Summers Pulls Out

Former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers on Sunday withdrew as a candidate for Federal Reserve chairman to replace Ben Bernanke when his term runs out in January. The former Obama adviser faced mounting opposition in the Senate from, among others, Sen. Bernie Sanders. “I applaud Larry Summers for withdrawing his name from consideration. The truth is that it was unlikely he would have been confirmed by the Senate,” Sanders said in a statement on Sunday. “What the American people want now is a Fed chairman prepared to stand up to the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, not a Wall Street insider whose deregulation efforts helped pave the way for a horrendous financial crisis and the worst economic downturn in the country since the Great Depression. The Fed now must help develop policies which create millions of decent-paying jobs and rebuild the middle class.”