In the summer of 1998, with the Russian economy on the verge of collapse, Summers pressed the IMF for still more loans. On July 17, the New York Times ran a feature story on Summers' pressure tactics. Predictably, Yeltsin and his circle scooped up the funds for their own purposes -bailing out before the collapse. They sent the funds overnight into personal accounts in New York and London. The loan, supposedly to stabilize the Russian economy, spent less than 24 hours in Russia before returning to venues such as the Bank of New York.
Summers has an especially troubling record on issues of free speech and free inquiry.
In the fall of 1999 he forced World Bank President James Wolfensohn to dismiss the Bank's Chief Economist, Joseph Stiglitz. Not inclined to tolerate dissenters, Summers is said to have told Wolfensohn bluntly that if he didn't dismiss Stiglitz, he would not be reappointed as World Bank president. In the spring of 2000, Summers showed his penchant for censorship once again. Unhappy at a major report by the World Bank on the causes and cures of poverty, he demanded changes, insisting that the report reflect orthodox belief that economic growth is the main way to reduce poverty. The draft report had been written over a period of many months by an expert team under the direction of Cornell University scholar Ravi Kanbur and it had incorporated ideas from hundreds of professors and NGOs.