… a brief engagement.
Lawrence Summers, director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, earned more than $2.7 million in speaking fees from companies such as Bank of America Corp., Ciitigroup Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. that later received taxpayer funds in the economic bailout.
The hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. also paid Summers more than $5 million in salary and other compensation in the past 16 months, according to a financial disclosure form released by the White House today. Summers served as a managing director at the New York-based firm until December, according to the report.
Summers, a Treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton, spoke to Citigroup, Goldman and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. audiences twice last year. Lehman, which went bankrupt in September, paid Summers $67,500 for an engagement on July 30, the filing showed…
A man stands up to give a speech. Did he write it himself? Probably not. How original is it? Let’s figure not very. How long did he speak? Forty minutes? Probably not even that. Is he especially beautiful, compelling, charismatic?
Is the outfit paying him in a position to give a guest speaker almost $70,000?
… Ah fuck it. I’m sure the expenditure makes… made… terrific sense for Lehman. Let’s look to the future: Isn’t it a good feeling to know that the man in whom the nation has vested our economic future knows how to turn a a few words into a check for $67,500 made out to himself?
April 5th, 2009 at 11:34AM
In a fit of rectitude and at the insistence of the godlet, Summers has repaid all of this money.
In some alternate universe, anyway.