LyrArc Article Gist
Larry Summers role in developing the Stimulus Plan, the plan that Geithner presented for the banking crisis, and in discussions on a whole range of other issues like housing and the budget. The President calls him Professor, or with his other policy wonks he calls them "propeller heads." Summers is quick to respond nowadays, to drop other things for instance to meet Speaker Pelosi, and is careful to let his boss decide and to give his boss credit. And the President understands his rough edges from Summers' experience at Harvard, and can say "you absolutely do" when Summers overstresses a point with the "I don't want to overstress this". On the lack of bipartisan support for the Stimulus plan in Congress, Summers says "politics are hard to predict", and he says Geithner's plan details when announced will show that it is "tough and ambitious", on the Stimulus Plan he says that the President "has got what I think is the right economic plan." A colleague Romer says Summers is a different person nowadays, with less of the rough edges. Others say he listens nowadays instead of lecturing....

LyrArc Article Gist
How GE's strategy is moving up the stock price, share buybacks and no costly acquisitions.

LyrArc Article Gist
GM has invested in a company that will make ethanol from crop wastes, wood chips, scrap plastic and including municpal garbage. Coskata will have its first pilot plant in Warrenville, Illinois. It uses a process of gasification and bacteria to produce ethanol. It doesn't use corn, uses only a gallon of water for a gallon of ethanol, uses a raw material available everywhere and is estimated to cost 0.50 cents to $1 cheaper than gasoline. The total production cost is less than $1.00 when it comes onstream by 2010, and uses techologies that are ready.

LyrArc Article Gist
How leisure and services provide a larger degree of happines than continual acquisition of material goods. The shift to a more thoughtful lifestyle with careful spending on the things that create happiness, as slower growth and weaker job and housing markets create the shift to a new kind of normalcy. Travel, hobbies and outdoor activities, ways of spending time creatively which lead to more happiness, addding anticipation, and other ways of finding pleasure in the many small joys of life.

LyrArc Article Gist
With the U.S. Federal Reserve pulling back from its monetary easing policy and the ECB holding steady with a low interest rate policy, bond investors are finding attractive buys for government bonds of Italy and Spain. 10 year government bonds of Italy yielded 4.2%, and Spain's government bonds yielded 4.3% on Aug. 22, 2013. By comparison German government bonds yielded 1.88%, narrowing the gap between the bonds of southern European countries and German bonds as the eurozone economies recover in 2013-2014.

LyrArc Article Gist
Takes some of the aura surrounding his long service in Washington under different administrations and at the Fed by bringing the real life person behing the media figure.