Powerful Women Silenced….
December 14, 2008
by The New Agenda
|
Brooksley Born / Shelia Bair
Today Amy Siskind, co-founder of The New Agenda, wrote a piece for The Daily Beast titled “Women Scorned”.
In the piece, The New Agenda discussed two important women who were silenced, Brooksley Born and Shelia Bair. Our contention is this: if these women had been listened to the current financial mess could have been averted.
Larry Summers (remember him) played a big role in silencing Brooksley Born:
Summers, then deputy to Rubin, took it from there: “In early 1998, Mr. Rubin’s deputy, Lawrence H. Summers, called Ms. Born and chastised her for taking steps he said would lead to a financial crisis,” The New York Times reports.
That’s the same Larry Summers who a decade later has been rewarded by President-elect Obama with an appointment as director of the National Economic Council (a position that does not require Senate approval).
And of course, newly appointed Treasury Secretary Geithner is trying to kick Bair off of the bailout team:
Bair has a reputation for independence. Her refusal to rubber-stamp each TARP disbursement and her insistence on concessions from the financial institutions seeking rescue funds made some people uncomfortable.
Please check out our article on The Daily Beast and leave a comment. Here is the link.
I love having threads cause they give you a synopsis of a story, but it’d be great if when people are quoted, a link could be provided for anyone who would also like to read the entire story. I know everyone at TNA is juggling a million things, so I don’t want to sound like a brat, like, hey, this is great, now do 10 more things. Anyway, just an idea if it’s not a big hassle to include a link to full articles.
Anna,
Did you see the line at the bottom that says
“Please check out our article on The Daily Beast and leave a comment. Here is the link” or were you talking about a different article?
Thia, Thanks. Yeah, I saw that and did click on it to read the entire piece. What I’m requesttingr is when someone quotes another person in their piece, if they could also provide a link to where the quote came from so if a person wants to read the entire piece that is being refereneced, they can. Sometimes I like to do that because I get a more comprehensive picture of what’s going on. Also, sometimes, because excerpts take things out of context, I like to judge for myself how I feel about something and the best way to do that is if I can read a piece in its entirety rather than an excerpt that someone else has selected. But, thanks for responding and trying to help!
Hello! I wrote a diary/blog post on this and someone chimed in with a THIRD woman who spoke up:
“Larry Summers fired Derivatives whistleblower at Harvard Management Co. (HMC) (4.00 / 2)
“Harvard alum Iris Mack, MBA/PhD requested a meeting with Larry Summers to express her concerns about how her HMC boss Jeff Larson used derivatives to manage an HMC portfolio. Larson eventually left HMC to start Sowood hedge fund with hundreds of millions of dollars of Harvard alums’ donations. Sowood was one of the first hedge funds to blow up during the subprime mortgage derivatives crisis.
Dr. Mack communicated with Summers’ office regarding such derviatives trades. Perhaps, she could have saved Harvard alums hundreds of millions of dollars if Summers had bothered to continue to hear her out before forcing her resignation. There is a wealth of information describing this derivatives whistleblowing case: correspondence between Dr. Mack and Summer’s office (emails, faxes, snail mail, phone records, etc.); legal documents; reports from FBI and DOJ interviews, etc.
Given all this, you have to wonder whether Summers was either too
(a) corrupt and wanted to coverup up something(s) at HMC.
(b) arrogant to think that Dr. Mack had anything of value to tell him about mathematical finance and derivatives. Please recall Summers’ comments about women and math. Also, please note that Dr. Mack has a doctorate in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and a Sloan Fellows MBA from London Business School.
(c) incompetent to understand what Dr. Mack was trying to warn him about regarding derivatives trades in HMC portfolios.
Did Summers try to silence Dr. Mack the way he, Rubin and Greenspan tried to silence Attorney Brooksley Born of the CFTC?
Thanks for the article. Getting women appointed and elected is just the start I guess. Next we have to make sure they can do their jobs. A site like this that exposes the good old boy attempts to preserve the corrupt and sexist status quo is refreshing and very valuable to all Americans.
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