David Kurtz at TPM:

I’m starting to get the sense that Larry Summers is to economic policy in the Obama Administration what Dick Cheney was to national security policy in the Bush Administration.

Kurtz’s excellent analogy is in reference to this Bloomberg story:

Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said.

Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said.

It’s so awesome that Volcker, one of the only people in US history to actually solve a problem of the scale we’re facing now, is being stymied by one of the men responsible for creating the current mess. Bringing Volcker in was one of the few wise personnel moves Obama made, but allowing Summers to screw it up with bureaucratic games is insane.

I’m starting to wonder what dirt Summers has on someone. His economic advice is so tone-deaf that it’s borderline malpractice.