By Al Lewis

If you saw the movie "The Social Network," you saw a portrayal of the Winklevoss twins complaining to Harvard President Larry Summers that some twerp named Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for Facebook.

Mr. Summers shooed them away, not recognizing the value of the website, which turned out to be worth billions, or their claim against Mr. Zuckerberg, which became worth a couple hundred million.

In 2006, Mr. Summers resigned as Harvard's president following a faculty no-confidence vote. He'd sparked one controversy after the next, the least of which was suggesting that women didn't have the aptitude for math and science.

He also supported a Harvard professor who bought Russian stocks while designing Russia's privatization plans -- a scandal that led to Harvard paying $26.5 million to settle a False Claims Act lawsuit. Then he lost Harvard about $1 billion by investing its money in derivatives -- instruments he wanted to keep deregulated during his days in the Clinton administration.

Another movie that involves Mr. Summers -- the 2010 documentary "Inside Job" -- portrays him as a key villain in the 2008 financial collapse. The former U.S. Treasury Secretary (under Bill Clinton) declined to be interviewed for the film and afterward had the temerity to complain that it had "all its facts wrong."

Mr. Summers is a master at "failing up." Screw up at one job, get a better one. He's now considered a front-runner to replace Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in January.

Mr. Bernanke's response to the financial crisis has been to digitally print trillions of dollars and give most of it to the biggest banks that caused the crisis. This seems to have averted another Great Depression, but at what cost? Eventually, the Fed must ease this money out of the system. And any time Mr. Bernanke even suggests he might do this, the stock market nose dives, spoiling the whole high-wire act.

Mr. Bernanke is smart enough to step away before the Fed must unwind this unprecedented position. This task will be like defusing a roadside bomb -- and the man to do it is Larry Summers?

Meantime, President Obama launched yet another campaign to help the middle class. "With this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington's taken its eye off the ball," he complained last week in Galesburg, Ill.

He blames Washington, even as he leads Washington. One reason why the middle class is still suffering is because Mr. Obama has a knack for putting the same people who ruined the economy in charge of fixing the economy.

In his first term, he reappointed Mr. Bernanke, who had misread the subprime-mortgage crisis. Then he put Tim Geithner -- head of the New York Fed as the financial world collapsed -- in charge of the Treasury. He also relied upon Mr. Summers to craft a stimulus plan that was too small and didn't include enough investment in infrastructure.

The result is an economy that still oozes with corruption and isn't really growing.

Meantime, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are starting a bitcoin investment fund.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency for Internet transactions. Some say it's a new model for money. Others call it just another Ponzi scheme. But one of bitcoin's appeals is that it can't be manipulated by the Fed.

The bitcoin play makes me afraid that once again, the Winklevoss twins may understand something that Mr. Summers does not.

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Al Lewis is a columnist for Dow Jones Newswires in Denver. He blogs at tellittoal.com; his email address is al.lewis@dowjones.com