Brother, Can You Spare a $5.2 Million Intern?

There's increasing trouble brewing for Obama economic advisor Larry Summers. In 2008, while everyone knew he would play a big role in either Clinton's or Obama's administration, he pulled down $5.2 million from a hedge fund--for working one day a week. But you see, we have it all wrong (italics mine):

Mr. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president who is now the chief economic adviser to President Obama, earned nearly $5.2 million in just the last of his two years at one of the world's largest funds, according to financial records released Friday by the White House.

Impressive as that might sound, it is all the more considering that Mr. Summers worked there just one day a week.

Much is known about Mr. Summers's days in Washington and Cambridge, but little attention has been paid to his two years in New York, from late 2006 to late 2008, advising an elite corps of math wizards and scientists devising investment strategies for D. E. Shaw & Company.

Mr. Summers said in an interview that his experience at Shaw, however brief, gave him valuable insight into the practical realities of Wall Street, insight he is now putting to use in shaping economic policy in the White House.

"I have a better sense of how market participants sort of think and react to things from sort of listening to the conversations and listening to the way the traders at D. E. Shaw thought," he said.

Summers wasn't an employee, he was an intern. The most expensive intern EVAH!, but still just an intern.

All better now.

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If he were a pre-med intern, he might deserve the money - I'd say he's more of a Monica Lewinsky type intern.

Now he's got a new job, I bagsy his old one.

I reckon I could just about make ends meet with 5.2million a year for 1 day a week.

By Captain Obvious (not verified) on 07 Apr 2009 #permalink