Exporting - Larry Summers - Economics 101 - Shit
Lawrence H. Summers resigned as President of Harvard University on June 30th (announced February 21, 2006,) after some unfortunate remarks he made about women and science.
Rooting as we do at Patel Towers in the vaults of the Internet , we found that the same guy was at one time was a vice president (and Chief Economist) at the World Bank (before becoming Clinton's Secretary to the Treasury (at the same time as Elena Kagan served as Associate Counsel to U.S. President Bill Clinton and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Counsel.) In 1992 a memo (remember this was way before wayward e-mails could fuck up a promising career) surfaced under his moniker entitled "Shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to Less Developed Countries:"
"The measurements of the costs of health-impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view, a given amount of health-impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we shold face up to that. I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted."
This might cause a weak smile to play about the lips of a Harvard grad, but recall the World Bank , now in the unsafe hands of comb sucking Wolfowitz now espouses grandiose schemes for national infrastructure like roads, airports, and ports.
Today the WB policy is to invest in energy or pollution producing mega-projects led by multinational corporations in developing nations where the IMF has often already established a cheap, unregulated labour force, low corporate taxes, and duty-free exports to world markets.
Just the way California exports pollution to the Eastward coal rich states to burn their coal to sell electricity to California... or what they call in Wyoming the California Cloud.
Birds, as they say in the less genteel purlieus of Lancashire, never shit in their own nest.
PS The successor to the richly fabled Summers has not been elected but the birdies tell us that Elena Kagan (see pic), the current Dean of the Harvard Law School, is the favorite at 3-1. Steven E. Hyman is 7-2 and John Etchemendy at 4-1. BETcris waits for your call.
2 comments:
I take it you disagree with Summers then. Women really do want to get stuck into maths, science & engineering, its just the patriarchy holding them back. Tell you what Ill go and prise my daughter away from her Barbies and try and force her to play with the meccano.
You assume too much. There does appear to be a fundamental dichotomy in the ability to think spatially between the sexes. Anyone who has taught plant anatomy will discover this.
Having run a software development company for over 20 years and recruited only a handful of women (because the application rate ran at about 20 : 1 )I have seen the division in another field.
Quite why, I personally cannot resolve the reasons, there is undoubtedly a male resistance to women encroaching on their macho male territory - matched by a feminine unwillingness to mess with machines and maths.
Read carefully, " an unfortunate remark" - it was very unfortunate for Larry - he got slipped a pink slip.
As for his remarks on exporting pollution he may have had his tongue firmly in his cheek ... I doubt it. I wait to meet an economist with a sense of humour. J K Galbraith excepted.
Like most things that separate the sexes, a mix of nature and nurture. Try explaining why fat / obese women wear extraordinarily tight trousers.
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