Summers Received Big Fees from TARP Recipients

By GottaLaff

In case you hadn't heard:

President Obama's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, "received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees last year from firms that have direct financial interests before the government or are intimately involved in the White House's bank relief programs," according to Huffington Post.

Among the biggest speaking fees: $67,500 from J.P. Morgan Chase, $45,000 from Citigroup, and $202,500 from Goldman Sachs.

"The speech payments will undoubtedly raise questions as to the impartiality of the economic advice Summers is providing to the president. Already viewed as too favorably disposed to Wall Street interests, the lavish payments for speeches will provide further fodder for those who think the administration has been forgiving in their approach to the banking industry."

Sunday talkers will have a field day.

Biden Appoints Jared Bernstein As Chief Economic Policy Adviser To VP

By GottaLaff

Via Ambinder:

Jared Bernstein is a highly qualified economist; he is affiliated with the Economic Policy Institute. If that doesn't ring any bells, well... KLANG KLANG KLANG. The EPI one of the nation's premiere left-leaning economics enterprises and is funded in part by labor unions. Bernstein served in the Clinton administration under Robert Reich. Bernstein, who has written academic tractates and popular works on the middle class squeeze, blogged regularly at Talking Points Memo.com.

His position -- chief economist and economist adviser to the vice president -- isn't in the Plum Book. It's new -- a signal of the urgency of the times -- and it's highly ranked, which means that Bernstein will be involved in every major debate about economics that takes place within the administration. He's the first unambiguously progressive /populist ecomomist to join the upper echelon of Obama's team. He's also less of a monetarist than others on the Obama team, believing that changes in fiscal policy can have greater effects on aggregate demand.