Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Wall Street's Ownership of Government --Glenn Greenwald

[billyoc]

White House officials yesterday released their personal financial disclosure forms, and included in the millions of dollars which top Obama economics adviser Larry Summers made from Wall Street in 2008 is this detail:

Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations. . . .

Financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, 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.

That's $135,000 paid by Goldman Sachs to Summers -- for a one-day visit. And the payment was made at a time -- in April, 2008 -- when everyone assumed that the next President would either be Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton and that Larry Summers would therefore become exactly what he now is: the most influential financial official in the U.S. Government (and the $45,000 Merrill Lynch payment came 8 days after Obama's election). Goldman would not be able to make a one-day $135,000 payment to Summers now that he is Obama's top economics adviser, but doing so a few months beforehand was obviously something about which neither parties felt any compunction. It's basically an advanced bribe. And it's paying off in spades. And none of it seemed to bother Obama in the slightest when he first strongly considered naming Summers as Treasury Secretary and then named him his top economics adviser instead (thereby avoiding the need for Senate confirmation), knowing that Summers would exert great influence in determining who benefited from the government's response to the financial crisis.

...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/04-9

[MannyGoldstein]

1. I Hope You're Wearing Asbestos Undies

DU's become banker-friendly, e.g., the responses to my post this AM: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=8320035&mesg_id=8320035

[billyoc]

3. Ooh, nice one!

[bvar22]

6. I saw that.

The Obama Taliban were out in force.
I don't believe a single attacker in that thread even made an attempt to debate the content of your post, just attacked the messenger.
Apparently, you committed the sin of NOT posting enough threads praising Obama...and they are counting, making lists, and reporting to the commissar.
The group dynamics of that clique are scary considering this is a Liberal website.

On Edit:
You are not alone.
There was a glimmer of light offered.
While they were trumpeting about how many they had on ignore, I realized that if they put all the high information Progressive DUers on ignore, we will be able to discuss The Issues unmolested by the Purity Police. :)

[mix]

7. i have systematically put them on ignore

i am too distrustful of power, right or left, to seek comfort in personality-based politics...

[polichick]

2. Oh that's okay - they're the president's men...

:sarcasm:

[glitch]

4. Glenn Greenwald excellent as usual, thanks for posting. K & R

He references this link http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/marapr/features/born.html also a good read.

[leftstreet]

5. K&R

[Teacher in SC]

8. Thanks for posting this link to Greenwald's blog

I went to Salon.com and read it along with many of the comments. Looks like Greenwald has the big picture. Sure hope Obama has time to listen to the Moyers interview. It is spreading all over the place, just as I figured it would when I heard it. We the People are paying attention. I wish they'd stop treating us like mushrooms.

There are those who feel like once they'd gotten Obama elected that they could just forget politics and go back to their hobbies, etc. Unfortunately, Obama is one man and not God. He needs our help. There are those in his circles who are going to insulate him from the likes of Moyers, Greenwald, Black, etc. If we don't continue to do our job of spreading the word via the internet then we'll be asking ourselves how Obama ended up in the same bubble once inhabited by Bush.

What did Paul O'Neill say to Fareed Zacharias in his recent interview? Something about "show me the money!" Wonder what he meant by that.... Pardon me while I look that up again. Suddenly it's taking on a new meaning.

[Teacher in SC]

9. O'Neill's interview on GPS

Yes, he did say he wanted the banks to show us the money, to be transparent.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/16/oneill.qanda/index.html?iref=newssearch

Remember that this is the treasury secretary who was fired by Bush because he wouldn't play along. Ron Suskind wrote a great book about it, "The Price of Loyalty".

[chimpymustgo]

10. K&R. People, take off the blinders.

[johan helge]

11. Obama should have known better

than to use such a man to give advice about the bank bailout. It's bad PR and may mean bad advice.