Sure, Wall Street loves the guy, but whose side is he on? And why does Obama continue to let Summers dictate economic policy?
Besides working with Republicans and Wall Street to implement the disastrous economic policies that led to our current crisis, Larry Summers has been cashing in Phil Gramm-style with the people that he helped get rich. Somehow we're now supposed to believe that Summers received millions of dollars from Wall Street and there's no catch.
Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year, financial disclosure forms released by the White House showed on Friday.For the rest of the country, there is an enormous conflict of interest. Let Larry Summers work for Wall Street or let him work for the American public but it's not possible to do both. This again raises the problem of the Obama economic team being too cozy with Wall Street. How can anyone trust them to do what is in the best interest of the country when they are receiving so much money from Wall Street?
Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard University president, also was paid $2.7 million in speaking fees by a range of organizations and companies, including several troubled Wall Street financial firms, they showed.
The disclosure documents on Summers and other White House officials advising Obama on the global financial crisis covered 2008 and the first few months of this year. Summers became an official adviser on January 20 when Obama took office.
Summers, who was a part-time managing director of D.E. Shaw after stepping down as Harvard president, had speaking fees of $67,500 from JP Morgan, $45,000 from Citigroup, $135,000 from Goldman Sachs and $67,500 from Lehman Brothers, which went bankrupt in the mortgage crisis last year.
By allowing Summers to remain as the de facto economic leader of the Obama administration, there will always be suspicions about his plans. The Democrats have deluded themselves into believing that somehow they can defend the best interest of the country while handing the keys to the economy to people like Summers. Yesterday at the Town Hall event in Strasbourg, Obama made a comment about people wanting an instant fix or else viewing it as a failure. The frustration for too many Americans is not so much that Obama's plans are not working immediately, but that the team is the wrong team. The approach is the wrong approach. Going back to the people who helped bring on the crisis, or who were supposed to be overseeing Wall Street when the crisis happened, is what angers Americans. Mistakes can and will happen. Most can accept that, but they will not accept it under these circumstances.
People may not give as much leeway to Summers or Geithner because of their history, and that's Obama's problem. This is the team that he chose, for reasons which don't make sense to many. If Obama is serious about the economy he will unload this team as quickly as possible. But there is little to suggest that he will. That's a real pity for all of us.
