Shots in the Dark

The Washington Post reports on Larry Summers and John Snow joining hedge funds on the same day.

Lori Montgomery writes:

Two former U.S. Treasury secretaries — John W. Snow and Lawrence H. Summers — have accepted positions with two of the nation’s largest hedge funds at a time when federal officials are growing increasingly concerned about the impact of the private investment pools on U.S. financial markets.

She adds, Summers said he has made it clear to the fund that he will do no lobbying.

Michael Feiner, a management professor and ethics fellow at Columbia Graduate School of Business, said: “There’s lobbying and then there’s lobbying.”

While influencing Washington may not be the chief reason Snow and Summers were hired, Feiner said, “it is inconceivable that either of these guys wouldn’t pick up a call and try to head off the slowly burgeoning movement to get a better handle on these folks.“

So…as far as Harvard goes, is this good, bad or irrelevant?

Writing for the Bloomberg news service, Brett Cole and Katherine Burton suggest a new reason for D.E. Shaw & Co. to hire Larry Summers: influence-buying.

As this introduction to the article notes,

The Treasury Department is currently conducting an inquiry into hedge funds, in order to determine if further regulation of the $1.3 trillion industry is needed.

Under those circumstances, then, it can’t hurt to have a former Treasury secretary on your payroll, helping make contacts with current officials, doing his best to argue that further regulation really isn’t required.

Is it a coincidence, then, that Summers and former Treasury secretary John Snow were hired by different hedge funds on the same day?

Before some of you rush to criticize me for this, please note that this isn’t my suggestion—it’s clearly the article’s implication.

The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington has been spinning this year, with Henry Paulson, former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chairman, taking over for Snow at Treasury. Those who’ve traded government for finance include Paul O’Neill, Snow’s predecessor at Treasury; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; and John Edwards, former vice presidential candidate and senator from North Carolina.

And by the way, the stakes are high indeed: David Shaw, Summers’ new employer, made $340 million last year. That’s 340, 000, 000.

Let us not forget the vital news of the day: The Mets lost! The Mets lost!

As a Yankee fan, I am sorry for Willie Randolph, who has done a great job. But I just couldn’t hack much more non-stop Mets coverage…and in a completely immature and indefensible way, I take great pleasure in seeing Mets fans have their hopes savagely crushed.

To lose a game by looking at strike three in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, two outs, down by two…. That’s gotta hurt.

Anyway, it was a terrific game for baseball fans: A pitching duel, some great defense, timely hitting, drama right down to the last pitch.

And next: Go Detroit!

The news that Larry Summers is joining the hedge fund, the D.E. Shaw Group, as a part-time managing partner has provoked a vigorous debate in the comments section below. Among the questions asked: Is this an appropriate role for a former Harvard president? Why shouldn’t Larry go for the big bucks? Is this blogger personally obsessed with Summers, or just fascinated by the issues the man seems to raise by the choices he makes, the trends he represents, and the example he sets?

In any case, the hedge fund news has gotten quite a bit of pick-up in papers around the country, but most of them don’t say much beyond the bare facts. Marcella Bombardieri in the Globe goes a bit further, getting economist Edward Glaeser to talk a bit about Summers’ intentions.

“He’s so devoted to his teaching, I would be very surprised if he did anything more than dabble” in the financial markets, said economics professor Edward Glaeser, who added that Summers spent 15 minutes last week brainstorming with him about an undergraduate’s thesis.

Here’s the thing: Though I have faulted Larry Summers for many things, all the evidence seems to suggest that he does indeed care about teaching and he does enjoy teaching; Larry likes a good argument, and to the extent that leading a seminar can provide that, I have no doubt he thinks this is a good thing. I’d bet he’s a much more engaging seminar leader than he is a lecturer.

But does Edward Glaeser really think it is so remarkable that a fellow economist would spend 15 minutes talking about an undergraduate thesis?

Also, I wonder if the good folks at the D.E. Shaw Group are excited to know that Summers will do no more than “dabble” in the markets?

And a final point: Bombardieri, unlike most of the reporters who covered this news, actually goes to the trouble of trying to get a comment from Summers, who declines to say anything.

We have gotten so used to Summers not speaking to the press that it is easy to take this for granted and not ponder it. But it does raise the question, Why not? Why not say something to the Globe on the occasion of a new adventure in life?

After all, surely part of the reason to announce Summers’ hiring is to attract interest in the firm and develop new clients. I’m sure D.E. Shaw wouldn’t object to Larry giving a nice quote to the Globe in which he says something complimentary about the company and why he chose them over other opportunities.

Did his new employer want Summers to give a comment, and he refused? Or would they just as soon he not speak to the press, to avoid saying something that might get him/them in trouble?

Here’s an issue that some reporter ought to take a look at: People in the academic world were upset when the president of Harvard said that women were less genetically equipped at math than men are. How do men and women in the financial world feel about that issue? The Summers’ hiring would make an interesting jumping-off point for such a piece….

The larger point is that there’s an attempt to control this news, whether by the Shaw Group or Summers himself…as was consistent with Summers’ media style at Harvard.

The travails of Larry Summers continue to provide conservatives with proof that liberals are running out of control.

(It’s a big day for Larry Summers news, for some reason.)

In the Chicago Tribune, Victor Davis Hansen, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, proclaims that “liberal Democrats are beginning to sound like rowdy students on spring break, shrieking and exhibiting themselves on camera.”

On college campuses, the old leftist intolerance of unwelcome free speech is back with a fury. A guest spokesman for the Minutemen immigration reform group was shouted down at a recent Columbia University lecture. Earlier, Harvard’s liberal president Lawrence Summers was forced out after timidly questioning academic orthodoxy about the role of women in science and engineering.

Back with a fury, eh? One isolated incident of shouting down a speaker, another incident involving prolonged discontent with a university president and his managing style.

That’d be like me reading one op-ed by a Stanford academic and concluding that all conservative Republicans are blathering idiots….

Mr. Hansen goes on to ask,

What sends liberal criticism over the edge into pathological hysteria?

Is it that George W. Bush is a polarizing figure, not just in terms of his Iraq policy, but also because of his Christian Texan demeanor?

His Christian Texan demeanor?

Here’s the point: Mr. Hansen may not be particularly thoughtful. But his interpretation of the Summers’ ouster has quickly become accepted gospel among conservatives. Thus is history made.

A study in Science reports that “simply overhearing that men have genes that make them better at math is enough to make women stumble on math tests,” according to the Vancouver Sun.

The study, published today in the journal Science, says scientists need to be cognizant of the “stereotype threat” posed by research linking genes to obesity, sexual orientation or intelligence. It also suggests former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers’ comments last year about female intelligence — or the lack of it — may have been even more damaging than his critics suggested.

Two Canadian scientists conducted a study in which they asked women to take math tests. Some of the women took the test after overhearing a faked (though they didn’t know it) conversation to the effect that men have genes that make them better at math than women are.

The results?

The women scored, on average, 50-per-cent worse on the test than women who had not heard the comments about men’s genetic advantage.

Hardly conclusive, but interesting.

The study is also reported on in the Globe and Mail.

Joshua Aronson, a professor of applied psychology at New York University who specializes in stereotypes and self-esteem, said in an interview yesterday that Dr. Summer’s comments were based on incorrect assumptions held by many people.

“When people think about biology, they tend to confuse it with things that are fixed and immutable. That’s incorrect,” Prof. Aronson said.

Again—an interesting contribution to the debate, but I think we’ve hardly heard the final word on the subject.

The former president has signed up with an investment firm, the D.E. Shaw Group.

It’s fascinating, the different choices presidents make after they leave office…you could become president of Common Cause or work at a foundation. Or you could cash in on being the former president of Harvard and make some serious money.

Okay, okay, that’s not really fair. The guy’s an economist, a former Treasury secretary, it’s what those people do. And Summers certainly could have taken such a job without having served his time at Harvard.

Still…Larry Summers was, for better and worse a very modern university president. He is now—ostensible blogger, ostensible FT columnist, ostensible professor, and for-sure investment banker—the very model of a modern ex-president.

In Florida, an 81-year-old man is in critical condition after a stingray jumped into his boat and stabbed him in the chest, according to a wire service report.

Here’s the ray:

This is actually what’s known as a spotted eagle ray, for obvious reasons. They’re really beautiful animals and extremely shy; they don’t like divers and they don’t like divers’ bubbles. My dive instructors taught me that, if you’re near the bottom and you see an eagle ray, drop to the sand and flatten yourself as much as possible, or you’ll scare them away. Underwater, they are really dramatic.

Here’s one I saw in Cozumel….

And here’s a school of them in the Galapagos, in about 20 feet of water….

When they’re in schools, eagle rays often swim in formation, like a squad of fighter planes, only peaceful; it’s one of the most beautiful things you can see underwater.

It’s a little hard to imagine how this incident could have happened, since it would seem to require the ray jumping out of the water—which rays don’t do—backwards and stabbing the man in the chest.

Perhaps the man was doing a little illicit hunting or harassing of a beautiful animal? Because a ray can’t just jump out of the water and, in mid-air, stab someone in the chest….

The Crimson’s magazine, FM, puts its “15 Questions” to Bob Woodward, who was in Cambridge flacking his new book, “State of Denial.”

Since the interviewer, Francesca Gilberti, is apparently a freshman, I don’t want to be too tough on her. But, Francesca…it is a good idea to do at least a little background reading on the subject of your interview. So that you know, say, that Deep Throat’s identity was disclosed about a year and a half ago, and that therefore there’s no need to make your first question of Woodward, “Who is Deep Throat?”

Alas, Gilberti gives no indication that she has read even one of Woodward’s books. Instead, she asks him about blogs and whether he writes on a computer.

Woodward, for his part, shows a total lack of a sense of humor—not a huge surprise—and a real touchiness about criticism. Like when he responds to this question about his recent NY Times/Michiko review by saying,

I’m going to answer that very directly by saying I think she forgot the reviews that she wrote of the earlier book, “Plan of Attack”. She said the following: “In his engrossing new book, ‘Plan of Attack’, Bob Woodward uses myriad details to chart the Bush administration’s march to war against Iraq. His often harrowing narrative not only illuminates the fateful interplay of personality and policy among administration hawks and doves, but it also underscores the role that fuzzy intelligence, Pentagon timetables, and aggressive ideas about military and foreign policy had in creating momentum for war.“

About which one must say two things: One, he doesn’t answer the question. And two—it’s kind of weird that Woodward can quote an entire paragraph of a review from memory.

Woodward is also a little patronizing, as when he tells Gilberti that “you ask tough questions,” when she obviously doesn’t. But then, I suppose it’s slightly understandable when being interviewed by someone who doesn’t appear to have much idea what she’s talking about. You can understand it when Woodward answers one question by tellng Gilberti, “Read State of Denial…” It’s pretty obvious that she hasn’t.

One other thing that’s a bit odd. Woodward emphasizes the importance of “digging” in journalism—certainly true—and says that during Watergate, Katherine Graham would tell him, “Keep laughing, keep digging, keep loving.”

Keep laughing, keep digging, keep loving.

What were they smoking there at the Washington Post?

At Brown, the prescriptively named “Committee on Slavery and Justice” has issued a report suggesting that the university make amends for its ties to slavery.

(You can find the report here; coverage in the Brown Daily Herald is here.)

Established by Brown president Ruth Simmons, the committee recommends that Brown make amends for slavery by building a memorial, creating a center for the study of “slavery and injustice,” and recruiting students from Africa and the West Indies.

None of these, in and of themselves, are bad things. By all means, recruit students from Africa. (Although isn’t that Brown’s version of the Madonna baby adoption?) A memorial? Can’t be a bad thing, I suppose.

But the implications of this are interesting. By far Brown’s greatest connection with slavery is accepting money from slaveholders or slave traders. So Brown needs to make amends, the argument goes, for accepting money from people who did bad things.

Now, universities everywhere have and continue to accept money from people who do bad things, on the grounds that better they should give their money to universities than that they should use it for nefarious purposes.

Why is slavery any different?

After all, it’s not like the slave traders were practicing their heinous business in order to raise money for Brown. The gifts to the university were incidental to what these people did for a living.

Of course, you could reject the premise of the argument, and say that universities should never take dirty money. That’s opening a can of worms.

Or you could say that slavery was a unique evil which mandates special measures. But since the committee is proposing a center for “slavery and injustice,” it clearly doesn’t think that slavery is a unique evil, but one out of various kinds of injustice.

(And of course these days slavery is defined in all sorts of ways: wage slavery, sexual slavery, and so on.)

So my question is, Will Brown be consistent here? Two hundred years from now, who knows what donors of today we may consider sinful. Will Brown hold its current donors to the standards to which it is now holding its donors of centuries ago?