Portside

'This raises the question of why he would deliberately concoct a story that is 180 degrees at odds with reality. He obviously was telling his audience what he assumed they wanted to hear.

'This puts the discussions in Davos in an interesting light. Here we have one of the most prominent economists in the world making up a fantasy story to pass along to the rich and powerful. The other economists present must have just implicitly consented to ignore the nonsense, since these are facts well-known to anyone who follows policy debates. The reporters who were present acted as stenographers, dutifully copying down Summers' assertions as though they were pearls of wisdom.

'Summers is presumably not the only “expert” who crafts a message to please the sponsors. When it comes to public education, there are surely many Michelle Rhee types who tout the virtues of charter schools and privatisation in spite of two decades of failure. And there are probably an endless array of top experts who tout Bill Gates' efforts to use patent-financed drug research to improve healthcare for the world's poor in spite of the vast body of evidence that industry-funded research is a cesspool of corruption.

'If we can take Summers' tales as representative of the dialogue at Davos, we have elite academics fabricating stories that they think appeal to the interests of the elites of the business world. These elites can then walk away thinking that they are doing good in the world no matter how destructive the policies they are pursuing may actually be.'

Economist Dean Baker,
on presentation by Obama economic
adviser Larry Summers at the recent
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland