WASHINGTON, D.C.  Sept. 3 (DPI) – Readers across the political spectrum – but especially on the left – have come out with emotional and sometimes gender-based hostility toward Larry Summers, who is shaping up to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

In comments that followed the latest New York Times report on Larry Summers’ likely appointment to the Fed, the #1 recommended post on NYTimes.com proclaimed that Summers is “an inferior and reckless male with a destructive track record” who “represents historical failure.”

Summers and Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen have been named in recent months the most likely  to succeed Ben Bernanke. Bernanke, appointed by George W. Bush in 2006 and reappointed by Obama in 2010, spearheaded the Fed’s expanding role in the US economy amid the financial crisis, and is widely seen as having successfully engineered a US economic recovery.

The Obama administration is said to be leaning toward the appointment of Summers.

Still, Summers, for an array of reasons, is being vilified on comment boards: He’s too closely associated with Wall Street; he is a member of an oligarchy that is plundering the middle class; he is a sexist who thinks men have a greater aptitude at math than women, a reflection of comments he made as president of Harvard.

Among the most popular posts on NYTimes.com today, not a single one supported a Summers appointment. The second-highest recommended on NYTimes.com as of midday:

I cannot believe Obama will actually pick Summers to run the Fed. This is a man who represents everything wrong with the financial world and its (non-)regulation. He is an arrogant person lacking self-awareness, his thinking reflects exactly the self-centered corporations-know-best perspective that has caused and continues to cause so much harm to real people. As he himself has ridden the corporate-government revolving door to riches, and has personally blocked efforts to put sensible limits on banking practices, he cannot be trusted to have the general welfare in mind, which he won’t. What happened to Obama the reformer?! Why can’t he pick Yellin, who is clearly more qualified?! When will people like Summers be treated as the criminals they are or at least like the pariahs they should be made to feel like?!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/business/as-summerss-odds-rise-stimulus-easing-is-seen.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/business/as-summerss-odds-rise-stimulus-easing-is-seen.html?comments#comments

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal has been relatively quiet on the matter of a Bernanke successor; the only posting in the last week on WSJ.com came from a contributor to The New Republic who was a friend and supporter of Summers. But among the 13 comments following that essay most opposed his appointment.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324653004578648062683497682.html?KEYWORDS=larry+summers#articleTabs%3Darticle