Sept. 15, 2013, 5:21 p.m. EDT
Summers withdraws from consideration for Fed post
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary, called President Barack Obama Sunday to say he is pulling out of the contest to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
“I have reluctantly concluded that any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interest of the Federal Reserve, the Administration or, ultimately, the interests of the nation’s ongoing economic recovery,” Summers said in a letter to the president that followed the telephone call.
The move forces Obama to look to other potential candidates for the Fed job including Janet Yellen, the Fed’s vice chairwoman; Donald Kohn, a former vice chairman and former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Obama has said that he interviewed the first two. Geithner has said he isn’t interested.
In a statement, Obama said he accepted Summers’s decision. He described him as “a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom, and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth and made the kind of progress we are seeing today.”
Summers, who was chairman of the Obama’s National Economic Council early in the presidency, had been widely believed to be the president’s first choice for the Fed job, but opposition from liberals and women’s groups — and, importantly, from some Senate Banking Committee Democrats — has been mounting.
