Summers

I think a strong case can be made that picking Summers was a huge mistake.

Josh Marshall - Money Porn According to disclosure documents filed today, Lawrence Summers made almost three million dollars in speaking fees from major commercial banks and investment banks and another $5.2 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw Group, a large hedge fund.

• DougJ adds:

  Summers, a leading architect of the administration’s economic policies and response to the global recession, appears to have collected the most income. Financial institutions including JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a Nov. 12 Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs, according to his disclosure form.

  The Geithner-Summers plan to continue with TARP-buying (as opposed to nationalizing) is very popular with the firms that paid Summers all that money over the past year. Maybe it’s the right plan anyway. But these kinds of things sure look like de facto bribes to me.

ChrisinParis - Is Obama for or against pay restrictions for TARP recipients?

Say it ain't so. If this story is accurate, there is a lot of explaining to do. Obama has publicly supported executive compensation for TARP recipients yet according to today's Washington Post, the administration is planning to circumvent Congress and relax these policies or push the money through other organizations in order to avoid restrictions. If anything, this sounds like yet another Larry Summers plan to help Wall Street but hopefully there's a mistake or something was misunderstood. If true, expect all hell to break loose, rightly so.

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

If this turns out to be another Summers stunt it should be the end of his reign in Washington. Obama is going to have to start reaching out to economists that are not so closely tied to this economic crisis. This is serious mistake, if true, so we should be hearing some clarification about this story this week.

Atrios: Hopey Changey

Ah well.

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.
...

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

It's the banksters' country. We just live in it.

UPDATE: Moyers 1/3: Sharing the Blame for the Economic Crisis?