Don't Let Larry Summers Back Into Polite Society

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers speaks during the World Market Summit in Washington D C on April Photo Mandel Ngan AFP via Getty Images Larry Summers is the archetype of the technocratic Democratic insider A prodigy whose abilities in the academy propelled him to powerful roles in regime he has for decades enjoyed close relationships with nearly every vital figure in left-of-center politics including advising former presidents Bill Clinton Barack Obama and in an informal role Joe Biden His CV gives the impression of the sort of shrewd politico who might broker an epic compromise to save the day in an episode of The West Wing Beyond the paragons of liberal society Summers also has prodigious connections to more unsavory sorts from financial bottom-feeders to goofy Silicon Valley founders like Jack Dorsey and an outright criminal like human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein So it felt overdue when the Harvard Crimson first broadcasted Monday night that Summers would step back from all constituents commitments Summers was deeply ashamed he stated the paper in a message and he took full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr Epstein The Harvard economist would continue teaching he reported in the message and he did not specify which commitments he d be stepping back from Summers it bears remembering had been publicly chastened and made a comeback before He s survived numerous scandals including previous reporting on his connections to Epstein while serving as president of Harvard University But nothing has laid bare his cavalier attitude toward the appearance of impropriety like the close friendship revealed in the newly disclosed trove of Epstein s emails They contain frequent correspondence between the late billionaire sex criminal and both Summers and his wife Elisa New a literature professor emerita at Harvard The emails shed new light on what Summers had previously described the Wall Street Journal was a relationship that primarily focused on global economic issues Indeed the emails reveal the two men had a close relationship and discussed deeply personal issues together long after Epstein s conviction on the charge of solicitation of a minor up until July the day before the financier s final arrest and subsequent death In one message the married Summers bemoans his pursuit of an unnamed woman to which Epstein offers his read on the situation shes smart making you pay for past errors you reacted well In further reporting published Monday by the Crimson Summers and Epstein also discussed the economist s pursuit of a woman he reportedly referred to as a mentee and the late financier dubbed himself Summers s wing man Summers is a towering figure in economic discourse The son of two economists and nephew of two Nobel laureates in the subject his father Robert Summers n e Samuelson was Paul Samuelson s brother his mother was Kenneth Arrow s sister he grew up steeped in the discipline Not to be overshadowed by his relations Summers earned his Ph D from Harvard where he became a tenured professor before turning one of the youngest in the school s history He went on to hold posts as chief economist at the World Bank secretary of the Treasury Department Harvard president and director of the National Economic Council That s the side of his story fit for The West Wing Related Larry Summers Had the Power to Punish Wall Street Now He s Slamming Obama s Gentle Healing The undercurrent is far less flattering While at the World Bank Summers signed a memo that argued for dumping waste in African nations although he later claimed it was meant to be sarcastic As Treasury secretary he pushed for deregulation and the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act s banking oversight and crucially helped block regulation of over-the-counter derivatives financial instruments traded directly between counterparties rather than on an exchange a decision that ultimately contributed to the disastrous financial crash Incidentally Summers would go on to make millions of dollars working for banks and hedge funds After serving in Clinton s Treasury Department for both terms he started as undersecretary then deputy secretary and ascended to secretary when his mentor Robert Rubin left in Summers ascended to the Harvard presidency His tenure was eventful He famously clashed with Cornel West Henry Louis Gates Jr and the Afro-American Studies Department multiple prominent faculty members considered leaving just months into his administration On-campus affairs clearly remain top of mind for Summers whose last citizens tweet before the Epstein emails dropped was hand-wringing about the Crimson s aid for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement Summers caused an uproar as university president when he attempted to explain the gender imbalance in the economics profession by claiming it was the outcome of women being innately worse at mathematical thinking While he has claimed this was taken out of context one of his email exchanges with Epstein presented that Summers s disdain toward women s intelligence hadn t dissipated in the decade since his ouster in In the email he snarked I observed that half of the IQ In the world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than percent of population Under Summers s leadership Harvard s hiring of women to tenure track positions fell from percent to a mere percent Since then Summers has become a martyr of sorts for pundits conservative and liberal alike decrying cancel lifestyle Following his supposed cancellation Summers took a brief sojourn to Wall Street hedge fund D E Shaw where he made million in the two years of his employment at the firm despite reportedly only working one day a week Summers padded out his lifestyle by pulling in an additional million in speaking fees from Wall Street banks With future aspirations in academia apparently limited to merely an at-large professorship at Harvard Summers turned his eye back to politics in After advising Obama s campaign Summers took an influential role as director of the National Economic Council where he was instrumental in cutting down the size of the new administration s stimulus package After losing out on the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Summers returned to Harvard where he has remained since while still exerting his influence in the world of politics He was in the running for a return to the Treasury in the Biden administration and publicly railed against Covid- stimulus checks The illustrious deregulator has advised or sat on boards for dozens of companies including predatory lenders Wall Street behemoths and cryptocurrency cons Naturally he also hasn t been left wanting for lucrative opportunities in the private sector often explicitly renting out his reputation to corporations The illustrious deregulator has advised or sat on boards for dozens of companies including predatory lenders Wall Street behemoths and cryptocurrency cons He worked for Genie Force while the firm was drilling in the Golan Heights the illegal Israeli settlement in Syria He s also advised CitiBank and Marc Andreessen s a z On at least three separate occasions Summers has left a company shortly before they faced analysis In he left LendingClub less than a month before the Federal Arrangement Commission sued the fintech company charging it with deceptive practices The FTC broadcasted in July that LendingClub would pay million to settle the charges He left Digital Currency Group at particular point in the firm s website listed him as an adviser until November However while following up on calls for more transparent disclosure from Summers Protos shared he had left earlier than that In any event the crypto company was hit with a joint SEC Justice Department probe in January followed by a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James in October In January the SEC reported the company would pay million in civil penalties On February he abruptly resigned from Block formerly Square just one week before they faced study from federal regulators In January Block was hit with million in penalties from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and states Still when Sam Altman faced mutiny from inside OpenAI and fired the entire board it was Larry Summers to whom he turned for help consolidating his control and appeasing investors Related Inflation Is Slowing Without the Higher Unemployment Larry Summers Disclosed Was Necessary On top of all of this advising and a full professorship Summers has still identified time to be a columnist at the Washington Post a regular Bloomberg contributor and an omnipresent source for the journalism elite Despite this lack of work-life balance Summers also amazingly managed to make headlines in by calling for unemployment to increase to combat inflation set against the backdrop of a tropical locale Summers has spent decades enjoying the finer things of life inside the D C Beltway power fame millions of dollars multiple flights on Epstein s private plane Over that time frame he has brought ruin to our financial system destroyed American manufacturing helped stop aspirant debt relief hampered the recovery from the Great Recession and helped ensure that economic framework serves the interests of capital holders and not workers In short we live in a hell made feasible in no small part by Summers influence After years of maintaining a close relationship with a known sex trafficker he is still teaching undergraduates at Harvard The antifeminist writer Helen Andrews in recent months highlighted Summers s occurrence as an example of the failures of cancel way of life In a way she s right Cancel heritage failed spectacularly to excise Summers from positions of influence After years of maintaining a close relationship with a known sex trafficker which has been citizens knowledge for years he is still teaching undergraduates at Harvard He was advising presidents and senators as in recent months as His cancellation was not even enough to preclude his consideration for a Cabinet post that would have put him fifth in line for the presidency again As much as any single person can Summers embodies the preponderance odious qualities of the political elite and the scorn they show for basic human well-being We don t need to be getting our approach insights from a pedophile-adjacent ethically conflicted nepo baby His advice isn t worth it He was wrong about our latest bout of inflation He was wrong about bank deregulation He was wrong about free commerce agreements He was wrong about fiscal stimulus He even lost Harvard nearly billion as president We should demand much more from our economists policymakers and leaders Indeed making a more humane responsive authorities will depend on it The post Don t Let Larry Summers Back Into Polite Society appeared first on The Intercept