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Summers received $5.2M from hedge fund
Saturday, April 04, 2009
What a surprise ... the top adviser in the Obama Administration on all matters economic was handsomely paid by a hedge fund last year and a highly compensated speaker at the behest of Goldman Sachs. The details are in this WSJ report:
Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions.You can be sure that he'll be "lookin' out for the little guy" when he deliberates on important matters such as whether or not he thinks its a good idea to send another couple hundred billion dollars northeast from Washington to Wall Street.
A financial disclosure form released by the White House Friday afternoon shows that Mr. Summers made frequent appearances before Wall Street firms including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He also received significant income from Harvard University and from investments, the form shows.
It's natural to wonder if our new president is having any second thoughts about the team that he currently has in place - there's very little "change" likely to come about based on who's got their hands on the controls.
In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms and other places, with fees totaling about $2.77 million. Fees ranged from $10,000 for a Yale University speech to $135,000 for an appearance paid for by Goldman Sachs & Co.There's lots more interesting financial data about the White House staff (and even more ties to Goldman Sachs) in the rest of this story that is in the free area of the WSJ.The disclosure -- in a financial report that is required for federal office holders -- comes as Mr. Summers is involved in shaping the Obama administration's policy decisions on the financial meltdown as well as the broader recession. Among the many decisions the economic team has wrestled with has been whether to step up regulation of hedge funds, one of the most contentious subjects during a summit of world leaders this week. European nations pushed for tougher rules, while the Obama administration preferred a less stringent approach.
5 comments:
That would be $5.2M as millions not B, but what the hell... it is only money, who counts them , not the treasury for sure...lol
That's funny. Things are always in billions or trillions these days, so I automatically think of billion when it's a smaller number.
The innuendo here is quite unfair. Larry Summers was employed as a Managing Director of a hedge fund. As such, he earned his salary. The implication seems to be that he was paid to acquire influence in the current administration; but that claim hasn't been made and there is no evidence for it. On the contrary, most hedge funds have weathered this economic storm very well - including his former employer.
Without the innuendo, the story might read like this: Larry Summers was formerly employed by a hedge fund where he earned $5.2M for helping to steer that hedge fund through the greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression with little to no losses.
"The implication seems to be that he was paid to acquire influence in the current administration"
No, the implication is that he'll be more likely to favor sweet deals for Wall Street since he was paid handsomely by Wall Street.
From the NYT:
“This is what might be called contamination,” said Andrew Sabl, an associate professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Did Summers spend so much time with the hedge fund, or its investors, sovereign wealth funds and so on, that he started to think like them?”
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