Lawrence H. Summers, the top economic adviser to President Obama, earned more than $5 million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money, the White House disclosed Friday in releasing financial information about top officials.

Officials say they will make wide-ranging changes, including stricter federal rules for hedge funds, credit rating agencies and mortgage brokers, and greater oversight of the complex financial instruments that contributed to the economic crisis.

President Obama on Friday stepped squarely into the fractious effort in Congress to assemble an $825 billion economic recovery package, seeking to quell criticism from both parties and to retain leadership on an initiative that could define his term.

Tax cuts are the most effective tool to boost the economy, said Mitt Romney on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”  "Just mailing consumers a check and say go out and buy something... It's pretty obvious; businesses are not going to add employees and expand production for one or two month blip,” the former Republican presidential candidate said.

Senate Democrats were working Tuesday to put together legislation making it possible for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to become secretary of state despite a constitutional clause that some critics argue should bar her from joining the cabinet.

The tensions and their increasingly public airing provide a revealing coda to the ill-fated McCain-Palin ticket, hinting at the mounting turmoil of a campaign that was described even by many Republicans as incoherent, negative and badly run.

Senator Barack Obama’s fund-raising juggernaut appears to have slowed dramatically from its record-shattering pace in September, raising $36 million in the first half of October, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission.