Reuters has a report out on what it’s like inside the White House when the economics wizards meet to try to make sense of the U.S. economy. As might be expected, Larry Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council, is the focal point.

Debates within Obama’s economic team can approach a World Wrestling Federation smackdown. In stories leaked to the press, Summers has been accused of shutting key people out of meetings, including Paul Volcker, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christina Romer and CEA member Austan Goolsbee.

In his book, “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” Jonathan Alter describes an especially heated exchange between Summers and Romer. “Don’t you threaten me!” Summers blurted at Romer, who shot back: “Don’t you bully me!”

Such reports have helped to fuel speculation about Summers’ clout within the administration. His past foibles and successes have made him a particularly intriguing figure in Washington’s favorite parlor game of guessing who’s up and who’s down.
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“The conventional wisdom seems to be that Summers’ power has faded somewhat as Geithner has burnished his image and Volcker has taken on more prominence,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities. “He has generally been much lower profile in 2010 than in 2009.”

But that view fails to take into account the breadth of Summers’ portfolio within the White House, not to mention the face time he has with Obama.

There’s a lot more detail about Summers’ background and his current role in the Obama administration – this could have been one of those stories sitting on the shelf, rushed to print today after it was announced that Budget Director Peter Orzag is leaving.

It’s hard for a lot of people to imagine that the guy who was on the cover of Time Magazine with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin in 1999 as the “Committee to Save the World” still has a prominent role in making policy given what has happened over the last few years.