At CSFB’s last tech conference, we had naked ladies. At its investor conference next week, we’ll more likely have ‘naked’ rivalry. That’s because CSFB has managed to pair-off Larry Summers and Allan Meltzer in a debate (9am Tuesday).
There is very little love lost between the two. Meltzer is a monetarist, non-interventionist who strongly believes in abolishing the World Bank and the IMF. Summers, the former chief economist of the World Bank, and more recently, former US Treasury Secretary, is a big interventionist and credits himself with saving – among other countries – Korea from the ravages of the 1997 international financial crisis.
Front row seats for this battle of the bile will be eagerly sought. Both men have been openly critical of each other. The feud began when Carnegie Mellon University professor, Meltzer, questioned some data that Summers and fellow economist Brad de Long of Berkeley had used in an article they co-published. Summers came back with: “Comments like Allan Meltzer's – which could not have been written in good faith had he done his homework and actually read our article – poison the well of economic debate.”
More recently, Meltzer entered the fray again, saying: “The United States Treasury [ie. Summers] has been giving Japan bad advice for several years.”
In Asia conference discussions tend to be on the polite side. This time, expectations are running high that both men will say exactly what they think.
