[DEBATE] : Summers: Living large and in charge

[Riaz K Tayob]

Summers: Living Large and in Charge By Robert Scheer |TruthDig|April 8, 
2009

[Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig, where this article originally 
appeared. His latest book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks 
Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America(Twelve).]

Not surprisingly, Lawrence Summers is convinced that he deserved every 
penny of the $8 million that Wall Street firms paid him last year. And 
why shouldn't he be cut in on the loot from the loopholes in the toxic 
derivatives market that he pushed into law when he was Bill Clinton's 
treasury secretary? No one has been more persistently effective in 
paving the way for the financial swindles that enriched the titans of 
finance while impoverishing the rest of the world than the man who is 
now the top economic adviser to President Obama.


It is especially disturbing that Summers got most of the $8 million from 
a major hedge fund at a time when such totally unregulated 
rich-guys-only investment clubs stand to make the most of the Obama 
administration's plan for saving the banks. The scheme, as announced by 
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Summers protégé, is to clean up 
the toxic holdings of the banks using taxpayer money and then turn them 
over to hedge funds that will risk little of their own capital. At least 
the banks are somewhat government-regulated, which cannot be said of the 
hedge funds, thanks to Summers.

It was Summers, as much as anyone, who in the Clinton years prevented 
the regulation of the hedge funds that are at the center of the 
explosion of the derivatives bubble, and the fact that D.E. Shaw, a 
leading hedge fund, paid the Obama adviser $5.2 million last year does 
suggest a serious conflict of interest. That sum is what Summers raked 
in for a part-time gig, in addition to the $2.77 million he received for 
forty speaking engagements, largely before banks and investment firms, 
and on top of the $587,000 he was paid as a professor at Harvard.

Summers was a top adviser to the Democratic presidential candidate last 
year, and that might have enhanced his speaking fees, which seem to have 
a base rate of $67,500, the amount he received on each of two occasions 
when he appeared at Lehman Brothers before that company went bankrupt. 
Lehman had purchased a 20 percent stake in D.E. Shaw while Summers was 
employed by the hedge fund, and it would be interesting to know if the 
subject of the overlapping business came up during Summers' visit to 
Lehman.

Lehman was only one on an impressive list of top financial firms that 
consulted Summers during a troubled period. Goldman Sachs was so 
interested in his thoughts that it paid him more than $200,000 for two 
talks, even though it soon needed $12 billion in taxpayer bailout funds. 
Citigroup, which has been going through hard times, managed only a 
$54,000 fee for a Summers rap. Merrill Lynch could pony up only a scant 
$45,000 for a Summers appearance last November 12, but that was at a 
point when Merrill was in deep trouble, with the government arranging 
its sale. Summers, anticipating an appointment in the administration of 
the newly elected Obama and perhaps wanting to avoid any embarrassment 
the fee might bring, decided to turn over the $45,000 to a charity.

Why was someone as compromised as Summers made the White House's point 
man overseeing $2.86 trillion in bailout funds to the financial moguls 
whom he had enabled in creating this mess and many of whom had benefited 
him financially? Will no congressional panel ever quiz Summers about his 
grand theory that the derivatives market required no government 
supervision because, as he testified to a Senate subcommittee in July of 
1998: "the parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated 
financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of 
protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies...."

Think of the sophisticates at AIG when you read that sentence, and then 
ask why Summers is once again at large in the public sector. Or take 
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt's word for it that "Dr. Summers has 
been at the forefront of this administration's work...to put in place a 
regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its 
oversight--all in an effort to help the families across America who have 
paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by Wall Street 
executives."

The very same executives that Summers had previously assured us could be 
trusted without any regulation. Why should we now trust Summers any more 
than we trust them? Couldn't Summers just take his ill-gotten gains and 
go hide out in some offshore tax haven? If this was happening in a 
Republican administration, scores of Democrats in Congress would be all 
over it, asking tough questions about what exactly did Summers do to 
earn all that money from the D.E. Shaw hedge fund. As it is, with their 
silence they are complicit in this emerging scandal of the banking 
bailout. Copyright © 2008 The Nation