RECENT BLOG POSTS

What Marco Rubio gets right — and wrong — about the decline of American investment

May 31st, 2019

By Anna Stansbury and Lawrence H. Summers
The Washington Post
May 31, 2019

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recently released a thoughtful report highlighting a substantial issue in the American economy: the steady decline of American private investment.

The trend, Rubio contends, is the result of shareholder capitalism and corporate short-termism. In other words, business decision making has shifted toward “delivering returns quickly and predictably to investors, rather than building long-term capabilities through investment and production,” as he writes in his analysis. READ MORE

Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?

January 28th, 2019

How Washington Should End Its Debt Obsession

By Jason Furman and Lawrence H. Summers

The United States’ annual budget deficit is set to reach nearly $1 trillion this year, more than four percent of GDP and up from $585 billion in 2016. As a result of the continuing shortfall, over the next decade, the national debt—the total amount owed by the U.S. government—is projected to balloon from its current level of 78 percent of GDP to 105 percent of GDP. Such huge amounts of debt are unprecedented for the United States during a time of economic prosperity. READ MORE