FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Eleanor Eagan, eagan@therevolvingdoorproject.org
This morning, the Revolving Door Project publicly released a letter we sent to Lawrence Bacow, president of Harvard University, John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, and Sally Buzbee, executive editor at The Washington Post, urging that they require Lawrence (Larry) Summers to disclose his financial interests publicly. In the letter, we document Summers’ numerous ties to multiple controversial corporations and how those ties (and any as yet undisclosed publicly), compromise the faith that his audience should have that his economic analysis is unbiased by personal financial interests. The letter is available here.
Regarding the letter, Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser issued the following statement:
“In light of a series of documented potential conflicts, RDP is gravely concerned about the potential impact of profit motives on conversations of serious importance. We view this issue as a foundational threat to healthy public discourse. It is imperative that those without the means to perform their own analyses are able to rely on expert advice. However, the public should not need to engage in wholesale vetting of a pundit’s disclosed financial ties to discern whether analysis is offered fully in good faith or, rather, is clouded by the commentator’s financial interests.
Particularly in the case of someone like Summers, who gains legitimacy through high-profile affiliations with Harvard, Bloomberg, and The Washington Post, disclosures of conflicts of interest must be readily accessible. An average reader should have all the relevant facts regarding a pundit’s potential conflicts of interest so that they can make up their own mind whether to trust that opinion. “
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PHOTO CREDIT: “Larry Summers offers keynote remarks on smart public investments in infrastructure at Brookings.” by BrookingsInst is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.