National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers made the rounds on the Sunday morning television programs to both chastise AIG for handing out bonuses, and to defend the Obama Administration for its inability to prevent such behavior.  He says the lesson is that "we don't have a satisfactory regulatory regime."  Here he is on CBS's Face the Nation:

It is interesting to see Summers trotted out in this role.  While he is highly regarded for his sharp mind and grasp of all details of economic theory, Summers has sometimes stumbled as a public figure, especially in his tenure as president at Harvard.  In the April edition of The New Republic, Noam Scheiber unpacks the personality of the White House's "economic oracle." Scheiber charts Summers's rise, from his MIT undergraduate days (when he chose economics over physics in part because "bad economists" can still find interesting work) to his current place in the Obama Administration, in an extensive profile.  The article is short on outright crticism of Summers, but long on detail.  Read it here.