Lawrence Summers to Leave White House At End of Year

Lawrence Summers will step down as director of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council at the end of the year, the White House announced Tuesday.

Summers, who helped craft the administration's economic policy and leads a daily presidential briefing, said he will return to academia.

"I will miss working with the President and his team on the daily challenges of economic policy making," Summers said in a statement issued by the White House. "I'm looking forward to returning to Harvard to teach and write about the economic fundamentals of job creation and stable finance as well as the integration of rising and developing countries into the global system."

Summers, 55, was president of Harvard University when Obama tapped him as economic adviser. Before that he was Clinton's Treasury secretary and also served as chief economist for the World Bank.

In the statement, Obama praised Summers for his "brilliance, experience and judgment."

"Over the past two years, he has helped guide us from the depths of the worst recession since the 1930s to renewed growth. And while we have much work ahead to repair the damage done by the recession, we are on a better path thanks in no small measure to Larry's wise counsel," the president said. "We will miss him here at the White House, but I look forward to soliciting his continued advice and his counsel on an informal basis, and appreciate that he has agreed to serve as a member of the President's Economic Advisory Board."

Staff shakeups are typical as presidents reach the half-way point of their terms. On Monday Obama indicated that some White House officials might be moving on.

"This is tough, the work that they do," the president said during a town hall discussion on the economy broadcast on CNBC. "They've been at it for two years, and they're going to have a whole range of decisions about family that will factor into this, as well."

So far this summer, Obama's director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, and Christina Romer, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, have stepped down.