12.

The purpose of this investigation is to observe the ways that we grow in awareness. Then to ask if it matters? And if it matters, why? purpose

The materials (for observing) are our personal awareness of our experience, our common sense, our intuition, our outlook and our insight and the shared observations of others. Others means that all may not process observations in the same way or if the observations are processed in the same way they may be analyzed in different ways. Males and females tend to respond differently to the same observations.

Our apparatus is our world, our body, our mind and others that we communicate and interact with.

The plaque attached to Pioneer 10	Pioneer plaque
	Illustration

Pioneer plaque

The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.^[1]

The Pioneer spacecraft were the first human-built objects to leave the solar system. The plaques were attached to the spacecraft's antenna support struts in a position that would shield them from erosion by stellar dust.

The Voyager Golden Record, a much more complex and detailed message using (then) state-of-the-art media, was attached to the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.

This may sound simple but there are two major kinds of problems that have harmed our brain development making it hard to perceive and/or analyze 1) the normal male brain and normal female brain process information differently and 2) physical and or behavioral reality now often have purposed distortions and deprivations under the name of education.

We may have been deprived of the early family care and freedom that enabled us to enjoy exploring and/or may have been indoctrinated before age 12 where the indoctrination during brain growth stages is confused with natural development of physical and behavioral reality. This is more critical in effecting neuronal growth patterns the younger the victim.

The oppression of children and distortion or repression of truth due to the political correctness of women's liberation, gay and lesbian liberation, urbanization and daycare for childrearing is a problem that leaves a deficit in child care and development that is growing with each generation.

The fact that so many young children are deprived of a healthy nursing bond for the first two years, so many are derived of healthy family care with a home and family life with visiting, involvement in gardening and animal care for the first seven years and the community play in a mixed age group where older ones protect the younger one should there be danger or a bully.

The fact that so many male children have been deprived of early childhood development in the physical skills with individual or group behavior in hunting, trapping, fishing, herding, self defense, group behavior in defense, building farm buildings and building houses.

The fact that so many female children have been deprived of early childhood development in the physical skills with individual or group behavior in child care, home cleaning, cooking, clothing care, gardening and raising small animals.

Affluence coming to South Korea caused the break down of the home and the highest subside rates in the world. Yes they are turning out indoctrinated children that are then intellectually programmed as parts for a human machine but at what a cost!

But, aside from external anatomical and primary and secondary sexual differences, scientists know also that there are many other subtle differences in the way the brains from men and women process language, information, emotion, cognition, etc.

One of the most interesting differences appear in the way men and women estimate time, judge speed of things, carry out mental mathematical calculations, orient in space and visualize objects in three dimensions, etc. In all these tasks, women and men are strikingly different, as they are too in the way their brains process language. This may account, scientists say, for the fact that there are many more male mathematicians, airplane pilots, bush guides, mechanical engineers, architects and race car drivers than female ones.

On the other hand, women are better than men in human relations, recognizing emotional overtones in others and in language, emotional and artistic expressiveness, esthetic appreciation, verbal language and carrying out detailed and pre-planned tasks. For example, women generally can recall lists of words or paragraphs of text better than men (13).

The "father" of sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson, of Harvard University (10), said that human females tend to be higher than males in empathy, verbal skills, social skills and security-seeking, among other things, while men tend to be higher in independence, dominance, spatial and mathematical skills, rank-related aggression, and other characteristics.

When all these investigations began, scientists were skeptical about the role of genes and of biological differences, because cultural learning is very powerful and influential among humans. Are girls more prone to play with dolls and cooperate among themselves than boys, because they are taught to be so by parents, teachers and social peers, or is it the reverse order?

However, gender differences are already apparent from just a few months after birth, when social influence is still small. For example, Anne Moir and David Jessel, in their remarkable and controversial book "Brain Sex" (11), offer explanations for these very early differences in children:

"These discernible, measurable differences in behaviour have been imprinted long before external influences have had a chance to get to work. They reflect a basic difference in the newborn brain which we already know about -- the superior male efficiency in spatial ability, the greater female skill in speech."

But now, after many careful controlled studies where environment and social learning were ruled out, scientists learned that there may exist a great deal of neurophysiological and anatomical differences between the brains of males and females.

Studying Differences in the Brain

There are now a number of sophisticated neuroscientific methods which allow scientists to probe minute differences between any two groups of brains. There are several approaches, brought forth by advancements in computerized image processing, such as tomography (detailed imaging of the brain using "slices"): There are now a number of sophisticated neuroscientific methods which allow scientists to probe minute differences between any two groups of brains. There are several approaches, brought forth by advancements in computerized image processing, such as tomography (detailed imaging of the brain using "slices"):

Scientists working at Johns Hopkins University, recently reporting in the "Cerebral Cortex" scholarly journal (1), have discovered that there is a brain region in the cortex, called inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) which is significantly larger in men than in women. This area is bilateral and is located just above the level of the ears (parietal cortex).

Furthermore, the left side IPL is larger in men than the right side. In women, this asymmetry is reversed, although the difference between left and right sides is not so large as in men, noted the JHU researchers. This is the same area which was shown to be larger in the brain of Albert Einstein, as well as in other physicists and mathematicians. So, it seems that IPL's size correlates highly with mental mathematical abilities. Morphological brain differences in intellectual skills were suspected to exist by neurologists since the times of phrenology (although this was proved to be a wrong approach), in the 19th century. The end of the 20th century has witnessed the first scientific proofs for that.

The study, led by Dr. Godfrey Pearlson, was performed by analyzing the MRI scans of 15 men and women. Volumes were calculated by a software package developed by Dr. Patrick Barta, a JHU psychiatrist. After allowing for the natural differences in overall brain volume which exist between the brains of men and women, there was still a difference of 5% between the IPL volumes (human male brains are, on average, approximately 10 % larger than female, but this is because of men's larger body size: more muscle cells imply more neurons to control them).

In general, the IPL allows the brain to process information from senses and help in selective attention and perception (for example, women are more able to focus on specific stimuli, such as a baby crying in the night). Studies have linked the right IPL with the memory involved in understanding and manipulating spatial relationships and the ability to sense relationships between body parts. It is also related to the perception of our own affects or feelings. The left IPL is involved with perception of time and speed, and the ability of mentally rotate 3-D figures (as in the well-known Tetris game).

Another previous study by the same group led by Dr. Godfrey Pearlson (9) has shown that two areas in the frontal and temporal lobes related to language (the areas of Broca and Wernicke, named after their discoverers) were significantly larger in women, thus providing a biological reason for women's notorious superiority in language-associated thoughts. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists measured gray matter volumes in several cortical regions in 17 women and 43 men. Women had 23% (in Broca's area, in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and 13% (in Wernicke's area, in the superior temporal cortex) more volume than men.

These results were later corroborated by another research group from the School of Communication Disorders, University of Sydney, Australia, which was able to prove these anatomical differences in the areas of Wernicke and of Broca (3). The volume of the Wernicke's area was 18% larger in females compared with males, and the cortical volume the Broca's area in females was 20% larger than in males.

On the other hand, additional evidence comes from research showing that the corpus callosum, a large tract of neural fibers which connect both brain hemispheres, is enlarged in women, compared to men (5), although this discovery has been challenged recently.

In another research, a group from the University of Cincinnati, USA, Canada, presented morphological evidence that while men have more neurons in the cerebral cortex, women have a more developed neuropil, or the space between cell bodies, which contains synapses, dendrites and axons, and allows for communication among neurons (8). According to Dr. Gabrielle de Courten-Myers, this research may explain why women are more prone to dementia (such as Alzheimer's disease) than men, because although both may lose the same number of neurons due to the disease, "in males, the functional reserve may be greater as a larger number of nerve cells are present, which could prevent some of the functional losses."

The researchers made measurements on slices of brains of 17 deceased persons (10 males and seven females), such as the cortex thickness and number of neurons in several places of the cortex.

Other researchers, led by Dr. Bennett A. Shaywitz, a professor of Pediatrics at the Yale University School of Medicine, discovered that the brain of women processes verbal language simultaneously in the two sides (hemispheres) of the frontal brain, while men tend to process it in the left side only. They performed a functional planar magnetic resonance tomographic imaging of the brains of 38 right-handed subjects (19 males and 19 females). The difference was demonstrated in a test that asked subjects to read a list of nonsense words and determine if they rhyme (7). Curiously, oriental people which use pictographic (or ideographic) written languages tend also to use both sides of the brain, regardless of gender.

Although most of the anatomical and functional studies done so far have focused on the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the higher intellectual and cognitive functions of the brain, other researchers, such as Dr. Simon LeVay, have shown that there are gender differences in more primitive parts of the brain, such as the hypothalamus, where most of the basic functions of life are controlled, including hormonal control via the pituitary gland. LeVay discovered that the volume of a specific nucleus in the hypothalamus (third cell group of the interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus) is twice as large in heterosexual men than in women and homosexual men, thus prompting a heated debate whether there is a biological basis for homosexuality (6). Dr. LeVay wrote an interesting book about the sex differences in the brain, titled "The Sexual Brain" (6).

Evolution versus Environment

What is the reason for these gender differences in structure and function? What is the reason for these gender differences in structure and function?

According to the Society for Neuroscience, the largest professional organization in this area, evolution is what gives sense to it. "In ancient times, each sex had a very defined role that helped ensure the survival of the species. Cave men hunted. Cave women gathered food near the home and cared for the children. Brain areas may have been sharpened to enable each sex to carry out their jobs". Prof. David Geary, at the University of Missouri, USA, a researcher in the area of gender differences, thinks that "in evolutionary terms, developing superior navigation skills may have enabled men to become better suited to the role of hunter, while the development by females of a preference for landmarks may have enabled them to fulfill the task of gathering food closer to home." (2) The advantage of women regarding verbal skills also make evolutionary sense. While men have the bodily strength to compete with other men, women use language to gain social advantage, such as by argumentation and persuasion, says Geary.

Author Deborah Blum, who wrote "Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and Women" (12), has reported the current trend towards assigning evolutionary reasons for many of our behaviors. She says: "Morning sickness, for example, which steers some women away from strong tastes and smells, may once have protected babes in utero from toxic items. Infidelity is a way for men to ensure genetic immortality. Interestingly, when we deliberately change sex-role behavior -- say, men become more nurturing or women more aggressive -- our hormones and even our brains respond by changing, too."

During the development of the embryo in the womb, circulating hormones have a very important role in the sexual differentiation of the brain. The presence of androgens in early life produces a "male" brain. In contrast, the female brain is thought to develop via a hormonal default mechanism, in the absence of androgen. However, recent findings have shows that ovarian hormones also play a significant role in sexual differentiation.

One of the most convincing evidences for the role of hormones, has been shown by studying girls who were exposed to high levels of testosterone because their pregnant mothers had congenital adrenal hyperplasia (4). These girls seem to have better spatial awareness than other girls and are more likely to show turbulent and aggressive behaviour as kids, very similar to boys'.

Fact and Prejudice

But do these differences mean a superiority/inferiority relationship between men and women? But do these differences mean a superiority/inferiority relationship between men and women?

"No", says Dr. Pearlson. "To say this means that men are automatically better at some things than women is a simplification. It's easy to find women who are fantastic at math and physics and men who excel in language skills. Only when we look at very large populations and look for slight but significant trends do we see the generalizations. There are plenty of exceptions, but there's also a grain of truth, revealed through the brain structure, that we think underlies some of the ways people characterize the sexes."

Dr. Courten-Myers concurs: "The recognition of gender-specific ways of thinking and feeling -- rendered more credible given these established differences -- could prove beneficial in enhancing interpersonal relationships. However, the interpretation of the data also has the potential for abuse and harm if either gender would seek to construct evidence for superiority of the male or female brain from these findings."

The conclusion is that neuroscience has made great strides in the 90s, regarding the discovery of concrete, scientifically proved anatomical and functional differences between the brains of males and females. While this knowledge could in theory be used to justify misogyny and prejudice against women, fortunately this has not happened. In fact, this new knowledge may help physicians and scientists to discover new ways to explore the brain differences in the benefit of the treatment of diseases, the personalized action of drugs, different procedures in surgeries, etc. After all, males and females differ only by one Y chromosome, but this makes a real impact upon the way we react to so many things, including pain, hormones, etc.

To Know More

Sabbatini, R.M.E.: The PET Scan: A New Window Into the Brain
Gattass, R.: Thoughts: Image Mapping by Functional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Gattass, R.: Thoughts:
Cardoso, S.H.: Why Einstein Was a Genius?
Sabbatini, R.M.E.: Paul Broca: Brief Biography
Sabbatini, R.M.E.: Mapping the Brain

References

Renato M.E. Sabbatini holds a doctorate in neurophysiology by the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, and was a guest scientist and post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Munich, Germany. He is currently chairman of medical informatics and adjunct professor at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the State University of Campinas, in Campinas, Brazil; associate editor and chairman of the editorial board of "Brain & Mind" Magazine.
Email: sabbatini@nib.unicamp.br

3.2.14.8 Brain size and cognitive ability:

Correlations with age, sex, social class, and race.

J. PHILIPPE RUSHTON and C. DAVISON ANKNEY
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

Differences in cognitive abilities are correlated with differences in brain size, and both brain size and cognitive ability are correlated with age, sex, social class, and race. As noted earlier, correlation does not prove cause and effect, but, just as zero correlations provide no support for a hypothesis of cause and effect, non-zero correlations do provide support. We are convinced that the brain-size/cognitive-ability correlations that we have reported are, in fact, due to cause and effect. This is because we are unaware of any variable, other than the brain, that can directly mediate cognitive ability.

Some have suggested that perhaps increased intellectual activity and/or improved nutrition cause higher cognitive ability. But, just as physical activity and/or better nutrition can only increase physical strength via their effects on muscles, increased cognitive "strength" can occur only via increased brain function. Of course, brain size is not the only mediator of brain function; Miller's (1994) review suggests that amount of brain myelination is related to IQ (as in work by Schultz, 1991; Willerman, Schultz, Rutledge, & Bigler, 1994). Nonetheless, we believe that the important research questions are as follows: (1) What is responsible for these group differences in brain size; that is, are they genetically and/or environmentally caused? and (2) Why does variation in brain size correlate with differences in cognitive ability?

Numerous problem areas remain to be researched. For example, it is not known whether women have fewer neurons than do men; there may be greater cortical packing density in women, and thus, it is myelin thickness or some other variable that is responsible for the sex differences in brain size (Haug, 1987). In a postmortem study of brain tissue from the temporal lobes of 5 women and 4 men, Witelson, Glezer, and Kigar (1995) supported the hypothesis that women's neurons are packed more tightly. It is unknown, however, whether tightly packed neurons are more or less efficient than are those that are more. widely spaced; the latter may allow a greater number of synaptic connections. Serious paradoxes also require resolution. For example, White women have brain sizes equal to or smaller than those of Black men, but nonetheless score higher than do Black men in general cognitive ability. Additional research with magnetic resonance imaging or behavior genetic techniques is certain to enrich knowledge of these important relationships. MRI may identify features of the brain that correlate even more highly with IQ than does volume (some possibilities are neuronal density, white/gray contrast, ventricle/brain ratio, and various specific brain regions). More generally, as Broca and other nineteenth-century scientists conjectured so long ago, it may be the complexities of the convolutions of the brain, and the varieties and efficiencies of its commissures, rather than its actual size, that is related to intellectual ability and that differentiates populations.

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
Why do the most liberated highly educated women often Kill themselves?

Eva Schernhammer (above) and Graham Colditz analyzed the results of 25 studies of doctor suicides and found that female doctors are twice as likely to take their lives as the general public. (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)
Suicide high among female doctors More than double the rate of general public By William J. Cromie Harvard News Office Harvard Gazette: Suicide high among female doctors ... Harvard Gazette: Suicide high among female doctors ... http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/02.03/11-suicide.html - Male doctors take their own lives at a higher rate than the general population of white men in the United States. That's been known for some time. Now, the largest, latest study of physician suicides in this country has found that female doctors take their lives much more often. The study was undertaken by Harvard Medical School researchers following the death of a young female physician who took her life in the School's library. Eva Schernhammer and Graham Colditz examined the results of 25 studies of physician suicides and concluded that male doctors killed themselves at a rate 41 percent higher than that of other men and women. The more startling finding was that female doctors take their lives at a rate more than twice (2.27 times) that of the general public. "We do not yet have a clear answer to why this is," admits Schernhammer, who works at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard teaching affiliate in Boston. "There is evidence that depression, drug abuse, and alcoholism, possibly related to stress, are often associated with suicides of physicians. Female physicians in particular have been shown to have a higher frequency of alcoholism than women in the general population." The women may feel more stress because of gender bias and an increased need to succeed in this male-dominated profession. That seems likely, but Schernhammer says there have been no conclusive studies to back it up. She also notes that being single and not having children, which applies more to women than men in medicine, "has been linked to higher suicide rates." According to another study, done last year, the most common way that doctors take their lives is by poisoning themselves, often with drugs taken from their offices or laboratories. Critical of themselves The Harvard researchers published the results of their investigation in the December issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. In this report, they cite evidence from other studies that doctors who kill themselves "are more critical of others and of themselves, and are more likely to blame themselves for their own illnesses." Other studies conclude that doctors feel uncomfortable turning to their colleagues for help. Instead, they may "resort to alcohol or drugs and isolation. Once they seek help, it appears likely they are not taken seriously enough by their fellow colleagues." One investigation found that more than half of physicians who sought help later committed suicide. Although they had been diagnosed with psychiatric problems, none were hospitalized before they took their lives. Schernhammer and Colditz believe that the underlying risk factors for female physicians' suicide could make them good targets for prevention programs. They highlight such factors as a high incidence of psychiatric disorders, especially depression. Also, excessive drug use can be a sign that they are under the kind of stress and strain that leads to suicide. The researchers recommend that the higher risk of suicide among physicians, particularly female physicians, be recognized nationally. They suggest that more studies be done to determine the causes of the suicides and to find possible ways to stop them. As a model for such intervention, they cite a program that resulted in dropping the suicide rate among U.S. Air Force personnel from 16.4 per 100,000 people to 9.4 per 100,000 in two years. These interventions should, they say, include discreet and confidential access to psychotherapy for stressed-out physicians. Last but not least, Schernhammer suggests "an open discussion of the stress encountered in medical careers is critical for successful early recognition of impairment and risk of suicide."

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Why do the most liberated highly educated women often Kill themselves?

Eva Schernhammer (above) and Graham Colditz analyzed the results of 25 studies of doctor suicides and found that female doctors are twice as likely to take their lives as the general public. (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)

Suicide high among female doctors

More than double the rate of general public

By William J. Cromie
Harvard News Office
Harvard Gazette: Suicide high among female doctors
... Harvard Gazette: Suicide high among female doctors ...
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/02.03/11-suicide.html -

Male doctors take their own lives at a higher rate than the general population of white men in the United States. That's been known for some time. Now, the largest, latest study of physician suicides in this country has found that female doctors take their lives much more often.

The study was undertaken by Harvard Medical School researchers following the death of a young female physician who took her life in the School's library.

Eva Schernhammer and Graham Colditz examined the results of 25 studies of physician suicides and concluded that male doctors killed themselves at a rate 41 percent higher than that of other men and women. The more startling finding was that female doctors take their lives at a rate more than twice (2.27 times) that of the general public.

"We do not yet have a clear answer to why this is," admits Schernhammer, who works at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard teaching affiliate in Boston. "There is evidence that depression, drug abuse, and alcoholism, possibly related to stress, are often associated with suicides of physicians. Female physicians in particular have been shown to have a higher frequency of alcoholism than women in the general population."

The women may feel more stress because of gender bias and an increased need to succeed in this male-dominated profession. That seems likely, but Schernhammer says there have been no conclusive studies to back it up. She also notes that being single and not having children, which applies more to women than men in medicine, "has been linked to higher suicide rates."

According to another study, done last year, the most common way that doctors take their lives is by poisoning themselves, often with drugs taken from their offices or laboratories.

Critical of themselves

The Harvard researchers published the results of their investigation in the December issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. In this report, they cite evidence from other studies that doctors who kill themselves "are more critical of others and of themselves, and are more likely to blame themselves for their own illnesses."

Other studies conclude that doctors feel uncomfortable turning to their colleagues for help. Instead, they may "resort to alcohol or drugs and isolation. Once they seek help, it appears likely they are not taken seriously enough by their fellow colleagues." One investigation found that more than half of physicians who sought help later committed suicide. Although they had been diagnosed with psychiatric problems, none were hospitalized before they took their lives.

Schernhammer and Colditz believe that the underlying risk factors for female physicians' suicide could make them good targets for prevention programs. They highlight such factors as a high incidence of psychiatric disorders, especially depression. Also, excessive drug use can be a sign that they are under the kind of stress and strain that leads to suicide.

The researchers recommend that the higher risk of suicide among physicians, particularly female physicians, be recognized nationally. They suggest that more studies be done to determine the causes of the suicides and to find possible ways to stop them. As a model for such intervention, they cite a program that resulted in dropping the suicide rate among U.S. Air Force personnel from 16.4 per 100,000 people to 9.4 per 100,000 in two years. These interventions should, they say, include discreet and confidential access to psychotherapy for stressed-out physicians.

Last but not least, Schernhammer suggests "an open discussion of the stress encountered in medical careers is critical for successful early recognition of impairment and risk of suicide."

Family and education

At age 16,^[5] he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he originally intended to study physics but soon switched to economics (S.B., 1975). He was also an active member of the MIT debating team. He attended Harvard University as a graduate student (Ph.D., 1982). In 1983, at age 28, Summers became one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history. It was also during this time that Summers was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. He underwent treatment and has since remained cancer free. Summers has three children (older twin daughters Ruth and Pamela and son Harry) with his first wife, Victoria Perry. In December 2005, Summers married English professor Elisa New, who has three daughters (Yael, Orli and Maya) from a previous marriage. He currently owns two houses, one in Washington, D.C. and one in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Career

Academic economist

As a researcher, Summers has made important contributions in many areas of economics, primarily public finance, labor economics, financial economics, and macroeconomics. Some of Summers' early papers concluded that corporate and capital gains taxes are an inefficient form of taxation.[citation needed] Cutting the capital gains tax rate, Summers found, could help the economy grow.[citation needed] Later, while working in the Reagan and Clinton White Houses, Summers was able to lobby successfully for cuts in both corporate and capital gains taxes.[citation needed] One of Summers' prominent findings in labor economics is that unemployment insurance and welfare payments are a major contributor to unemployment, and therefore should be scaled back.^[6]

Summers has also worked in international economics, economic demography, economic history and development economics. His work generally emphasizes the analysis of empirical economic data in order to answer well-defined questions (for example: Does saving respond to after-tax interest rates? Are the returns from stocks and stock portfolios predictable? Are most of those who receive unemployment benefits only transitorily unemployed? etc.) For his work he received the John Bates Clark Medal in 1993 from the American Economic Association. In 1987 he was the first social scientist to win the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation. Summers is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Public official

Summers was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan from 1982-1983. He also served as an economic adviser to the Dukakis Presidential campaign in 1988.

Chief Economist at the World Bank

As Chief Economist, Summers stated in a 1991 interview: “There are no... limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind any time in the foreseeable future. There isn’t a risk of an apocalypse due to global warming or anything else. The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit, is a profound error and one that, were it ever to prove influential, would have staggering social costs.” This statement is regarded as highly controversial by ecologists and other sustainability scientists.^[7]

"Dirty Industries" controversy

In December 1991, while at the World Bank, Summers signed a memo that was leaked to the press. Lant Pritchett has claimed authorship of the private memo, which both he and Summers say was intended as sarcasm. The memo stated that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that . . . I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted."^[8]

Service in the Clinton Administration

Much of Summers's tenure at the Treasury Department was focused on international economic issues. He was deeply involved in the Clinton administration's effort to bail out Mexico and Russia when those nations had currency crises.^[9] Summers encouraged then-Russian leader Boris Yeltsin to use the same "three-'ations'" of policy he advocated in the Clinton Administration-- "privatization, stabilization, and liberalization."^[10]

Summers pressured the Korean government to raise its interest rates and balance its budget in the midst of a recession, policies criticized by Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.^[11] According to the book The Chastening, by Paul Blustein, during this crisis, Summers, along with Paul Wolfowitz, pushed for regime change in Indonesia.^[12]

Summers was a leading voice within the Clinton Administration arguing against American leadership in greenhouse gas reductions and against US participation in the Kyoto Protocol, according to internal documents made public in 2009.^[13]

As Treasury Secretary, Summers led the Clinton Administration's opposition to tax cuts proposed by the Republican Congress in 1999.^[14] Also during his stint in the Clinton Administration, Summers was successful in pushing for capital gains tax cuts.[citation needed] During the California energy crisis of 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Summers teamed with Alan Greenspan and Enron executive Kenneth Lay to lecture California Governor Gray Davis on the causes of the crisis, explaining that the problem was excessive government regulation.^[15] Under the advice of Kenneth Lay, Summers urged Davis to relax California's environmental standards in order to reassure the markets.^[16]

Summers hailed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act): "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," Summers said.^[17] "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."^[17] Many critics, including President Barack Obama, have suggested the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis was caused by the partial repeal of the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act.^[18] Indeed, as a member of President Clinton's Working Group on Financial Markets, Summers, along with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Arthur Levitt, Fed Chairman Greenspan, and Secretary Rubin, torpedoed an effort to regulate the derivatives that many blame for bringing the financial market down in Fall 2008.^[19]

Summers' role in the deregulation of derivatives contracts

On May 7, 1998, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a Concept Release soliciting input from regulators, academics, and practitioners to determine "how best to maintain adequate regulatory safeguards without impairing the ability of the OTC (Over-the-counter) derivatives market to grow and the ability of U.S. entities to remain competitive in the global financial marketplace." ^[20] On July 30, 1998, then-Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Summers testified before congress that "the parties to these kinds of contract are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies." Summers, like Greenspan and Rubin who also opposed the concept release, offered no proof that the contracts would not be misused by financial institutions. Instead, Summers stated that "to date there has been no clear evidence of a need for additional regulation of the institutional OTC derivatives market, and we would submit that proponents of such regulation must bear the burden of demonstrating that need." ^[21] This argument suggests that the default position in the disagreement was that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin were right, and that anyone (i.e., Brooksley Born) who disagreed with them bore the burden of proving their position. In fact, subsequent events have proven that Summers, Rubin, and Greenspan misjudged the dangers posed by derivatives contracts.

In 1999 Summers endorsed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which removed the separation between investment and commercial banks, saying "With this bill, the American financial system takes a major step forward towards the 21st Century."^[22]

The lack of regulation that allowed A.I.G. to sell hundreds of billions of dollars in credit default swaps on mortgage-backed securities was a direct result of efforts by the Treasury (first under Rubin and then under Summers), the Federal Reserve (under Greenspan), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (under Arthur Levitt) to deregulate the derivatives markets. The first response to the CFTC Concept Release was issued as a joint statement from Rubin, Greenspan, and Levitt who stated that they "have grave concerns about this action and its possible consequences." ^[23] Levitt and Greenspan have admitted that their views on this issue were mistaken. Levitt told WGBH in Boston that "I could have done much better. I could have made a difference." Greenspan told a congressional hearing that "I found a flaw ... in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works." ^[24] ^[25] When George Stephanopoulos asked Summers about the financial crisis in an ABC interview on March 15, 2009, Summers replied that "there are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last eighteen months, but what’s happened at A.I.G. ... the way it was not regulated, the way no one was watching ... is outrageous."

At the 2005 Federal Reserve conference in Jackson Hole, Raghuram Rajan presented a paper called "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?" Rajan pointed to a number of potential problems with the financial developments of the past thirty years. ^[26] The problems that Rajan considers include skewed incentives of managers, herding behavior among traders, investment bankers, and hedge fund operators who suffer withdrawals if they under-perform the market. Rajan also discusses (on pp. 337–40) the problems associated with firms that "goose up returns" by taking risky positions that yield a "positive carry." This is how the infamous Joseph J. Cassano impressed his superiors at A.I.G. for a decade while sowing the destruction of the firm. ^[27] During the boom years of the housing market, the credit default swap contracts that A.I.G. Financial Products sold provided a stream of premium payments to the company with no expense stream. That's an example of what Rajan calls "goosing up returns" with latent risk. Rajan asks (on page 388) "If firms today implicitly are selling various kinds of default insurance to goose up returns, what happens if catastrophe strikes?" This is a fair question.

The flip side of the trade is equally problematic. Gregory Zuckerman in his book The Greatest Trade Ever about John Paulson's hedge fund recounts the difficulties that Paulson and others had holding on to their bets against the housing market. Even Paulson, whose timing couldn't have been better, spent a great deal of his time persuading investors to persist with the bet against the market. But month after month, millions of dollars were paid out on the credit default swap premia. The investors saw money spent and gone that could have been used to buy assets with rising prices, or at least held safely with a positive yield. As Rajan puts it (p. 338), "it takes a very brave investment manager with infinitely patient investors to fight the trend, even if the trend is a deviation from fundamental value."

Justin Lahart, writing in the Wall Street Journal in January 2009 about the response to Rajan's paper at the conference recounts that "former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, famous among economists for his blistering attacks, told the audience he found 'the basic, slightly lead-eyed premise of [Mr. Rajan's] paper to be largely misguided.'"^[28]

In a recent paper (on pages 285-87), Steven Gjerstad and Nobel laureate Vernon L. Smith describe more fully (1) the contribution of derivatives to the flow of mortgage funds that supported the housing bubble, (2) the concerns that Brooksley Born had raised about the dangers inherent in these contracts, (3) Summers' contribution to their deregulation, and (4) how these contracts precipitated the collapse of the financial system in 2007 and 2008. ^[29]

On April 18, 2010, in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program, Clinton said Summers was wrong in the advice he gave him not to regulate derivatives.^[30]

President of Harvard

In 2001, when George W. Bush became President, Summers left the Treasury Department and returned to Harvard as its 27th President, serving from July 2001 until June 2006. He is considered Harvard's first Jewish president, though his predecessor Neil Rudenstine had Jewish ancestry, and received praise from Harvard's Jewish community for his support.^[31] However, a number of Summers's decisions at Harvard attracted public controversy.

Cornel West affair

In an October 2001 meeting, Summers criticized African American Studies department head Cornel West for allegedly missing three weeks of classes to work on the Bill Bradley presidential campaign, and complained that West was contributing to grade inflation. Summers also claimed that West's "rap" album (in fact a spoken word album) was an "embarrassment" to the university. West pushed back strongly against the accusations.^[32] "The hip-hop scared him. It's a stereotypical reaction," he said later. West, who later called Summers both "uninformed" and "an unprincipled power player" in describing this encounter in his book Democracy Matters (2004), subsequently returned to Princeton University, where he taught prior to Harvard University.

Differences between the sexes

In January 2005, at a Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers sparked controversy with his discussion of why women may have been underrepresented "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions".

Summers had prefaced his talk, saying he was adopting an "entirely positive, rather than normative approach" and that his remarks were intended to be an "attempt at provocation."^[33]

Summers then began by identifying three hypotheses for the higher proportion of men in high-end science and engineering positions:

The second hypothesis, different availability of aptitude at the high end, caused the most controversy. In his discussion of this hypothesis, Summers said that "even small differences in the standard deviation [between genders] will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out [from the mean]".^[33] Summers referenced research that implied differences between the standard deviations of males and females in the top 5% of twelfth graders under various tests. He then went on to argue that, if this research were to be accepted, then "whatever the set of attributes... that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley... are probably different in their standard deviations as well".^[33]

Summers then went on to discuss approaches to remedying the shortage of women in high-end science and engineering positions.

This lunch-time talk drew accusations of sexism and careless scholarship, and an intense negative response followed, both nationally and at Harvard.^[34] Summers apologized repeatedly.^[35] Nevertheless, the controversy is speculated to have contributed to his resigning his position as president of Harvard University the following year, as well as costing Summers the job of Treasury Secretary in Obama's administration.^[36]

Summers' opposition and support at Harvard

On March 15, 2005, members of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which instructs graduate students in GSAS and undergraduates in Harvard College, passed 218–185 a motion of "lack of confidence" in the leadership of Summers, with 18 abstentions. A second motion that offered a milder censure of the president passed 253 to 137, also with 18 abstentions.

The members of the Harvard Corporation, the University's highest governing body, are in charge of the selection of the president and issued statements strongly supporting Summers.

FAS faculty were not unanimous in their comments on Summers. Influential psychologist Steven Pinker defended the legitimacy of Summers' January lecture. When asked if Summers' talk was "within the pale of legitimate academic discourse," Pinker responded "Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s the difference between a university and a madrassa. There is certainly enough evidence for the hypothesis to be taken seriously."^[37]

Summers had stronger support among Harvard College students than among the college faculty. One poll by the Harvard Crimson indicated that students opposed his resignation by a three-to-one margin, with 57% of responding students opposing his resignation and 19% supporting it.^[38]

In July 2005, the only African-American board member of Harvard Corporation, Conrad K. Harper, resigned saying he was angered both by the university president's comments about women and by Summers being given a salary increase. The resignation letter to the president said, "I could not and cannot support a raise in your salary, ... I believe that Harvard's best interests require your resignation."^[39]^[40]

Support of economist Andrei Shleifer

Harvard and Andrei Shleifer, a close friend and protege of Summers, controversially paid $28.5 million to settle a lawsuit by the U.S. government over the conflict of interest Shleifer had while advising Russia's privatisation program. The US government had sued Shleifer under the False Claims Act, as he bought Russian stocks while designing the country's privatisation. In 2004, a federal judge ruled that while Harvard had violated the contract, Shleifer and his associate alone were liable for treble damages.

In June 2005, Harvard and Shleifer announced that they had reached a tentative settlement with the US government. In August, Harvard, Shleifer and the Department of Justice reached an agreement under which the university paid $26.5 million to settle the five-year-old lawsuit. Shleifer was also responsible for paying $2 million dollars worth of damages.

Because Harvard paid almost all of the damages and allowed Shleifer to retain his faculty position, the settlement provoked allegations of favoritism on Summers. His continued support for Shleifer strengthened Summers' unpopularity with other professors:

"I’ve been a member of this Faculty for over 45 years, and I am no longer easily shocked," is how Frederick H. Abernathy, the McKay professor of mechanical engineering, began his biting comments about the Shleifer case at Tuesday’s fiery Faculty meeting. But, Abernathy continued, "I was deeply shocked and disappointed by the actions of this University" in the Shleifer affair.

In an 18,000-word article in Institutional Investor (January 2006), the magazine detailed Shleifer’s alleged efforts to use his inside knowledge of and sway over the Russian economy in order to make lucrative personal investments, all while leading a Harvard group, advising the Russian government, that was under contract with the U.S. The article suggests that Summers shielded his fellow economist from disciplinary action by the University.^[41] Summers' friendship with Shleifer was well known by the Corporation when it selected him to succeed Rudenstine and Summers recused himself from all proceedings with Shleifer, whose case was actually handled by an independent committee led by Derek Bok.

Losses on financial derivatives

During Summers' presidency at Harvard, the University entered into a series totalling US$3.52 billion of interest rate swaps, financial derivatives that can be used for either hedging or speculation.^[42] Summers approved the decision to enter into the swap contracts as president of the university and as a member of Harvard Corp., "the university’s seven-member ruling body" which bears "the school’s ultimate fiduciary responsibility."^[43] By late 2008, those positions had lost approximately $1 billion in value, a setback which forced Harvard to borrow significant sums in distressed market conditions to meet margin calls on the swaps.^[44] In the end Harvard paid $497.6 million in termination fees to investment banks and has agreed to pay another $425 million over 30–40 years.^[43] The decision to enter into the swap positions has been attributed to Summers and has been termed a "massive interest-rate gamble" that ended badly.^[45]

Resignation as Harvard President

On February 21, 2006, Summers announced his intention to step down at the end of the school year effective June 30, 2006. Harvard agreed to provide Summers on his resignation with a one-year paid sabbatical leave, subsidized a $1 million outstanding loan to the university for his personal residence, and provided other payments.^[46] Former University President Derek Bok acted as Interim President while the University conducted a search for a replacement which ended with the naming of Drew Gilpin Faust on February 11, 2007. After a one year sabbatical, Summers subsequently accepted the University's invitation to serve as the Charles W. Eliot University Professor, one of twenty select University-wide professorships, with offices in the Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Business School.^[47] He also joined the D. E. Shaw Group in October 2006 as a part-time managing director.^[48] Summers also has been authoring a column for the Financial Times.^[49]

Post-Harvard career

On October 19, 2006, he became a part-time managing director of the investment and technology development firm D. E. Shaw & Co. He drew a large salary from this job.

Upon the death of libertarian economist Milton Friedman, Summers wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times entitled "The Great Liberator" arguing that "any honest Democrat will admit that we are now all Friedmanites." In it Summers wrote that even though Friedman's contributions to monetary policy have been highly lauded, his most important contribution may have been "in convincing people of the importance of allowing free markets to operate."^[50]

Henry Kissinger once said that Larry Summers should "be given a White House post in which he was charged with shooting down or fixing bad ideas." ^[51]

In February 2009, he quoted John Maynard Keynes, saying "When circumstances change, I change my opinion", reflecting both on the failures of Wall Street deregulation and his new leadership role in the government bailout.^[52]

National Economic Council

As director of the White House National Economic Council, he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration, where he attracted both praise and criticism. There had been friction between Summers and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, as Volcker accused Summers of delaying the effort to organize a panel of outside economic advisers, and Summers had cut Volcker out of White House meetings and had not shown interest in collaborating on policy solutions to the economic crisis.^[53] On the other hand, Obama himself was reportedly thrilled with the work Summers did in his first few weeks on the job. And Peter Orszag, another top economic advisor, called Summers "one of the world’s most brilliant economists."^[54]

In January 2009, as the Obama Administration tried to pass an economic stimulus spending bill, Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR.) criticized Summers, saying that he thought that President Barack Obama is "ill-advised by Larry Summers. Larry Summers hates infrastructure."^[55] DeFazio, along with liberal economists including Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, had argued that more of the stimulus should be spent on infrastructure,^[56] while Summers had supported tax cuts. ^[57] Summers had come under fire for accepting perks from Citigroup, including free rides on its corporate jet in 2008.^[58] According to the Wall Street Journal, Summers called Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) asking him to remove caps on executive pay at firms that have received stimulus money, including Citigroup.^[59]

On April 3, 2009 Summers came under renewed criticism after it was disclosed that he was paid millions of dollars the previous year by companies which he now has influence over as a public servant. He earned $5 million from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw, and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money.^[60]

In early April 2010, Joshua Green reported that Summers was frustrated with his position at the NEC and upset that he was not chosen to replace Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve. It was considered likely that Summers would soon leave the post.^[61]

On September 21, 2010, the White House announced that Summers would step down from his position on the NEC at the end of the year, to return to Harvard University.^[62] In a speech to the Economic Policy Institute upon leaving his post, Summers "warn[ed] against the creeping cost of government" and "approvingly quot[ed] Daniel Patrick Moynihan's argument that increased government involvement in the health care sector is a risky idea."^[63]

In popular culture

The 2010 film The Social Network, which deals with the founding of the social networking site Facebook, shows Summers (played by Douglas Urbanski), in his then-capacity as President of Harvard, meeting with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to discuss their accusations against Mark Zuckerberg. Summers is depicted as dismissive of the twins' concerns and as unable to appreciate the potential value of Facebook.

Larry Summers had a number of references when Barack Obama appeared on The Daily Show.^[64]

In the 2010 documentary Inside Job, Summers is presented as one of the key figures behind the Late-2000s financial crisis. Charles Ferguson points out the economist's role in deregulating many domains of the financial sector.^[65]

Notes

References

^ Tapper, Jake. "Summers Says Financial System That Causes One Crisis Every Three Years Demands Reforms", ABC News, October 16, 2009
^ ^a ^b change.gov (November 24, 2008). "Geithner, Summers among key economic team members announced today" (Official website). Newsroom. Office of the President-elect. http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/geithner_summers_among_key_economic_team_members_announced_today/. Retrieved November 24, 2008.
^ Obama picks Summers as top economic adviser. CNN Money. November 23, 2008.
^ Bohan, Caren (November 24, 2008). "Obama taps Geithner, Summers". U.S. News (Reuters). http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AM0A220081123. Retrieved November 24, 2008.
^ Plotz, David."Larry Summers: How the Great Brain learned to grin and bear it.", Slate, June 29, 2001.
^ Summers, Larry. "Unemployment". The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Unemployment.html.
^ William Rees. 2006. "Footprints to Sustainability". University of British Columbia. UBC Reports, Vol. 52 No. 4 Apr. 6, 2006.
^ Office Memorandum from Lawrence M. Summers, Subject: GEP, the World Bank/IMFMIGA, 12 Dec 1991. This was an internal memo at the World Bank not intended for the public that highlighted the economic logic of dumping waste in less-developed countries.
^ A New Economic Team: The Nominee; The Administration's Fiscal Closer. The New York Times. May 13, 1999.
^ Naomi Klein, "The Shock Doctrine" page 231
^ Blustein, Paul (2001). "'The Chastening'". Public Affairs, New York. http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=9781586481810.
^ Blustein, Paul (2001). "'The Chastening'". Public Affairs, New York. p. 232. http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=9781586481810.
^ Wampler, Robert (December 18, 2009). "Kyoto Redux? Obama's Challenges at Copenhagen Echo Clinton's at Kyoto". National Security Archive at George Washington University. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB303/index.htm. Retrieved April 10, 2010.
^ Aides Say Clinton Would Veto Tax Compromise. The Washington Post. July 26, 1999.
^ Krugman, Paul (November 20, 2008). "California Energy Memories". The New York Times. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/california-energy-memories/. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
^ Gibney, Alex. "Larry Summers' Enron Problem". The Daily Beast. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-12/larry-summers-and-enron/.
^ ^a ^b Labaton, Stephen (November 5, 1999). "Congress Passes Wide Ranging Law Repealing Bank laws". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-easing-bank-laws.html. Retrieved March 25, 2009.
^ Paletta, Damian (March 10, 2009). "Ten Questions for Those Fixing the Financial Mess". Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123665023774979341.html. Retrieved March 26, 2009.
^ "the warning". Frontline/PBS. October 23, 2009. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/#morelink. Retrieved October 26, 2009.
^ U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (May 7, 1998). http://www.cftc.gov/opa/press98/opa4142-98.htm.
^ Summers, Lawrence (July 30, 1998). "Lawrence H. Summers Testimony". http://ustreas.gov/press/releases/rr2616.htm.
^ David Orrell's 2010 book Economyths, page 142-143
^ Greenspan, Alan (May 7, 1998). "Joint Statement by Treasury, Federal Reserve, and S.E.C.". http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/rr2426.htm.
^ Greenspan, Alan (October 20, 2009). "Transcript of PBS Frontline program "The Warning"". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/etc/script.html.
^ Greenspan, Alan (October 20, 2009). "PBS Frontline program "The Warning"". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/.
^ Rajan, Raghuram (October 20, 2009). "Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?". http://www.kc.frb.org/publicat/SYMPOS/2005/PDF/Rajan2005.pdf.
^ Lewis, Michael (August 2009). "The Man Who Crashed the World". http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/aig200908.
^ Lahart, Justin (January 2, 2009). "Mr. Rajan Was Unpopular (But Prescient) at Greenspan Party". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123086154114948151.html.
^ Gjerstad, Steven; Smith, Vernon L. (July 2009). "Monetary Policy, Credit Extension, and Housing Bubbles: 2008 and 1929". Critical Review: pp. 269–300. http://www.chapman.edu/images/userImages/mattmill/Page_12352/GjerstadSmith_CR_2009.pdf.
^ http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-19/clinton-calls-advice-he-got-on-derivatives-wrong-update1-.html, retrieved April 20, 2010.
^ Harvard’s First Jewish President. The Harvard Crimson. March 8, 2006
^ Bombardieri, Marcella (June 6, 2006). "Some seek a scholar's return". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/06/06/some_seek_a_scholars_return/.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Archive of: Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. January 14, 2005.
^ Summers' Remarks on Women Draw Fire. The Boston Globe. January 17, 2005
^ Saletan, William. "Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head", Slate, January 21, 2005.
^ Summers' 'sexism' costs him top Treasury job. The Independent. November 24, 2008
^ Psychoanalysis Q-and-A: Steven Pinker. The Harvard Crimson. January 19, 2005
^ Poll: Students Say Summers Should Stay. The Harvard Crimson. February 20, 2006
^ A Harvard Governor, Dissatisfied, Resigns July 29, 2005
^ Board Member's Letter of Resignation. The New York Times. August 2, 2005
^ ‘Tawdry Shleifer Affair’ Stokes Faculty Anger Toward Summers. The Harvard Crimson. February 10, 2006
^ Quint, Michael; Gillian Wee (2009-03-03). "Harvard Losing AAA Benefit in Market Shows Swap Risk". Bloomberg.com. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601009&sid=aq3zn49Q9Zww. Retrieved 2009-07-24.
^ ^a ^b McDonald, Michael; Lauerman, John; Wee, Gillian (2009-12-18). "Harvard Swaps Are So Toxic Even Summers Won’t Explain". Bloomberg.com. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aaZGpGgHsVGw. Retrieved 2010-01-18
^ Munk, Nina (2009-08). "Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard". Vanity Fair (Conde Nast). http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/harvard200908. Retrieved 2009-07-24.
^ Salmon, Felix (2009-07-24). "Larry Summers’s billion-dollar Harvard gamble". Reuters.com. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/07/24/larry-summerss-billion-dollar-harvard-gamble/. Retrieved 2009-07-24.
^ President and Fellows of Harvard College, IRS Form 990, 2006 & 2007.
^ Schuker, Daniel J. T. (July 7, 2006). "Summers Named Eliot Univ. Prof". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513918.
^ Burton, Katherine (October 19, 2006). "Summers, Former Treasury Secretary, Joins D.E. Shaw". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arlvVTVwttZw&refer=home.
^ Lawrence Summers, Columist as Financial Times.
^ Summers, Larry (November 19, 2006). "The Great Liberator". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/opinion/19summers.html.
^ Leonhardt, David (November 25, 2008). "The Return of Larry Summers". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/business/economy/26leonhardt.html.
^ http://www.newsweek.com/2009/02/20/the-reeducation-of-larry-summers.html
^ Schmidt, Robert; Julianna Goldman (February 5, 2009). = "Volcker Chafes at Obama Panel Delay, Strains With Summers Rise". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aaLzJZKNcc6Y =.
^ Calmes, Jackie (June 8, 2009). "Obama's Economic Circle Keeps Tensions High". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/us/politics/08team.html. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
^ DeFazio, Peter; Video Interview (January 2008). "DeFazio Slams Summers". http://firedoglake.com/2009/01/23/defazio-smacks-larry-summers-for-being-anti-infrastructure/.
^ Krugman, Paul (January 6, 2009). "Stimulus Arithmetic (wonkish but important)". The New York Times. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/stimulus-arithmetic-wonkish-but-important/.
^ "Sean Grady: Shootout at Jackson Hole: The World's Central Bankers Take Aim at Deflation." The Independent. August 14, 2010.
^ Fitzgerald, Jay (February 11, 2009). = "Larry Summers Jet Ride Called Part of Larger Problem". Boston Herald. http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view/2009_02_11_Larry_Summers__jet_ride_called_part_of_larger_problem/ =.
^ Soloman, Deborah; Mark Maremont (February 14–15, 2009). [= "Bankers Face Strict Pay Cap"]. Wall Street Journal. pp. 1, above the fold. =.
^ Zeleny, Jeff (April 3, 2009). "Financial Industry Paid Millions to Obama Aide". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/us/politics/04disclose.html. Retrieved April 4, 2009.
^ Yes, Larry Summers is Leaving
^ Summers to Step Down after Midterm Elections
^ Scherer. Michael (2010-12-14) Larry Summers' Warning About The Growth Of Government, Time
^ Full transcript of Barack Obama on Daily Show (27 October 2010) http://lincmad.blogspot.com/2010/10/full-transcript-of-obama-on-daily-show.html
^ Article written by Charles Ferguson by the time of the film's premiere in the United States of America. http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/

External links

Business positions
Preceded by Stanley Fischer	Chief Economist of the World Bank 1991–1993	Succeeded by Michael Bruno
Government offices
Preceded by Frank N. Newman	United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury 1995 – 1999	Succeeded by Stuart E. Eizenstat
Political offices
Preceded by Robert Rubin	United States Secretary of the Treasury Served under: Bill Clinton 1999–2001	Succeeded by Paul O'Neill
Preceded by Keith Hennessey	Director of the National Economic Council 2009–2010	Succeeded by Gene Sperling
Academic offices
Preceded by Neil Rudenstine	President of Harvard University 2001–2006	Succeeded by Derek Bok Acting

At 15 and raised in the North I knew nothing about racism and segregation, after working on a farm for the Summer of 1955 I hitch-hiked to Arizona to visit Rodger Chaplin (a childhood friend) at Davis Monthan AF Base at Tucson Arizona. On the way home I was taken to Houston Texas by a ride where the driver told me it would be easy to get a ride north from the truck stop there. While there I was told about a drunken black man that had gone into a white restaurant creating a problem. I was told that the owner had shot him dead and there had been no cause for prosecution as he was a trouble making trespasser.

Then in September 1955 I turned sixteen and quit school and went on the road with a magazine crew. They started me working in the poor inner cities because people were easy to talk to and would buy less but more often. The Northern Inner Cities had been taken over by black migration from the south. The neighborhoods had not been kept up and had turned into slums with fatherless homes and women getting welfare according to how many children they had. Dropout rates, crime and unemployment were high. This is where I learned what white trash meant. It was in white homes where dog poop and trash were on the floor, tables had scratch marks on the crud from being scraped by the plates.

In the 1960's President Johnson's "Great Society" had built high rise federally funded housing to replace the inner cities slums. Johnson's Great Society approach was to replace the slums with federally funded high rise apartments and lower 2 story complexes. The fatherless homes and women getting welfare according to how many children they had continued. Dropout rates, crime and unemployment continued to raise. There were many unemployed inner-city black youths. This led to inner city race riots in the Mid 1960's.

While working as supervisor of maintenance at Lake Erie Rolling Mills in the mid 1960's, in response to the inner city race riots private businesses hired young black males to get them off the street. I had to take one as an Electrician's Helper. For the first month you would have to find where he was hiding listening to his portable radio. I wanted to dismiss him but was not permitted. To my surprise after about a month he started to grow in responsible behavior!

Then in response to the fatherless and teen pregnancies there came birth control education and planned parenthood to give tax funded birth control and abortion.

I went to Carborundum Cooperation Research working on Nuclear Reactor Control in the later 1960's. Then Gay and Lesbian Rights activists, Black Rights activists and Women's Liberation activists worked together to get quotas as a restraint on federal funding for research and supplies purchased by the Government. To get research funding or sell to the Government new hires needed to be black or female to show affirmative action. We were very fortunate that John Kennedy's Space Program had already established the technical competence to make the technical revolution of math, physics, chemistry and organization skills that led to America's leader ship in Science, Engineering and Computers.

After a leave to finish degrees in Math and Physics, I decided to be a teacher (that would give me summers for my research and time to be with my three children). As soon as I got a job teaching Physics my wife divorced me. It was a tragedy with no equal in my life. I was teaching Physics based on the Harvard Project Physics Program (Harvard Project Physics was a national curriculum development project to create a secondary school physics education program in the United States. The project was active from 1962 to 1972, and produced the Project Physics series of texts, which were used in physics classrooms in the 1970's and 1980's. It was funded by the National Science Foundation and they paid for my 1971 Summer course at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).

The joy of teaching physics by self paced discovery learning was my salvation as the pain of losing my home children and income was so devastating.

My laboratory teaching with small class size (12 to 15) and the one-on-one hands on, self pacing learning gave me two major insights. As a group 1) in both male and female there were responsible students and Sociopathic, divisive students, 2) Boys were much more interested in exploring with the experiments and doing the mathematical analysis than were females.

Now as I've traveled to Russia Spring and fall for the last 10 years with stopovers in many European cities I had often used Internet places in the early 2000's. Everywhere the computer rooms were filled with boys playing games, the few girl were just hanging around to socialize with the boys.

History of term

Affirmative action in the US began as a tool to address the persisting inequalities for African Americans in the 1960s. This specific term was first used to describe US government policy in 1961. Directed to all government contracting agencies, President John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 mandated "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."^[10]

Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson elaborated on the importance of affirmative action to achieving true freedom for African Americans:

After describing the specific historical context of American affirmative action, President Johnson outlined the basic social science view that supports such policies:

As the social science explaining impact of such 'unseen forces' has developed, affirmative action has widened in scope. In 1967, President Johnson amended a previous executive order on equal employment opportunity to expressly mention "discrimination on account of sex" as well.^[12]

One of the United States' first major applications of affirmative action, the Philadelphia Plan, was enacted by the Nixon administration in 1969. The Revised Philadelphia Plan was controversial for its use of strict quotas and timetables to combat the institutionalized discrimination in the hiring practices of Philadelphia's skilled trade unions.

The concept and application of affirmative action has developed since its inception, though its motivation remains the same.

If we operationally define a "Healthy Citizen" as:
1) A person that naturally fulfils a sexually appropriate role in marriage, maintaining a single family home.
2) A man that is willing and able to provide and maintain his single family home and fill the role of a caring father and loving husband.
3) A woman that is willing and able to be a home and garden maker, raising children in a healthy nursing bond teaching them to love others as they love themselves and respect their father as she respects him as her husband.

Any healthy citizen wants healthy marriages with healthy child rearing single family homes with home ownership, healthy neighborhoods, healthy communities, healthy societies and healthy states. Our insights into behavioral reality and the complexity of male/female differences that accomplish this is nowhere near the wisdom of reality and it seem we are drifting into a majority of adults being dysfunctional when it comes to raising a healthy next generation.

I taught 22 year in at Sweet Home High School on the same plot as SUNY AB Amherst Campus. I taught Physics (mostly 11th and 12th grade) and a class of ISCS Level 2 (9th grade Chemistry). Both were taught as investigative learning (pairs of student making independent investigation). There were two groups of students that tended to be dysfunctional. The 9th graders from the local Catholic School that only went to 8th Grade and the 11th and 12th graders that had a parent that was a professor (mainly of the behavioral sciences) at the university.

We do have healthy marriages with healthy child rearing single family homes with home ownership even as it has greatly decrease in frequency since the 1930's in America and since the revolution in the early 1910's in Russia with Europe some where in-between.

By their "fruit you shall know them". Looking at rural Europe, North America and China and you will see that the single family farm has born the healthiest "Homoculture" which mechanization is doing away with.

South America was corrupted by the upper class that often engaged in human sacrifice and from the Spanish Conquistadors corrupted by 700 years of Muslim rape, intimidation, pillage and domination. India was corrupted by the cast system where the upper casts stole all the property enslaving the lower casts. From Albania to Persia to Pakistan the peaceful family life of Christianity and Buddhism have been destroyed for over 1000 years. First by the Turkmen as barbarian invaders enslaving the people and then by converted Islamic Subjects, Turkmen and Arab invasions imposing a theocracy, murder and terror.

The Gypsies were people that escaped the Islamic invasions of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India over 1000 years ago and fled to the safety of Christianity in the land of the Seven Churches and Europe. Then converted Islamic Turkmen and Arabs invaded the land of the Seven Churches murdering, driving out or converting to Islam by threat the indigenous Christians and Gypsies.

Sex, Math and Scientific Achievement

For years, blue-ribbon panels of experts have sounded the alarm about a looming shortage of scientists, mathematicians and engineers in the U.S.—making dire predictions of damage to the national economy, threats to security and loss of status in the world. There also seemed to be an attractive solution: coax more women to these traditionally male fields. But there was not much public discussion about the reasons more women are not pursuing careers in these fields until 2005, when then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers offered his personal observations.

He suggested to an audience at a small economics conference near Boston that one of the major reasons women are less likely than men to achieve at the highest levels of scientific work is because fewer females have “innate ability” in these fields. In the wake of reactions to Summers’s provocative statement, a national debate erupted over whether intrinsic differences between the sexes were responsible for the underrepresentation of women in mathematical and scientific disciplines.

Napolitano: "The system worked"

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that "the system worked."

Asked by CNN's Candy Crowley on "State of the Union" how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who has been charged with trying to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the jet, Napolitano responded: "We're asking the same questions."

Napolitano added that there was "no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened."

Reader Comments (14 of 511)

Janet Napolitano = Politically Correct Moron

Janet Napolitano is a Bumbling Idiot

I am really getting sick of politics and politicians.

Politicians do absolutely nothing now a days except for blaming previous administrations and touting failed security measures. Somehow, Napolitano has claimed that “The System Worked” with regards to failed bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253.

Only a day later, Napolitano the homely czar, retracted her statement, said that the system didn’t work, and Abdulmutallab should have never been allowed on the plane. However, she blamed everybody from the Africa desk of the CIA to past administrations. Obviously, she is of the mindset that the Obama administration can do absolutely no wrong, and as always, George Bush is always ripe for blame about anything not going according to plan.

So what am I rambling about?

This is yet another example of the ineptitude of our leaders. The politically correct mindset will be our downfall, and I fear that it could be fodder for a terrorist attack on a massive scale. (Whoops…..I said terrorist attack. Napolitano coined the term “man caused disaster” to refer to terror attacks, to be very politically correct.) Here is a statement explaining her sage-life outlook on the Muslim fanatics who are gunning for Americans everywhere.

‘Away From the Politics of Fear’

Janet Napolitano spoke with a reporter about immigration, the continued threat of terrorism and the changing tone in Washington.

SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word “terrorism.” Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

What They Really Mean is that Islam will dominate the world, in a friendly way!

Napolitano: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

Politics of Fear? I think that Terrorists wanting to Kill You Pretty Much Counts as Fear.

The previous interview snippet demonstrates exactly how out of touch these politicians are. Instead of using common sense, they wave the politically correct flag, all the while not wanting to call a spade a spade? What is the matter with using the word terrorist? After all, a good definition of terror is when somebody is trying to kill you, and the one inflicting the duress is a terrorist.

But no, lets make sure that we don’t use terms like terrorist, or islamic extremist. Those terms, albeit true, may hurt the feelings of these evil individuals. And if I am certain of one thing, I absolutely do not want someone trying to murder scores of people to be upset because they were subjected to a label. I think that we should just cut to the chase and call them:

Peaceful Religious subjects who sometimes happen to accidently blow themselves up resulting in mass casualities and claiming to achieve martyrdom.

7 Responses to “Janet Napolitano = Politically Correct Moron”

Loss of Generations of Folk Wisdom given by the Elders and Story Tellers

Bruno Bettlelheim studied folk tales. I spoke to him at SUNY AB on his retirement round of University Colloquiums. Bruno said that he was a non-religious Jew but that he had great respect for the Jewish Bible's folk tales like "Cane Killed Able", that these are folk tales that have survived in the story telling of many cultures because of there truth value. He said that the foolish stories tend to get lost in an oral culture but the more valuable stories went on and with the advent of writing got marked down.

This simple truth would be more valuable if early corruption of child rearing by the affluent hiring wet nurses and child care in the emerging port cities in Assyria, the Indus and others. This corruption caused an upper class of sociopaths and manipulators that perverted the sailing knowledge of the stars into astrology and planet worship making themselves priests and prognosticators of peoples fortunes. This happened before the advent of writing and these sophisticated manipulators, priests and astrologers destroyed the wisdom of the oral transmission of this great knowledge and history.

More about this later but suffice to say that we need to see the reality of the times in which the recorded events of Jewish tradition. You will later find that the roots of the history are based on the respect for pregnancy and the rights of children that historically have been aborted or murdered after birth and often as a sacrifice to gods created by the generations of Sociopathic priest created by the affluent women's lack of interest and then ability in caring for their children.

8.1 female doctors take their lives at a rate 227 percent higher than that of the general public.

Eva Schernhammer and Graham Colditz examined the results of 25 studies of physician suicides and concluded that male doctors killed themselves at a rate 41 percent higher than that of other men and women. The more startling finding was that female doctors take their lives at a rate more than twice (227 percent higher) than that of the general public.

Candidates for Neighborhood Representation, Leadership and Judgment need to be couples with children that are healthy and doing well in a privately owned single family home in the neighborhood.

Candidates for Community Representation, Leadership and Judgment need to be couples who have served well as parents, doing well in a privately owned single family home in the Community and having served well in Neighborhood Representation, Leadership and Judgment.

Candidates for Society Representation, Leadership and Judgment need to be couples who have served well as parents, doing well in a privately owned single family home in the Society and having served well in Community Representation, Leadership and Judgment.

Candidates for State Representation, Leadership and Judgment need to be couples who have served well as parents, doing well in a privately owned single family home in the State, having served well in Society Representation, Leadership and Judgment and who have at least two generations (married children with grand children) that demonstrate healthy marriages, private single family homes and children.

Given a woman healthy enough to enter a home making mate relationship with a man and a nursing bond with a child born out of mate love, the main reasons that a man is needed is 1) to get pregnant 2) have a home provided (food may come from gardening and farming) 3) for protection from other men.

In the urban and suburban socialist world 2) is met by the government and 3) is met by police. Also day care breaks down the maternal bond harming the next generations ability to bond to their children on the mammalian level. All this has broken down the meaning of marriage, home, mothering and fathering.

Men may be held responsible for paying for home and children but they have no control over that with they are held responsible for. In this environment the autism rates has gone up about 10 time each of the last 30 year periods since the start of WWII. Some studies suggest that it is near 1 in 25 in 2010, 1 in 250 in 1980, 1 in 2,500 in 1950 and 1 in 8, 000 in 1940. Along with this there has been a similar increase in psychopathy, sociopathy, sadomasochism, homosexuality, divorce drug use and suicide.

Both my mother and father had 8 siblings, a garden, a cow and chickens with a mother in the home. When the depression came they could not buy much but they supplied there own food and fire wood. Something is wrong today, with all the automation women are not home makers any more. For example, with the affluence in South Korea the suicide rate has become one of the highest in the world. The major cause of death between 10 and 40 is suicide (one every 38 minutes!).

internaut

February 25, 2010 at 6:05 pm

It is time to demand that our politicians speak plainly like Geert Wilders.

International ‘Islamic terrorism’ is the enemy. The silent majority of Muslims support this terrorism by their silence!

They are the medium that nurtures the toxic product: hatred, intolerance, murder and destruction.

Let’s get real about it.

#380

Moon Pleva

March 15, 2010 at 10:11 am

My mortgage payments are already behind, would you suggest something?

#552

TNT

May 15, 2010 at 9:53 pm

Saying terrorist attacks are man-made disasters is like calling a mass shooting man-made employment opportunities.

#1162

Kali Knable

May 16, 2010 at 8:16 am

I truly loved reading your blog. It was well written and easy to undertand. Unlike other blogs I have read. I also found it very interesting. Actually after reading, I had to go show the better half and she ejoyed it also!

#1166

Dylan White

May 24, 2010 at 6:45 am

i have never been a fan of Bad Politics and bad policies in the government. they always present bad news.’~-

#1229

Ethan Thompson

July 28, 2010 at 2:03 am

actually, i do not like politics that much because it is a dirty job…,

#1698

Double Headboard

December 21, 2010 at 6:17 pm

Politics is of course very annoying, politicians do annoy me because of their bad performance -:’

Pioneer plaque

Studying Differences in the Brain

Evolution versus Environment

Fact and Prejudice

To Know More

References

3.2.14.8 Brain size and cognitive ability:

Correlations with age, sex, social class, and race.

Suicide high among female doctors

More than double the rate of general public

Critical of themselves

Contents

Introduction

Family and education

Career

Academic economist

Public official

Chief Economist at the World Bank

"Dirty Industries" controversy

Service in the Clinton Administration

Summers' role in the deregulation of derivatives contracts

President of Harvard

Cornel West affair

Differences between the sexes

Summers' opposition and support at Harvard

Support of economist Andrei Shleifer

Losses on financial derivatives

Resignation as Harvard President

Post-Harvard career

National Economic Council

In popular culture

Notes

References

External links

History of term

Sex, Math and Scientific Achievement

Napolitano: "The system worked"

Reader Comments (14 of 511)

Pages

Janet Napolitano = Politically Correct Moron

Janet Napolitano is a Bumbling Idiot

So what am I rambling about?

‘Away From the Politics of Fear’

Politics of Fear? I think that Terrorists wanting to Kill You Pretty Much Counts as Fear.

7 Responses to “Janet Napolitano = Politically Correct Moron”

Loss of Generations of Folk Wisdom given by the Elders and Story Tellers