Check out Yves on how the big boiz get their profits. Larry Summers is is a successful underpants gnome.

I'd been wondering where the switch was. Apparently, Larry's asleep at it.

Frank Rich:

Lawrence Summers, the president’s chief economic adviser, made $5.2 million in 2008 from a hedge fund, D. E. Shaw, for a one-day-a-week job. He also earned $2.7 million in speaking fees from the likes of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. [Yet/And at] the start of his stormy and short-lived presidency, Summers picked a fight with Cornel West for allegedly neglecting his professorial duties by taking on such extracurricular tasks as cutting a spoken-word CD.

Avedon asks a good question:

Moyers and Winship:

Reading stories about [Larry] Summers and Wall Street you realize the man was intoxicated by the exotic witches’ brew of derivatives and other financial legerdemain that got us into such a fine mess in the first place. Yet here he is, serving as gatekeeper of the information and analysis going to President Obama on the current collapse. We have to wonder, when the President asks, “Larry, who did this to us?” is he going to name names of old friends and benefactors? Knowing he most likely will be looking for his old desk back once he leaves the White House, is he going to be tough on the very system of lucrative largesse that he helped create in his earlier incarnation as a de-regulating Treasury Secretary? (“Larry?” “Yes, Mr. President?” “Who the hell recommended repealing the Glass-Steagall Act back in the 90s and opened the floodgates to all this greed?” “Uh, excuse me, Mr. President, I think Bob Rubin’s calling me.”)

TPM on the Summers/Mack derivatives whistleblower firing story. A day late. Still, good for them!

Ouch!

Leave aside for a moment the question of whether a market in which buyers have to be bribed to participate can really be described as “better functioning.”

And now, the throwdown:

Naked Capitalist has a terrific post on the latest TARP maneuvering showing, essentially, that the only institutional* difference between Village Republicans and Village Demorats is the Dems use lube:

The Administration has evidently launched a campaign to warn the American public that the black hole banking industry will need more in the way of recapitalization funding than is currently on offer.... [T]hrowing money at sick banks with no plan as to how to shrink and rationalize the industry** does not strike us as a sound way to proceed (and the TARP II notion of buying bad assets at certain to be inflated prices is a cosmeticized equity infusion and not a real solution).

Perhaps as important, the public is sufficiently outraged over TARP I that something quite different (as in more punitive to incumbent management, stockholders, and in some cases, bondholders) is required to muster Congressional support. I don't have the sense that Team Obama fully appreciates that.

No, but then why would they? Team Obama's priority -- as Obama was quite explicit about in his inaugural speech -- is imposing "shared_{MR SUBLIMINAL [cough]} sacrifice"; that is, not less pain, but more. As we shall see, they're quite open about it.

Naked Capitalist continues:

So, I bet you all remember that wonderful sexist Larry Summers who said that women aren't excelling in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields because of innate differences between our brains and men's. Isn't he sweet?