Yes, how now can Summers begin to pass the buck? My own (perhaps imperfect) information is that a) the memo was leaked to Greenpeace by an environmental economist in the Bank, who shall go nameless, who had lost enough debates with Summers to express her/his frustration in such a manner; and b) this was considered such serious stuff in Washington that on the grounds of the memo, Gore nuked Summers to be WB prez in early 1995. Summers covering up for his ghost-writer is not a convincing denouement. The memo was so great precisely because it was, and is, so very plausible (so much so that it got the Economist's blessing for impeccable argumentation). > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Response: That is exactly right. Summers later claimed it was his own kind of > "reductio ad absurdum/nauseum" exercise he was doing. The problem is that that > memo had been widely circulated and quoted internally--seriously--before it > was released in The Economist and further, the sterile calculations (we > economists shouldn't be raising "normative" issues) and the hubris embodied in > that Eichmann-like memo are quite consistent with other known memos--and > work--of Summers. It does indeed represent "Welfare" economics--and > libertarianism--taken reductio ad absurdum/nauseum/inhumanum.
