Author: Jonathan Schwarz

From a recent profile of Larry Summers by Noam Scheiber in the New Republic:

At first glance, Summers might appear to have less to contribute on the bank and credit-market front, the most dangerous part of the current situation. His exposure to Wall Street over the years has been limited…

From the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

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…

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.

I wonder what would have constituted “significant” exposure to Wall Street. Maybe if he’d worked for D.E. Shaw full time? (Amazingly, Summers was paid $5.2 million for a part-time position. He was still a full-time professor at Harvard. If we’re generous and assume he worked 1000 hours a year for them, he was paid $5,200 an hour.)

Then there are the speaking fees. As the Wall Street Journal mentions, they were mostly from the financial sector—including the “giant government bailout” sector, such as JP Morgan, Citigroup, and two speeches to Goldman Sachs. I’ve pulled out some of the interesting ones from his disclosure form and listed them over at my site.

Next, note also that Summers worked for D.E. Shaw from October, 2006 onwards, so $5.2 million is likely less than half his total haul.

Finally, the New Republic article omitted that Summers was listed as a contributor to their now defunct blog Open University. Though as far as I can tell Summers never wrote anything for it, he was mentioned on it several times—for example, when he was hired by D.E. Shaw.

Here’s the New York Times story about the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act:

Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another’s businesses…

“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,” Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. “This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.”

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation’s financial system.

Thank God this Summers guy no longer has any power over American economic policy.

Oh Good:

HERSH: Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command — JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …

Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us. It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized. In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.

Via Scott Horton at Harper’s.

(I should mention that Hersh has previously made claims in speeches that, as far as I know, he has yet to substantiate in subsequent writing.)

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have stated repeatedly that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Is that based on the assessment of the U.S. intelligence agencies, or are they, like the Bush administration, just saying whatever the fuck they want? As Charles Davis explains, the answer is apparently the latter.

Why has the Obama administration—including Obama himself and Secretary of State Clinton—started talking about Iran’s “nuclear weapons program” even though U.S. intelligence agencies don’t have any actual evidence that such a thing exists? Because the politicians have reached “consensus.” Charles Davis explains.