October 19, 2013

Larry Summers rejects Netanyahu's offer to head Bank of Israel

From the Times of Israel:
‘Lawrence Summers rejects post of Bank of Israel governor’ 
Acting governor Karnit Flug said to be back in the running; Netanyahu rebuffed by former US Treasury secretary, says Channel 2

It would be interesting to know whether Summers replied in words to the effect of, "Sorry, I'm an American."

Perhaps not. The man Netanyahu wanted Larry to replace, Stanley Fischer (Israel's head central banker from 2005-2013), is also an American citizen. On the other hand, Fischer was born and raised in Rhodesia.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jews are a international people but still tribal, I think that only gypsies are similar to them.

Art Deco said...

What? Is it your contention that it is somehow disloyal to the United States to make monetary policy in Israel?

anony-mouse said...

1/ Er, Fischer was born in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia which is now called Zambia. Not in that Rhodesia (which was called Southern Rhodesia and is now called Zimbabwe).

2/ This makes Fischer an African-American. So why didn't Obama think of nominating him?

3/ The first Taoiseach of Ireland was American-born (and only half-Irish) and yet he accepted the post. I should make up a list of similar people.

Anonymous said...

Israel is too much of small potatoes for Summers.

Anonymous said...

3/ The first Taoiseach of Ireland was American-born (and only half-Irish) and yet he accepted the post. I should make up a list of similar people.

Eamon de Valera moved to Ireland at the age of 2.

ATBOTL said...

I'm sure if Summers were to accept this post, he would pursue the same kinds of policies in Israel that he oversaw in Russia.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure if Summers were to accept this post, he would pursue the same kinds of policies in Israel that he oversaw in Russia.

Just look who is the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service since 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Fradkov

Yes, is a tribesman.

David Davenport said...

Art Deco said...

What? Is it your contention that it is somehow disloyal to the United States to make monetary policy in Israel?


Just suppose that a different type of internationalism took power in Washington-- one that celebrated post-Christian white tribalism.

Suppose this new U.S. government appointed a German or maybe Lithuanian or Polish gentile citizen head of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

How would you like that?

Whiskey said...

The new head of the Bank of England is Canadian and the current head of the Bank of Israel was considered and is rumored to be courted by the Swiss.

So non citizen central bankers are like cross border soccer stars. Pro players there to do a job like Beckham in the LA Galaxy.

Anonymous said...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_B._MacDonald



MacDonald has particularly been accused by other academics of academic fraud, saying that he has promoted anti-Semitic propaganda under the guise of what he says is a legitimate and academic search for truth.[26] He has also been accused of misrepresenting the sources he uses in that regard. Fenris State University professor Dr. Barry Mehler cited for example a quote from a 1969 dissertation by Sheldon Morris Neuringer titled American Jewry and United States immigration policy, 1881-1953 where MacDonald surmised that when Neuringer noted Jewish opposition in 1921 and 1924 to the anti-immigration legislation at the time was due more to it having the “taint of discrimination and anti-Semitism” as opposed to how it would limit Jewish immigration, MacDonald wrote, “…Jewish opposition to the 1921 and 1924 legislation was motivated less by a desire for higher levels of Jewish immigration than by opposition to the implicit theory that America should be dominated by individuals with northern and western European ancestry.” “It seems to me Mr. MacDonald is misrepresenting Mr. Neuringer in this case and I posted my query hoping that a historian familiar with the literature might have a judgment on MacDonald's use of the historical data,” Mehler wrote, citing other examples.[27]

Anonymous said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_B._MacDonald

In 2001, David Lieberman, a Holocaust researcher at Brandeis University, wrote a paper entitled Scholarship as an Exercise in Rhetorical Strategy: A Case Study of Kevin MacDonald's Research Techniques, where he noted how one of MacDonald’s sources, author Jaff Schatz, objected to how MacDonald used his writings to further his premise that Jewish self-identity validates anti-Semitic sentiments and actions. “At issue, however, is not the quality of Schatz's research, but MacDonald's use of it, a discussion that relies less on topical expertise than on a willingness to conduct close comparative readings," Lieberman wrote.[29]

Lieberman has also written that MacDonald even dishonestly made up lines from the work of British Holocaust denier David Irving. Citing Irving's Uprising which was published in 1981 for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hungary's failed anti-Communist revolution in 1956, MacDonald asserted in the Culture of Critique, "The domination of the Hungarian communist Jewish bureaucracy thus appears to have had overtones of sexual and reproductive domination of gentiles in which Jewish males were able to have disproportionate sexual access to gentile females." Lieberman, who also noted that MacDonald is not a historian, debunked those assertions, concluding, "(T)he passage offers not a shred of evidence that, as MacDonald would have it, "Jewish males enjoyed disproportionate sexual access to gentile females."[30]

Anonymous said...

And Samantha Power was born in Ireland to Irish parents, an Irish citizen. They are everywhere, those Irish, moving back and forth between Ireland and America, influencing American foreign policy, giving money to a left wing anti-American terror organization, getting special immigration breaks thanks to one of their tribe, Ted Kennedy. Taking their Irish left wing policies and putting them into practice in America.

neil craig said...

Mark Carney accepted the governorship of the bank of England recently rather thaan saying "Sorry I'm a Canadian".

Looks like banking is becoming an even more international business than soccer.

Anonymous said...

The new head of the Bank of England is Canadian

Not quite the same thing though. Britain has had a couple of Canadian Prime Ministers as well. They're family.

Art Deco said...

Suppose this new U.S. government appointed a German or maybe Lithuanian or Polish gentile citizen head of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

How would you like that?


I would refer you to Hans Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations. He recounts a story of Otto von Bismarck taking his leave of the Tsar at the conclusion of his tenure as Prussian Ambassador to Russia. The Tsar asked if he were planning to join the Russian diplomatic service. Morganthau explains that there were still a certain corps of free-floating professionals in the European diplomatic corps of the time and the question was not nearly as peculiar as it sounds.

Stanley Fischer was previously director of the International Monetary Fund. He is a monetary professional. Is it wrong for a monetary professional to occupy a post outside his country of allegiance? I cannot see that there is bar that the top position in question is in effect a member of the national cabinet occupying a position in and among the country's elected officials. That would be a complaint properly uttered by someone in Israel, not by me.

Were Summers hired as President of Tel Aviv University, would that bother you? From the perspective of an American, whether or not Summers takes a job abroad should hinge on an understanding of obligations due as a consequence of loyalty. Israel is not an antagonist of the United States and never has been, so the question does not arise in that specific case. Taking a position in Soviet Russia ca. 1984 would have been out of the question.

In an American context, I would be bothered to the extent that such a move indicated that our politicians had adopted a "post-national" outlook. The use of foreign expertise in our central bank does not in and of itself irritate me. I would be skeptical it was necessary for different reasons: we have a very deep bench in this country in academe and the business world and the graveyards are filled with indispensable men. Israel does not have nearly as much domestic talent.

Art Deco said...

/ The first Taoiseach of Ireland was American-born (and only half-Irish) and yet he accepted the post. I should make up a list of similar people.

The 1st chief executive of the Irish Free State was William Cosgrave, who was born in Dublin. His successor was born in the States (and half-Spanish).

Art Deco said...

Jews are a international people but still tribal, I think that only gypsies are similar to them.

Jews are not subdivided into lineage groups, are sedentary populations always and everywhere, tend to be fairly affluent as a rule, are not known for a pronounced tendency to form crude criminal syndicates, and are not known for wretched hygiene.

Steve Sailer said...

Would it be okay for an American citizen to become head of France's espionage service?

Anonymous said...

Would it be okay for an American citizen to become head of France's espionage service?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Bigot

Christophe Bigot was the former French ambassador to Israel.

Since september 2013, by decision of François Hollande, he is put in charge of the strategy department of the french foreign security agency (DGSE).

Anonymous said...

Re: Christophe Bigot: both positions are in the French government, dingleberry.

Matthew said...

Take Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the head of the Liberal Democrats. His mother is Dutch, his paternal grandmother was Russian, and his wife is a Spaniard who hasn't even bothered to take UK citizenship, and insisted on giving their children Spanish names.

The heads of two of Britain's three major parties don't even strongly identify as British.

David Davenport said...

The first Taoiseach of Ireland was American-born (and only half-Irish) and yet he accepted the post.

Is that supposed to be something to be proud of?

Why couldn't Eire find a 110 per cent Irishman to be its first Taoist? Was the native talent stock that poor?

Art Deco said...

Would it be okay for an American citizen to become head of France's espionage service?

Mark Steyn once offered that the juxtaposition of emotional fragility and duplicity might explain just about every major event in French history since the Great War. The place is really no one's ally. So, yes, as long as he stays there.

Anonymous said...

The first Taoiseach of Ireland was American-born (and only half-Irish) and yet he accepted the post. I should make up a list of similar people.

Eamon de Valera moved to Ireland at the age of 2.


It's not even certain de Valera was half-Spanish. There seems to be no documentary evidence that the Spaniard his mother said she married (and who quickly thereafter died) ever actually existed. Best guess is that he was born illegitimate in the New York Irish slums of the day.