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Larry Summers has removed his name from the running to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. The former Treasury secretary informed President Obama of his decision in a phone call Sunday. The withdrawal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

"I have reluctantly concluded that any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interest of the Federal Reserve, the Administration or, ultimately, the interests of the nation's ongoing economic recovery," Summers said in a letter he sent to Obama after their phone call.

Summers had been seen as a frontrunner to replace Ben Bernanke, whose term expires in January. But he faced opposition from Democrats in Congress, for reasons that include his role in helping to deregulate the financial industry under President Clinton, as The Washington Post reported in a recent article on the possible political battle over his nomination.

The other top candidate is widely seen as Janet Yellen, the head of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank who was appointed by Obama to be the vice chairman of the Fed in 2010.

"Earlier today, I spoke with Larry Summers and accepted his decision to withdraw his name from consideration for Chairman of the Federal Reserve," Obama said, in a White House statement released Sunday afternoon.

The president continued, "Larry was a critical member of my team as we faced down the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it was in no small part because of his expertise, wisdom, and leadership that we wrestled the economy back to growth and made the kind of progress we are seeing today."

In withdrawing his name, Summers told Obama that he will continue to support efforts "to reform our financial system so that no President ever again faces what you and your economic team faced upon taking office in 2009."

Summers was one of Obama's key economic advisers until late 2010, serving as the assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council. Since then, he has been a professor at Harvard University, an institution that he once led.

Earlier this month, a group of more than 350 economists signed a letter to Obama that backs Yellen as the next chief of the Federal Reserve.

Sometimes presidents have to make things up as they go along.

President Obama's decisions have had an improvisational air these past three weeks. His course on Syria kept shifting, at times seemingly guided by offhand remarks.

But the results are what count.

"If it works out in the end, the president's allowed to be uncertain," says Tim Naftali, a former director of the Nixon presidential library. "Oftentimes, the judgment you get during the crisis is not the judgment you get at the end."

There's still plenty of opportunity for problems to emerge when it comes to implementing the deal to rid Syria of chemical weapons, announced Saturday by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

No one has tried to dispose of weapons of mass destruction on such an accelerated timetable — and certainly not in the middle of an ongoing civil war. Obama's critics note that this deal does nothing to drive Syrian President Bashar Assad from power.

Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the deal "an act of provocative weakness on America's part." In a statement, they wrote, "It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley."

“ If you get under the skin of most crises, they'd have this kind of ad hockery.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray has vetoed a controversial "living wage" bill that would have forced large retailers such as Wal-Mart to pay a 50 percent premium on the district's $8.25 per hour minimum wage.

When the bill was approved by the city council in July, Wal-Mart said it would abandon three of the six stores it planned to build in the district, claiming the required minimum $12.50 it would have to pay was too much.

Since then Gray, a Democrat, has been mulling whether to sign the Large Retailer Accountability Act, as the bill is known. On Thursday, he ended weeks of speculation and vetoed it.

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, a supporter of the act, said he was "disappointed" by the mayor's decision, which he said was "not good for workers."

A letter sent by Gray to Mendelson said the bill was "not a true living-wage bill, because it would raise the minimum wage only for a small fraction of the District's workforce," according to The Washington Post.

The Post quotes Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo as saying the veto is "good news for D.C. residents," saying Gray chose "jobs, economic development and common sense over special interests."

He said that if the council fails to override the veto, "all stores are back on."

Other major retailers, such as Target and Home Depot, also opposed the bill.

In a statement from the National Retail Federation, spokesman David French thanked Gray "for his leadership on this important issue. With a stroke of his pen, the Mayor brought power back to D.C.'s 'Open for Business' sign."

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