Muckety mover - the ’supercilious Mr. Summers’

It must be difficult to go from master of the universe to servant of the people.

National Economic Council Chairman Lawrence Summers has a reputation for intellectual arrogance. Sunday’s New York Times described him as “the brilliant but sometimes supercilious Mr. Summers.”

He’s the son of two economists, nephew of two Nobel Prize winners (from opposite sides of the family, no less), former Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard.

And in the leadup to the global financial collapse, his brain commanded top dollar. The hedge fund D.E. Shaw, where Summers was a managing director, paid him $5.2 million last year, according to his financial disclosure form.

Summers collected another $2.77 million for speaking before some of the same institutions receiving bailout money, including Goldman Sachs ($202,500) and JPMorgan ($67,500).

Now he’s part of an administration that’s calling for executive salary caps.

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