What is Larry Summers' Net Worth?
Larry Summers is an American economist who has a net worth of $40 million. Lawrence Summers served as the US secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010. He held a number of other positions in the Clinton administration, and later served as the president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. After that, Summers worked at various financial institutions and began writing columns for major newspapers, including the Washington Post.
Early Life and Education
Lawrence Summers was born on November 30, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut to Jewish parents Anita and Robert, both economists and professors at the University of Pennsylvania. He was raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Penn Valley, and went to Harriton High School. When he was just 16, Summers enrolled at MIT; he graduated in 1975 with a degree in economics. Subsequently, he attended graduate school at Harvard University, earning his PhD in 1982.
Career Beginnings in Academia
Summers began his career in academia, teaching at his alma mater Harvard in 1983. At only 28 years of age, he became one of the youngest tenured professors in the school's history. As an academic economist, Summers specializes in such areas as public finance, labor economics, and macroeconomics.
Chief Economist of the World Bank
In 1991, Summers left Harvard to become the Chief Economist of the World Bank. During his two years in that position, he was integral in creating strategies to assist developing nations. Summers also led the Bank's research operations and guided external training programs. In late 1991, he was briefly involved in a minor scandal when a sarcastic memo he signed was leaked to the press. The memo spoke facetiously of corporate pollution in Africa, and was allegedly doctored by the leaker to remove context and irony.
Clinton Administration
After leaving the World Bank in 1993, Summers was appointed Under Secretary for International Affairs in the Clinton administration. A couple years later, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, and in 1999 became Secretary of the Treasury. During his time working for the Clinton administration, Summers played a pivotal part in the American response to financial crises in Mexico, Asia, and Russia. Additionally, he was integral in facilitating American-advised privatization of post-Soviet economies, as well as the deregulation of the US financial system, leading to the introduction of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Harvard President
Summers left the Treasury Department upon George W. Bush's inauguration in 2001 and returned to his alma mater of Harvard University, becoming the school's 27th president. He attracted a great deal of controversy during his tenure for a variety of dubious incidents. Among them, Summers made demeaning comments about the head of the African-American Studies department Cornel West. He got into further trouble for a conference speech in 2005 that many accused of sexism. There were also many questions about financial conflict of interest vis-à-vis his relationship with fellow economist Andrei Shleifer. Following a no-confidence vote by the faculty of Harvard, Summers resigned as president in 2006. He returned to the school two years later to become the Charles W. Eliot University Professor.
As seen in the movie "The Social Network," during his time as President of Harvard, twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss complained directly to Summers about Mark Zuckerberg stealing their idea for a social network by creating Facebook. Summers was not sympathetic to the Winklevoss brothers and did not assist them in disciplining Zuckerberg.
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Financial Sector Work
In late 2006, Summers became a part-time managing director of the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co. He went on to do work with a number of other financial institutions as well, mostly in the capacity of freelance speaking. From speaking gigs at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup, among others, Summers earned around $2.7 million. Elsewhere in finance, Summers was an early angel investor in Zoomcar, India's first car rental company.
Obama Administration
When Obama was inaugurated as president in 2009, Summers was appointed director of the National Economic Council. In that role, which he held for two years, he served as a key financial decision-maker during the Great Recession. However, Summers also attracted controversy when it was revealed that he was previously paid millions of dollars by companies that he now had influence over as a public servant.
Board Appointments
Summers took a number of board appointments after leaving the Obama administration. He joined the board of directors of the electronic payment services company Square in 2011, and joined the board of the financial services company Lending Club in 2012. Summers later joined the board of directors of the data and analytics technology company Premise Data.
Personal Life
In 1984, Summers wed his first wife, Victoria Perry. They had a son named Harry and twin daughters named Ruth and Pamela. The couple divorced in 2003. Two years after that, Summers married professor Elisa New, who has daughters named Orli, Yael, and Maya from a prior marriage. Summers resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.
