The Ignorant Investor

Surprise, surprise:

(Bloomberg) -- Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said.

Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said.

Volcker is one of the few guys around D.C. who has lived through the economic nightmare of the 1970s and still has his reputation intact after the financial debacle and easy money policies that spawned it over the past 20 years. Larry Summers is a creature of the Wall Street/D.C. axis whose job it is to protect the interests of his big bank friends. He's not an outsider, not a reformer. What he wants is for things to go back as they were before. No wonder he wants Volcker out of the way. TPM notes that Summers is emerging as the Dick Cheney of the new administration when it comes to the economy. Terrible news.