Is there a big difference between Janet Yellen and Lawrence Summers as head of the Fed?  Certainly.   But women are making a mistake when they focus on the remarks about women scientsits Summers made when he was President of Harvard.  Summers is commendably gender neutral.  He made some vain Harvard professors angry when he insisted they teach freshman courses.  Students have stayed away from Harvard when they realized that you are not taught by the big guns when you are an undergraduate.  Summers got down in the trenches and taught freshman Economics himself.

The media debacle that followed his remarks is exactly what you don’t want to follow in the wake of a Fed Chairman.  Because Summers is a lose cannon, it is better that he not be appointed.  He has had President Obama’s ear from the beginning, but that says more about the President’s lack of knowledge about economics and lack of interest in the subject than it does about having an economics kitchen cabinet.   Yellen to Fed