Larry the propeller head takes his reverence

"Larry the propeller head" takes his reverence. The White House announced Tuesday night that Larry Summers, former Secretary to the Treasury of Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001 appointed Director of the National Economic Council in 2009, will leave his duties at the end of the year to resume his Chair Professor at Harvard. After successive departure of the former Director of the Budget, Peter Orszag, and Christina Romer, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, it is the third heavy weight to leave Barack Obama economic team since the beginning of the summer. Less than six weeks from the November 2 elections, the announcement of the departure of one of two main artisans of the fiscal stimulus package of 2009 and financial reform, with the current Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, suggests a complete overhaul of the economic team presidential.

"Over the past two years, Larry Summers has helped guide us to reconnect with the growth draw us depths of the worst recession since the 1930s", has launched Barack Obama, while welcoming "virtuosity and his experience." Candidate to the estate of Ben Bernanke at the head of the FED at the beginning of the year, Lawrence Summers will continue to serve on the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a panel of outside experts chaired by former FED Chairman Paul Volcker. Despite the insistence of the White House to emphasize that this departure is "programmed for a long time", the timing of his announcement is not neutral. It also aims to respond to the frustrations of opinion on the front of the unemployment and the revival. Among criticism of Larry Summers, in addition to a certain historical proximity with Wall Street, some economists criticize him having sous-calibré stimulus package to 787 billion of February 2009, including the impact now seems to be insufficient.

Among potential successors of Larry Summers, the former advisor to Bill Clinton Laura Tyson (Berkeley) or the Economist Jason Furman, former collaborator of Robert Rubin Treasury, are already cited. But the White House might be tempted to give a signal of reconciliation with the corporate world, by appointing a born personality of the business. According to the Wall Street Journal, former DG of Xerox Anne Mulcahy would do appear to be favorite candidate, even if the pattern of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt, is also cited.

A priori, the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, should maintain its position, even if Barack Obama recently reported on CNBC that, after "two years of hard work, family reasons may come into play. Even if the White House minimizes the scope, the departure of Larry Summers seems to presage a refocusing of economic Barack Obama line, sometimes called the "obamanomics". Partly inspired by the Chicago School of Milton Friedman, the doctrine remains relatively blurred on the control of the deficit, now crucial in the eyes of 57 of Americans, according to a Reuters Ipsos survey.

Sign of the willingness of the democratic administration to take a fresh start to the day after the election of November 2: the resignation of Larry Summers could be followed by Rahm Emanuel, the current Director of Office of Barack Obama, who plans to be a candidate for Mayor of Chicago.