{"id":12850013,"date":"2025-11-19T14:13:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/?p=12850013"},"modified":"2025-11-21T16:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:45:09","slug":"winter-is-coming-for-summers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/2025\/11\/19\/winter-is-coming-for-summers\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Is Coming For Summers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n

Winter Is Coming For Summers<\/a><\/h2>\n

I warned readers about Larry Summers’ gross incompetence in 2013. Now it’s back on full display in emails with Jeffrey Epstein.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Courtesy of Al Lewis, Business Blunders\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Henry Ford<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

Larry Summers now finds himself under scrutiny for his long relationship with the world\u2019s most notorious sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

Today,\u00a0he resigned from the board\u00a0<\/a>of artificial intelligence pioneer, OpenAI.\u00a0On Monday, he apologized<\/a>\u00a0and said he would step back from public commitments. He also said he would continue teaching at Harvard University, even as the Ivy League icon has launched an internal investigation.<\/a><\/p>\n

As the former Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton and an economic advisor to President Barack Obama, Summers is going to be a prime punching bag for Donald Trump \u2013 whose name appears most in the most recent Epstein email dump. The president has already stumped for the Department of Justice to investigate Summers.<\/p>\n

For too many years, Democrats have disregarded Summers\u2019 buffoonery, which he has carried on in plain site. Now it\u2019s a hurdle on their path to claim a moral high ground. And it\u2019s time to take out the trash.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Summers was on the short list to replace Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve despite a staggering slew of blunders.<\/p>\n

At the time, I was writing a\u00a0Business Blunders-<\/em>themed column for\u00a0The Wall Street Journal.\u00a0<\/em>Those with a WSJ subscription can still find it online.<\/p>\n

Read More:<\/strong>\u00a0Larry Summers \u2018Failing Up\u2019 to the Fed: Mess Up at One Job, Get a Better One<\/a>\u00a0(The Wall Street Journal, Al Lewis)<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not taking a victory lap here because there is no victory.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d just like to express how incredible it seems that I\u2019ve spent so much time highlighting the financial follies of our times, and how few people care in their incessant awe of wealth, power, influence.<\/p>\n

Here are a few paragraphs from my 2013\u00a0WSJ<\/em>\u00a0piece:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf you saw the movie \u2018The Social Network,\u2019 you saw a portrayal of the Winklevoss twins complaining to Harvard President Larry Summers that some twerp named Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Summers shooed them away, not recognizing the value of the website, which turned out to be worth billions \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2006, Mr. Summers resigned as Harvard\u2019s president following a faculty no-confidence vote. He\u2019d sparked one controversy after the next, the least of which was suggesting that women didn\u2019t have the aptitude for math and science.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe also supported a Harvard professor who bought Russian stocks while designing Russia\u2019s privatization plans \u2013 a scandal that led to Harvard paying $26.5 million to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit. Then he lost Harvard about $1 billion by investing its money in derivatives \u2013 instruments he wanted to keep deregulated during his days in the Clinton administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnother movie that involves Mr. Summers \u2013 the 2010 documentary \u2018Inside Job\u2019 \u2013portrays him as a key villain in the 2008 financial collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s some resume, yet Summers continued to rank among the nation\u2019s most influential economists \u2013 at least to the willfully blind.<\/p>\n

He went on teaching at Harvard, giving speeches at the International Monetary Fund, serving on boards, publishing books and papers, and now we\u2019ve learned, he\u2019s been carrying on with Epstein all the while.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been chatting with Epstein all the way up to 2019 when the global sex-trafficking magnate was arrested a second time and ended up mysteriously dead in his prison cell.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Business Blunders<\/em>\u00a0noted last week:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cJeffrey Epstein had been a registered sex offender since 2008. Anyone maintaining a \u2018professional relationship\u2019 with him after that date has explaining to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read More:\u00a0Networking With A Pedophile<\/a>\u00a0(Business Blunders)<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s that simple. And indeed Summers has a lot of explaining to do after an email dump that shows him asking Epstein\u00a0for dating advice<\/a>\u00a0amid other chummy exchanges.<\/p>\n

The emails don\u2019t implicate Summers in any wrongdoing, but most embarrassingly Epstein calls himself Summers’ \u201cwing man\u201d in one thread.<\/p>\n

Quite suddenly aghast, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is\u00a0calling for Harvard to cut ties with Summers.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein\u2019s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation\u2019s politicians, policymakers, and institutions \u2014 or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Warren is a former Harvard Law professor.<\/p>\n

She opposed Summers for the Fed in 2013. She didn\u2019t like his \u201cWall Street vs. Main Street views, or his networking with the world\u2019s rich and powerful. But she never publicly weighed in on his many Harvard controversies \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n

A generous interpretation is that Summers valued Epstein as a connection to wealthy donors and influencers. He raised money for Harvard and other causes and needed an Epstein edge.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s sad is a bipartisan culture that ignores such buffoonery until it becomes painfully obvious.<\/p>\n

Business Blunders is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter Is Coming For Summers I warned readers about Larry Summers’ gross incompetence in 2013. Now it’s back on full display in emails with Jeffrey Epstein. Courtesy of Al Lewis, Business Blunders\u00a0 \u00a0 “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again.\u201d\u00a0\u2013 Henry Ford Larry Summers now finds himself under scrutiny for his long relationship with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":12850014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26922,21,1,12,25391],"tags":[371],"class_list":{"0":"post-12850013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-market-news","8":"category-available","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"category-phils-favorites","11":"category-members-corner","12":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12850013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12850013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12850013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12850015,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12850013\/revisions\/12850015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12850014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12850013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12850013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12850013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}