Hold your noses, folks, because this one smells rotten: The president’s top economic adviser, partly responsible for sending tens of billions of dollars to Wall Street banks, made almost eight million dollars in salary and speaking fees last year from those same banks and a hedge fund.

The Washington Post reports……

Lawrence H. Summers, one of President Obama’s top economic advisers, collected roughly $5.2 million in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw over the past year and was paid more than $2.7 million in speaking fees by several troubled Wall Street firms and other organizations.

Here’s the Times:

Mr. Summers’s role at the White House includes advising Mr. Obama on whether — and how — to tighten regulation of hedge funds, which engage in highly sophisticated financial trading that many analysts have said contributed to the economic collapse.

Several Obama aides and advisers made large sums last year from companies whose business could now be affected by their relationship with the federal government, but none made nearly as much, nor with as clear a conflict of interest, as Summers did.

The Post again:

….Financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch paid Summers for speaking appearances in 2008. Fees ranged from $45,000 for a Nov. 12 Merrill Lynch appearance to $135,000 for an April 16 visit to Goldman Sachs…

In addition to his $5.2 million in salary and other compensation from D.E. Shaw, Summers received $586,996 in salary from Harvard University.

Let’s see. That’s basically his presidential salary from 2005, his last full year as president. So starting in January 2008, a year and a half after Summers was fired as president, he’s still being paid his full salary.

Wonder if Harvard will offer deals like that to the union workers, some of whom have been at Harvard for decades, to whom it’s offered early retirement and may yet lay off.

Actually, we already know the answer to that: No.

Back when I wrote a piece for Boston magazine about Summers’ ouster, I put the amount of his golden parachute at “in the seven figures.” After the article came out, official Harvard types pooh-poohed that number. No way, they said. You’re wrong. We can’t tell you what it is, but it’s not that much.

It was that much.

Larry Summers always wanted to make more money than the half million bucks or so he received from Harvard, along with free housing, a full-time chauffeur, business class travel, a huge expense account, and so on (clothing allowance?) that he received as Harvard president. Fine. That’s his prerogative.

The problem is, Can we now believe anything that he has to say when it comes to Wall Street? How can Americans trust this man when he earned from Wall Street in one year a sum comparable to the total he’d made in all the prior years of his career? How grateful he must be!

As Henry Blodget puts it on Business Insider, “No wonder Summers is so eager to save Wall Street.”

Here’s a list, by the way, of the banks, consulting firms and so on who bribed paid Summers. You’ll note, for example, McKinsey & Co., the consulting firm to which Summers threw a lot of business when he was Harvard president.

(…..said Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard’s president, adding that the university brought in consultants from McKinsey & Company to identify categories in which money could be saved.)

Apparently payback isn’t always a bitch. Sometimes it’s $135,000.

(Then again, maybe that $135k was something former Harvard Corporation member/Mckinsey and Co. officer D. Ronald Daniel, who helped choose Summers, threw in to sweeten the pot and get Summers to leave his office quietly.)

One wonders, by the way, what Larry Summers, whose managerial skills dragged a university into the worst chaos and upheaval since Vietnam, had to tell a consulting firm about best practices.

You’ll also note the presence of Goldman Sachs, Bob Rubin’s old firm, and Citigroup…Bob Rubin’s then firm.

Scratchscratchscratchscratch.….

Scratchscratchscratchscratch….

(That’s the sound of two men scratching each other’s back.)

No wonder Barack Obama didn’t want Larry Summers to have to go through a confirmation process…..

For a copy of Larry Summers’ financial disclosure report, go here.