Lawrence Summers to Leave White House after Elections
Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers will step down from his post after November's mid-term elections, the White House announced Tuesday.
Summers is the third out of four key economic advisors to leave the Obama administration this year. Peter Orzag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Christina Romer, the president's chair of Council of Economic Advisers, vacated their positions earlier, while the fourth key player, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, remains in place.
The announcement came after anonymous sources told Bloomberg News Tuesday that Summers would leave his post. A senior administration official told CBS News Correspondent Chip Reid that the departure is not unexpected.
"Last fall, the president asked Larry to stay through 2010 in order to see through the passage of financial reform and the continued implementation of the economic recovery program," the senior administration official told Reid. "This announcement is part of a long-standing plan to return to Harvard."
CBS News Chief Political Consultant Marc Ambinder reports that a person close to Summers said his two-year leave from Harvard University is up.
The elections are expected to reduce Democrats' majorities in Congress if not cost President Obama's party one chamber of the Capitol, which would most likely be the House of Representatives. Summers serves as director of the president's National Economic Council and leads the president's daily economic briefing.
Bloomberg reported that officials are considering replacing Summers with a corporate executive to combat criticism that Mr. Obama is anti-business. Some aides also see the vacancy as an opportunity to appoint a woman to a high-level position, the news organization reported. Bloomberg attributed its report to three anonymous sources.
Jill Schlesinger, editor of CBS' MoneyWatch reports that the news about Summers comes on the heels of two other big departures from President Obama's economic team - Peter Orszag, who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Christina Romer, previously the head of the Council of Economic Advisers. "Can you say house cleaning? (If I were Tim Geithner, I'd be speed dialing my friends at investment banks and hedge funds to see who's hiring.) The departures are a clear indication that the administration finally understands that its current economic team may have been good in the heat of the financial crisis, but is no longer adequate for the recovery phase," says Schlesinger.Obama: Don't Call Me Anti-Business
The White House released a statement announcing Summers' departure early Tuesday evening.
"I will miss working with the president and his team on the daily challenges of economic policy making," Summers said in the statement. "I'm looking forward to returning to Harvard to teach and write about the economic fundamentals of job creation and stable finance as well as the integration of rising and developing countries into the global system."