On Friday, top presidential economic advisor and Harvard ruiner Larry Summers said that the economy is improving. It's a bold statement to make in the current climate. But Larry Summers had justification for his brave conclusion, according to the Associated Press:

Back in January, Lawrence Summers said, Google searches for "economic depression" had increased by a factor of four. Today, the searches are back to pre-crisis levels.

Palms, meet faces.

Lost in the hullabaloo over the recent Vanity Fair profile on Sarah Palin and her subsequent, if unrelated, resignation was the magazine's article "Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard" by Nina Munk. The spread chronicles the massive expansion of Harvard's wealth, which grew from $4.8 billion in 1990 to $36.9 billion and the rapid pace Harvard opened new buildings. But since October the endowment has lost $8 billion dollars, with President Faust warning it could lose as much as $11 billion by the end of fiscal 2008. Now trash cans overflow, shuttles are fewer, and athletes have to suffer through continental breakfasts.

"Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard" is full of blind quotes pointing fingers at which administrator screwed which pooch. No matter who is responsible, though, one thing is clear:

"They are completely fucked."

To find out just how fucked Harvard is you have to buy the August edition of Vanity Fair. That is, unless you read our recap after the jump.

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Larry Summers, former Harvard president and current National Economic Council director, fell asleep in another meeting this afternoon. This time it evidently happened during one of President Obama's boring, hope-laced orations. Now who says he lacks social skills?

Tonight, the audience of a free student showing of Watchmen in Cambridge erupted in applause at a line that Nixon actually sort of did deliver:

"Let's see those bastards at Harvard figure a way out of that one."

Oh crap, it's coming true. The movie is f'ing long, almost an hour per upcoming year of recession according to one Harvard drop-out. At least this country's last depression was also Prohibition, and anyone with gumption could run rum for money.

What are recent graduates supposed to do now? There are absolutely no jobs, and don't even think about grad school. Finance positions, Ivy gravy until painfully recently, are down more than 70 percent. Which is poetic justice: the hotshot genius "quants" were playing Jenga with the world economy, and they were drunk. And yet, who is supposed to save us? Harvard's Larry Summers and Dartmouth's Tim Geithner (among others). Maybe that explains why Geithner's own government is pulling the rug out from under him. That, or they know the truth.

The Watchman reference makes more sense after the jump.

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The Larry Summers saga is one for the ages.  Like a young Anakin, this son of economics who rose from the deserts of New Haven now casts his (rotund) shadow on the universe once again.  A recent New York Times retrospective depicts Summers and his new position at the helm of the Obama economic team as a phoenix rising from the flames of defeat to save a broken nation.  (Star Wars references stop here.)  Sure, Summers said some rather distasteful things about women.  Yeah, he was never the popular kid at school.  But as one fellow president has shown, bullies get jobs whether people shake their hands or not.

Just like in the Simpsons episode where Nelson falls for Lisa, Larry Summers has shown some signs of rehabilitation.  (Summers' wife, a professor in Harvard Department of English and American Literature Department, is named Elisa.)  As the Times praises the man and the Crimson keeps up their Larry-guard, nobody really knows whether to welcome the man back to powerful office or just cower in the corner of the playground as usual.

So what's the deal with the boy genius turned girl-bashing old man who chased away half of Harvard's Af-Am Department?  He's actually a pretty good economist and kind of a decent guy.  His John Bates Clark medal, an award up there with the Nobel in the field of economics, should grant the man some credibility.  Meanwhile, Summers tossed buckets of Harvard's hefty endowment at a financial aid overhaul program—a move matched by many elite universities—while his predecessor at the Treasury, Robert Rubin of CitiBank failure fame, just made buckets of money.  And descriptions like this of Lawrence the Terrible turned Pal from Mass Hall are downright sad:

After his five-year Harvard presidency, Mr. Summers at first seemed to have trouble letting go, colleagues and staff members say. He was on sabbatical but still roamed campus, especially the residential houses and pizza parties of undergraduates, who adored him so much they gave him a standing ovation at the next year’s graduation.

Praise granted, Larry Summers does sort of upset people.  No-Drama-Obama surely knows this and anticipates a proper performance when Summers makes the move back inside the Beltway.  Read why it might be a match made in heaven after the jump.

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After this post on the twisted lives of Ivy League power couples, we realized we had a situation on our hands. An L-Word "The Chart" sort of situation, revealing for the first time exactly how close Anne-Marie Slaughter is to Heidi Fleiss, connecting the dots all the way from Larry Summers to Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon, people! That means we win.

Harvard alum mag 02138 is likely clocking record-breaking traffic this week, now that their profile of Harvard "power couple" Eliot Spitzer and Silda Wall (where Wall admits to never spending time with her husband, and Spitzer pretends he's never worn makeup before) has become one long, foregone punchline. From power couple to criminally perverse politico — oh, what a difference two years can make!

Though all but one of 02138's "power couples" are technically still intact, Eliot and Silda are far from alone in their public humiliation. Being labeled a "power couple," it seems, is the latest relationship kiss of death, on par with 20-something hipsters getting matching tattoos, or meeting your mate on "The Bachelor." And if you expand the "power couple" list to include 02138's "power exes," a sordid soap opera unfolds, featuring closeted football players, heroin-addled artists, even a contestant from America's Next Top Model!

After the jump: Your guide to the Ivy League's most doomed.

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Larry Summers' amusing habit of antagonizing Harvard's African-American Studies Department is no more. Drew Faust has hired back Marcyliena Morgan, a scholar of hip-hop culture, along with her husband, Lawrence D. Bobo, a prominent sociologist.

The pair had left Harvard for Stanford after our friend Larry overrode the unanimous vote of the African-American Studies Department to grant Morgan tenure. Still, Summers had a strong case: Morgan had published just a single book and her classes received lukewarm reviews from students.

According to the Crimson, Faust made a personal appeal to the couple, and the African American Studies Department "wooed the pair this summer over dinners in Cambridge and Martha's Vineyard." Incredible! That's the same way Yale got Young Jeezy to lecture!

Morgan is the proud author of shining pseudo-scholarship such as this:

"Much more than CNN, hiphop brought back the search for reality and truth within a modern, highly advanced world of ideas, technology and modes of communication. For many youth, hiphop conducts its real business in the counter public where it is actualized through a central edict that is constantly repeated and reframed: represent, recognize and come correct."

Sometimes, especially if it's a cold, lonely night, I look at the moon and think I can hear the ghost of Larry Summers, howling in pain as Drew Faust, Spawn of Satan, undoes all his finest work.

The Ivy League's resident black radical and pop-scholar phenom Cornel West returns to hipster-hop with the release of his second rap album, Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations, featuring the likes of Prince, Talib Kweli, Andre 3000, KRS-One, Jill Scott, Rhymefest, and the late Gerald Levert.  Which is impressive and all, but seriously, where's Kanye?  This is totally up his alley.  They even have the same last name!

Professor West's first album, 2001's Sketches of my Culture, predicated the professor's public spat with Harvard ex-prez Larry Summers and the professor's subsequent break from the university in favor of Princeton.  Though his new boss, Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, has yet to comment on Never Forget, West thinks she'll be hipper to the project than Summers was.  In a Boston Globe article West speculates,

"I think she'll be much more open than Brother Summers," he says. "The hip-hop scared him. It's a stereotypical reaction."

A vocal opponent of misogyny and hedonism in contemporary hip-hop, West portrays his music as a "danceable education" reaching towards the genre's socially progressive roots.  "We'll go from the bling-bling to Let Freedom Ring" Brother West raps in "Bushonomics," before giving a shout-out to militant beat poet Gil Scott-Heron.  The track features New York MC and black progressive Talib Kweli denouncing "voter registration with no scope of education," "whore-mongerers," and "war-mongerers" alike.  Listen to it, and Prince collaboration "Dear Mr. Man," below. Bushonomics Cornel West and Talib Kweli Dear Mr. Man Cornel West and Prince --MAUREEN O'CONNOR