I think this is one possible answer to the questions raised by DougJ’s last thread. Via Billmon, ThinkProgress:
As his fellow panelists sought to sidestep criticisms of the financial industry on the five-year anniversary of the bank failure that kicked the financial crisis and Great Recession into full swing, former congressman Barney Frank asked a simple question that brought Wall Street’s defenders up short. “To your question about those poor beleaguered bankers who have been forced to do so much,” Frank said, “why are they paying themselves so much money? Where did these enormous salaries come from if they were in fact in such serious trouble?”…
Transcript at the link. It’s not that Larry Summers has the self-awareness to realize that Barney Frank signals a willingness among “rogue Democrats” like Elizabeth Warren to raise uncomfortable questions about the Wall Street banksters. But the people propping up his normination may have come to understand just how “toxic” it would be for their own interests to give DFHs like Barney an opening.