[PEN-L:8173] Re: RE: Re: Request: Summers Memo

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Craven, Jim wrote:

>BTW, I heard, but do not know, that for some time Summers did not deny
>having written that memo and then later claimed he did not write it but it
>was a memo of understanding to what was discussed and then the story changed
>again to "I didn't write it and had nothing to do with it and if I had had
>this discussion (If I had a dog), it was only speculative and/or intended as
>a little "dark humor." It then was left up to some entrepreneural journalist
>(seeking access for scoops for exposure for name recognition for more access
>for...) to write the new cover story.

According to Cassidy's article in The New Yorker, Pritchett was deeply
grateful to Summers for taking the heat for the memo. Not that Summers has
paid too dearly for it. The irony is that Pritchett has done some
interesting work - e.g. a paper, "Divergence, Big Time," which argues that
far from converging on common levels of prosperity, First and Third World
countries are diverging, with the North-South gap widening, not narrowing,
as predicted by theory.

>Thanks again. Any cites for the full memo? I can't find it at the Economist
>archive.

I have a copy in a fading fax. It's pretty much unscannable, and I'm not
about to type it in.

Doug