David C. Farmer vs. Harmon - Witness Lawrence Summers

David C. Farmer, Successor-Trustee vs. Harmon

(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon & Nicholson vs. Harmon)

CV05-00030 DAE KSC

U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii

Judges: David A. Ezra; Kevin S. Chang

—

DEFENDANT’S WITNESS

LAWRENCE SUMMERS

Address to be determined.

From wikipedia:

Lawrence Henry ("Larry") Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American economist and academic. He is the 1993 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal for his work in macroeconomics, was Secretary of the Treasury for the last year and a half of the Clinton administration, and served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.

In three instances during his time as Harvard president, Summers made remarks that touched on political "hot-button" controversies. Environmentalists, affirmative action advocates, and many women and those concerned with women's issues took offense and brought increasing pressure on Harvard, contributing to his resignation.

Summers left his position as President of Harvard on June 30, 2006, and was replaced by former University President Derek Bok as acting Interim President the next day. Summers has accepted an invitation to return to the University following a planned sabbatical for the 2006-07 academic year as one of Harvard's select University Professors. Separately, as announced on October 19, 2006, he became a part-time managing director of D. E. Shaw & Co.

Early life

Born to a Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut, on November 30, 1954, Summers is the son of two economists – both professors at the University of Pennsylvania – as well as the nephew of two Nobel laureates in economics: Paul Samuelson (sibling of father Robert Summers, who, following an older brother's example, changed the family name from Samuelson to Summers) and Kenneth Arrow (his mother Anita Summers's brother)....

At age 16, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he originally intended to study physics but soon switched to economics (B.S., 1975). He was also an active member of the MIT debating team. He attended Harvard University as a graduate student (Ph.D., 1982), where he studied under economist Martin Feldstein. He has had stints teaching at both MIT and Harvard. In 1983, at age 28, Summers became one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history. Recently, in December 2005, Summers married a Harvard English professor, Dr. Elisa New. Summers has three children by his first wife, Victoria Perry.

Professional life

Public official and educational administrator

Summers left Harvard in 1991 and served as Chief Economist for the World Bank (1991–1993) and later in various posts in the United States Department of the Treasury under the Clinton administration.

From 1999 to 2001 he served as Secretary of the Treasury, a position in which he succeeded his long-time political mentor Robert Rubin. In 2001, he left the Treasury and returned to Harvard as its President.

In 2006 he was a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons who reviewed the work of UNCTAD.

Controversies

Summers is a zealous proponent of free trade and globalization, and frequently takes positions on a number of politically-charged subjects. This, along with his direct style of management, made him controversial as President of Harvard, particularly among his colleagues in the humanities and social sciences.

World Bank Pollution Memo

In December 1991, while at the World Bank, Summers signed a memo written by staff economist Lant Pritchett which argued among other things (according to its author; the full memo is not public) that free trade would not necessarily benefit the environment in developing countries. An "ironic aside" made an argument that, in fact, the developed countries ought to be exporting more pollution to those developing countries. The logic being that countries with the lowest wages have lowest cost in terms of damage from pollution. He goes on to say in his memo "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that" This aside was leaked to the media as a serious, standalone memo, and a public outcry ensued.

Cornel West

In the fall of 2001 the US national media focused their attention on a private meeting in which Summers criticized prominent African-American Studies professor Cornel West, for missing too many classes, contributing to grade inflation, and neglecting serious scholarship. West, who later called Summers both "uninformed" and "an unprincipled power player" in describing this encounter in his book Democracy Matters (2004), subsequently returned to Princeton University, where he taught prior to Harvard University.

Anti-Israel attitude among academics

In 2002, Summers stated that a campaign by Harvard and MIT faculty to have their universities divest from companies with Israeli holdings was part of a larger trend among left-leaning academics that is "Anti-semitic in effect, if not in intent."

Differences between the sexes

In January 2005, Summers suggested, at a National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER) Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce, the possibility that many factors outside of socialization could explain why there were more men than women in high-end science and engineering positions. He suggested one such possible reason could be men's higher variance in relevant innate abilities or innate preference. An attendee made Summers' remarks public, and an intense response followed in the national news media and on Harvard's campus.

Summers' opposition and support at Harvard

On March 15, 2005, members of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which instructs graduate students in GSAS and undergraduates in Harvard College, passed 218-185 a motion of "lack of confidence" in the leadership of Summers, with 18 abstentions. A second motion that offered a milder censure of the president passed 253 to 137, also with 18 abstentions.

The lack of confidence measure is different from a "no-confidence" vote, which in the British parliamentary system causes the fall of a government, and it has no formal effect on the president's position. The members of the Harvard Corporation, the University's highest governing body, are in charge of the selection of the president and issued statements strongly supporting Summers.

FAS faculty were not unanimous in their comments on Summers. Influential psychologist Steven Pinker defended the legitimacy of Summers' January remarks. When asked if Summers' remarks were "within the pale of legitimate academic discourse," Pinker responded "Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s the difference between a university and a madrassa. [...] There is certainly enough evidence for the hypothesis to be taken seriously."

Summers had stronger support among Harvard College students than among the college faculty. One poll by the Harvard Crimson indicated that students opposed his resignation by a three-to-one margin, with 57% of responding students opposing his resignation and 19% supporting it.

In July 2005, the only African-American board member of Harvard Corporation, Conrad K. Harper, resigned saying he was angered both by the university president's comments about women and by Summers being given a salary increase. (Some reports suggest Harper's support of Summers may have first started to erode earlier because of the Cornel West controversy.) The resignation letter to the president said, "I could not and cannot support a raise in your salary, ... I believe that Harvard's best interests require your resignation."

After the Harvard Corporation accepted Summers' resignation, hundreds of millions in pledged contributions were canceled by donors who were disappointed by the Harvard Corporation's failure to stand up to the college faculty. Harvard college alumni, as well as students and faculty at Harvard University's professional schools (in particular Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School), and other large donors generally supported Summers. Summers' dismissal was viewed by many as an indicator that the humanities faculty at the College had power that was disproportionately large relative to their contributions to the University, and that they would seek to use their entrenched position as tenured faculty to block curricular reforms, championed by Summers, that would place greater emphasis on math and science.

Support of economist Andrei Shleifer

Harvard and Andrei Shleifer, a close friend and protege of Summers, settled a $26M case with the government over the conflict of interest Shleifer had while advising Russia's privatisation program. Summers' continued support for Shleifer hastened Summers' unpopularity with other professors:

"I’ve been a member of this Faculty for over 45 years, and I am no longer easily shocked," is how Frederick H. Abernathy, the McKay professor of mechanical engineering, began his biting comments about the Shleifer case at Tuesday’s fiery Faculty meeting. But, Abernathy continued, "I was deeply shocked and disappointed by the actions of this University" in the Shleifer affair, which was detailed in a lengthy magazine article that jolted many professors out of their reading period slumber.

In an 18,000-word article in January's Institutional Investor (2006), the magazine detailed Shleifer’s alleged efforts to use his inside knowledge of and sway over the Russian economy in order to make lucrative personal investments, all while leading a Harvard group advising the Russian government that was under contract with the U.S. The outgoing University president is a close friend of Shleifer, and the article suggests that Summers shielded his fellow economist from disciplinary action by the University. However, the case actually was filed in 2000, the year before Summers became Harvard's president. Summers' friendship with Shleifer was well-known by the Corporation which selected him to succeed Rudenstine and Summer recused himself from all proceedings with Shleifer, whose case was actually handled by an independent committee led by Derek Bok....

Resignation as Harvard President

On February 21, 2006, Summers announced his intention to step down at the end of the school year effective June 30, 2006. Former University President Derek Bok has acted as Interim President while the University conducted a search for a replacement which ended with the naming of Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust on February 11, 2007. Summers has been invited and agreed to return to the University following a planned sabbatical for the 2006-07 academic year as Charles W. Eliot University Professor, one of twenty select University-wide professorships, with offices in the Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Business School. In October 2006, the D. E. Shaw Group announced that Summers would serve as one of their part time managing directors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

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April 4, 2009

Financial industry paid millions to Obama aide!

Summers earned cash last year from firms over which he now has influence

By Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times

WASHINGTON - Lawrence H. Summers, the top economic adviser to President Obama, earned more than $5 million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money, the White House disclosed Friday in releasing financial information about top officials.

Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama?s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.

Last year, he reported making 40 paid appearances, including a $135,000 speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, in addition to his earnings from the hedge fund, a sector the administration is trying to regulate.

The White House released hundreds of pages of financial disclosure forms, which are required of all West Wing officials. A White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said the compensation was not a conflict for Mr. Summers, adding it was not surprising because he was “widely recognized as one of the country’s most distinguished economists.”

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.

Mr. Summers, a former president of Harvard University, was Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. He appeared before large Wall Street companies like Citigroup ($45,000), J. P. Morgan ($67,500) and the now defunct Lehman Brothers ($67,500), according to his disclosure report. He reported being paid $10,000 for a speaking date at Yale and $90,000 to address an organization of Mexican banks.

While Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to restrict lobbyists from working in the White House, a step intended to reduce any influence between the administration and corporations, the ban did not apply to former executives like Mr. Summers, who was not a registered lobbyist. In 2006, he became a managing director of D. E. Shaw, a firm that manages about $30 billion in assets, making it one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.

“Dr. Summers was not an adviser to or an employee of the firms that paid him to speak,” Mr. LaBolt said.

He added, “Of course, since joining the White House, he has complied with the strictest ethics rules ever required of appointees and will not work on specific matters to which D. E. Shaw is a party for two years.”

A review of hundreds of pages of financial disclosure forms on Friday evening offered an extensive portrait of the wealth of top officials in the Obama administration. The forms detail the salaries, bonuses and investments of the president’s circle of advisers, many of whom took deep pay cuts from the private sector and sold their companies to work at the White House.

David Axelrod, who was the chief campaign strategist to Mr. Obama and now serves as a senior adviser to the president, reported a salary of $1 million last year from his two consulting firms. Over the next five years, according to his disclosure form, he will get $3 million from the sale of the two firms, which provide media and strategic advice to political clients. He listed assets of about $7 million to $10 million, and reported a long list of Democratic clients and a few corporate concerns, including AT&T and the Exelon Corporation, a nuclear energy company.

The disclosure forms also shed further light on the compensation received by a top Obama aide who previously worked for Citigroup, one of the largest recipients of taxpayer bailout money. The aide, Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, received more than $7.4 million from the company from January 2008 to when he joined the White House this year.

'Shameful'

That money included a year-end bonus of $2.25 million for work in 2008, which Citigroup paid him in January. Such bonuses have prompted political controversy in recent months, including sharp criticism from Mr. Obama, who in January branded them as “shameful.”

The White House had previously acknowledged that Mr. Froman received such a year-end bonus and said he had decided to give it to charity, but would not say what it was.

The administration said Friday that Mr. Froman was working on giving the $2.25 million to a combination of charities related to homelessness and cancer, which took the life of his son this year.

The remainder of Mr. Froman’s earnings from Citigroup included deferred compensation and bonuses for work performed in prior years, as well as a $2 million payment for waiving his carried-interest stake in several private equity funds.

The White House said Mr. Froman decided to take the buyouts to avoid having to recuse himself from foreign-policy issues related to the funds’ investments, like India infrastructure, which means he would be taxed at ordinary income rates on the money.

Millionaires work in a variety of positions across the administration, and they include Desirée Rogers, the White House social secretary. Ms. Rogers, a close Chicago friend of the Obama family, reported income of $2.3 million last year. She earned a salary of $1.8 million from People’s Gas & North Shore Gas, along with three other sources of income from serving on insurance company boards.

Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser, reported earning $3.9 million as a partner at the Washington law firm O’Melveny & Myers. His disclosure form says major clients included Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Apollo Management, a private equity firm in New York that specializes in distressed assets and corporate restructuring.

Mr. Donilon is also entitled to future pension payments from Fannie Mae, where he worked from 1999 to 2005.

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, David Johnston, David D. Kirkpatrick, Eric Lipton and Charlie Savage.

This story, Financial Industry Paid Millions to Obama Aide, originally appeared in The New York Times.

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January 11, 2009

Quick tapping of unspent
$350 billion in works

By ANDREW TAYLOR and PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats prepared Sunday to answer a request for the remaining $350 billion in financial industry bailout funds as the Bush administration and President-elect Obama undertook a tag-team effort to obtain the money from reluctant lawmakers.

A vote in Congress is likely as early as this week, several senators predicted after receiving a rare Sunday briefing from top Obama economic adviser Larry Summers on the Wall Street bailout, as well as on Obama's separate $800 billion-or-so economic recovery plan.

President Bush would request the additional money for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, but the incoming administration would make the case for it by laying out a series of changes in how the program is run. More of the money would go directly to relieve homeowners threatened with foreclosure, said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. A fuller accounting of the money already spent is needed as well, Dodd said.

"Larry Summers made a very strong argument for why it's important and critical for the overall recovery," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "And I think that's an argument that most senators understand."

Summers sought to win over Senate Democrats even as the GOP leader of the House, John Boehner of Ohio, warned that any effort to release the additional money would "be a pretty tough sell." Boehner appeared on CBS' "Face The Nation."

A request would force a vote within days on whether to block the funding, but the deck is stacked in favor of Bush and Obama winning release of the remaining $350 billion.

Congress can pass a resolution disapproving the request, but the White House could veto the resolution; then, just one-third of either chamber would be needed to uphold the veto and win release of the money. Senate leaders would prefer to win a majority vote, Dodd said.

The idea is to make the money available to the new administration shortly after Obama takes office Jan. 20. The unpopular bailout has featured unconditional infusions of money into financial institutions that have done little to reveal what they've done with it.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally promised the money would be used to buy up toxic mortgage-related securities whose falling values have clogged up credit markets and brought many financial institutions to the brink of failure.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated Sunday that Bush and Obama officials are near agreement on submitting notice to Congress about using the remaining $350 billion.

"We're waiting to hear from President Bush and or President-elect Obama as to what, if anything, they're going to do," said Reid, D-Nev., "and that's occurring as we speak."

"The likelihood is that we'll have some kind of vote on that somewhere in the course of the week," Kerry said.

But to prevail, Obama and his team must soothe senators who feel burned by the way the Bush administration has used the TARP.

"The (incoming) administration ... is going to fundamentally alter how this is being managed," Dodd said. "The concept is still very sound and solid and it is needed. But it's not going to pass around here unless there's a strong commitment to foreclosure mitigation."

Dodd said lawmakers were demanding other conditions, such as more concrete steps to limit executive compensation and make recipients of the funds be more accountable.

The Congressional Oversight Panel raised detailed questions last week about how banks are spending the first $350 billion, how the money will combat the rising tide of home foreclosures and Treasury's overall strategy for the rescue. In instance after instance, the panel said, the Treasury Department did not offer adequate responses.

In an interview aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Obama said he has asked his economic team to develop a set of principles to ensure more openness about how the money is spent. Under consideration by Obama aides and congressional Democrats are proposals to limit executive pay at institutions that receive the money and to force such institutions to get rid of any private aircraft they may own or lease.

"I think that when you look at how we have handled the home foreclosure situation and whether we've done enough in terms of helping families on the ground who may have lost their homes because they lost their jobs or because they got sick, we haven't done enough there," Obama said.

Work continued through the weekend on Obama's economic recovery plan, which features aid to cash-strapped state governments, $500-$1,000 tax cuts for most workers and working couples, and a huge spending package blending old-fashioned public works projects with aid to the poor and unemployed and a variety of other initiatives.

Advocates for using tax cuts to promote alternative energy won concessions and the Obama team promised to make a $3,000 job creation tax credit — which has attracted considerable criticism — more workable.

Meanwhile, transition officials were resisting efforts to use the economic recovery bill to address the alternative minimum tax, which has affected more and more middle-income families.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090112/ap_on_go_co/obama_economy

###

January 11, 2009

Dear Mr. Farmer; Mr. Guttman; Ms. Muranaka; Attorney General Mukasey, and All Concerned:

Due to the discovery of new facts, I am adding the subject news article as a new Exhibit. You will find related information at:

http://www.kycbs.net/Central-Pacific-Bank.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CITIGROUP.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/GoldmanSachs.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/No-Bailout-for-Billionaires.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Bush-George.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Obama-Barack.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Paulson-Henry.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Rubin-Robert.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Summers-Lawrence.htm

Please advise me immediately if this Exhibit contains any "PROTECTED SUBJECT MATTER" which is prohibited by ORDER of Judge David A. Ezra.

Although I believe that Judge Ezra's Order constitutes a prior restraint of my FREEDOM OF SPEECH, if you and Judge Ezra would like to put an end to this unconstitutional approval process, then I would again suggest that we, and our respective insurance carriers (including Chubb Group, XL Insurance, and Island Insurance Co. ) make a good-faith effort to reach a global settlement of this case through confidential negotiation or mediation.

If you and your insurance carriers are NOT willing to attempt to negotiate or mediate a settlement, however, then I ask that, in light of all the new facts presented in these Exhibits and witness descriptions, you advise me whether or not you intend to OBJECT to my filing a Motion to reopen this case.

Your immediate reply is requested. If I do not receive a response from you within 15 days, I will assume that you have found no "prohibited subject matter" in these updated pages, and that you will NOT file any objections to my Motion to reopen this case.

Very truly yours,

Bobby N. Harmon, CPCU, ARM

Related internet pages:

http://www.kycbs.net

http://www.kycbs.net/Apartheid-Hawaii.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Bishop.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Broken-Trust-Book.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Confessions.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-OUST-vs-Harmon.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Freedom-To-Sing.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/JUSTICE.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/Lost-Generations.htm