Prepare yourself for a Wall Street bombshell. Larry Summers, once a titan of economic policy, has been ousted from his consulting gig at DE Shaw, a hedge fund giant, over his troubling ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
The New York Post reported that Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard bigwig, saw his long-standing relationship with DE Shaw crumble under the weight of scandal involving the disgraced financier Epstein, alongside other professional retreats like stepping back from Harvard roles and resigning from OpenAI's board.
Summers, now 70, first joined DE Shaw back in 2006 as a managing director, even bringing along his trusted adviser Michael O’Mary a year later.
By late 2008, Summers stepped away to serve as a top economic adviser under President Barack Obama, only to return to DE Shaw as a consultant in 2011, working remotely from Boston near Harvard’s campus.
Reporting to managing director Max Stone, Summers carved out a niche in macroeconomics at the hedge fund, which boasts over $70 billion in assets and was named the most profitable of its kind in 2024 by Institutional Investor magazine, raking in $11.1 billion for clients.
DE Shaw, founded by David E. Shaw—a known supporter of Democratic figures—prides itself on pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on Wall Street, a stance some might call laudable but others see as a distracting progressive agenda.
The cracks in Summers’ career began widening with revelations of his Epstein connections, including a post-wedding trip on Dec. 21, 2005, to Epstein’s Caribbean island aboard the infamous “Lolita Express,” alongside his wife, Elisa F. New, and Ghislaine Maxwell, later convicted on sex trafficking charges.
This getaway came just months after Palm Beach police launched an investigation into Epstein for horrific allegations involving a minor, with a search warrant already executed on his property. It's a timeline that raises eyebrows about Summers’ judgment.
Flight logs further reveal Summers took Epstein’s jet, allegedly linked to trafficking operations, on three other occasions, while hundreds of emails from 2013 to 2019 show a cozy rapport discussing everything from politics to Harvard matters.
Take this gem from an email Summers sent to Epstein in October 2017: “I observed that half the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”
While Summers might have thought he was being clever, this quip smacks of a tone-deafness that clashes with today’s cultural sensitivities—hardly the insight you’d expect from a former Harvard president or World Bank chief economist.
Another email from March 2019 shows Summers musing to Epstein, “I dint [sic] want to be in a gift-giving competition while being the friend without benefits.”
Such exchanges paint a picture of a relationship far too chummy for comfort, and the fallout has been swift: Summers was put on leave from teaching at Harvard, stepped back from a leadership role at the Harvard Kennedy School, and resigned from OpenAI’s board just days ago.
At DE Shaw, where he was listed as an adviser as recently as Friday morning, the axe fell with a curt confirmation: “Larry Summers is no longer a consultant to the firm,” a spokesperson told The Post.
While some may lament the end of Summers’ storied Wall Street chapter, once hailed by The New York Times as DE Shaw’s “marquee hire” to woo global clients. It’s tough to argue he didn’t court this disaster with questionable associations, especially in an era where accountability, not just achievement, defines a legacy.
