Jacobin | A Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty
As President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, Summers engineered the deregulation that created the 2008 financial crisis, and then, as President Barack Obama’s economic adviser, Summers made sure the postcrisis rescue plan prioritized serving the bankers throwing millions of Americans out of their homes. Those decisions should have ended Summers’s public-facing career, but they didn’t. He was instead rewarded with Harvard University’s presidency; platforms at the New York Times and Bloomberg; gigs at a hedge fund, an artificial intelligence giant, and a cryptocurrency firm; and a distinguished senior fellowship at the Center for American Progress, where he was slated to sculpt Democrats’ agenda.