Trump’s tariffs are a bully strategy
Trump’s tariffs are a bully strategy, my conversation with Manu Raju on CNN’s Inside Politics
Larry Summers on Trump Tariffs, CNN
My interview on February 1, 2025 with Jessica Dean of CNN on how Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada defy economic logic.
A world on fire: How the G-20 can douse the flames
By Bono and Lawrence H. Summers, The Washington Post
Bono is the co-founder of ONE, a global campaign to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, and the lead singer of the rock band U2. Lawrence H. Summers, a professor and past president at Harvard University, was U.S. treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 through 2010.
Wildfires of all kinds.
This has been the hottest summer, not just in both of our lives, but possibly in 120,000 years, according to leading scientists. Yet it is likely to be the coolest we’ll experience for the rest of our lives. It’s a startling thought and one to stop on before checking the exits — if we can find any.
That means more heat, more drought and more wildfires like this summer’s devastating blazes in Maui and the Mediterranean basin. But it also means more pressure on a global economy already feeling the strain.
Because the climate crisis unaddressed will become development in reverse, undoing decades of social and economic progress in regions that did nothing to cause it.
This is a time to plan, not panic. To organize, not agonize. There are strategies we can adopt before the next time we hear someone shout “Fire!,” and we realize it’s the global economy itself that has gone up in flames. READ THE FULL WASHINGTON POST COLUMN
A New Chance for the World Bank
Project Syndicate — The World Bank should be a major vehicle for crisis response, post-conflict reconstruction, and, most importantly, for supporting the huge investments necessary for sustainable and healthy global development. To realize this potential, those attending the Bank’s meeting this week need to step up and do the right thing. Read more
IMF-World Bank meetings are the last stop before a coming economic storm
When they gather in Washington next week for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group annual meetings, the world’s finance ministers face what has been labeled a polycrisis: Challenges ranging from increased interest rates, climate change and an epically strong dollar, to food-supply shortages, high inflation and a still-prevalent pandemic all combine to threaten not just the global economy but also the livelihoods of hundreds of millions.
He was right about inflation. Biden wasn’t. Larry Summers on what’s coming next
Ryan caught up with the former treasury secretary — and thorn in the side of Biden White House economists — Larry Summers on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum for a wide-ranging interview about last 18 months of economic debates, why so many policymakers got the inflation debate wrong, what Summers thinks about Joe Manchin blowing up Build Back Better over inflation concerns, what Biden — and Pelosi — are getting wrong in their approach to China, and why we are almost certainly headed into a painful recession.
Larry on Fareed Zakaria
My interview on Fareed Zakaria GPS on Sunday July 24, 2022 where I told Fareed there is a very high likelihood of a recession and “soft landings represent a kind of triumph of hope over experience.”
Is America in a recession?
As we wait for new data, I spoke with @LHSummers about the state of the US economy and what to do about it: pic.twitter.com/4g2zcelIlM
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) July 24, 2022
Ezra Klein podcast: I Keep Hoping Larry Summers Is Wrong. What if He’s Not?
For over a year now, Summers has been warning about the economy that we appear to be entering. Listen here to Ezra Klein podcast on New York Times.
The stock market liked the Fed’s plan to raise interest rates. It’s wrong.
The stock market responded positively Wednesday to the Federal Reserve’s move to raise interest rates and plan for six more increases by year’s end. I wish I could share that enthusiasm. Instead, I fear, the economic projections of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) represent a continuation of its wishful and delusional thinking of the recent past.
Start with the labor market. It is now tighter than at any point in history: The vacancy-to-unemployment ratio is in unprecedented territory, quits are at near-record levels and wage growth is still rising at 6 percent, having accelerated rapidly in the past few months. The FOMC expects further tightening, to a 3.5 percent unemployment rate, which it expects will be maintained through 2024.
The Fed Must Do Much More to Fight Inflation — And Fast
During the 1960s and 1970s it took a dozen years for a toxic cocktail of excessive fiscal stimulus, misguided monetary policy focused on symptoms rather than causes, and bad luck on the supply side to generate stagflation—a combination of high inflation and a stagnant economy. Read the full article on TIME
The West wages economic war on Russia – Fareed Zakaria GPS
In an interview with Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, March 6, 2020, Summers said: “We have inflicted more damage, more quickly with more unity on our side on the Russian economy that almost anyone would have expected. There is more we can do to cut off Russian financial institutions and energy production and we need to keep those threats in reserve to exert maximus leverage.”
A triumph of Detroit over Davos
The leaders of the Group of 20 nations, representing the largest economies in the world, gathered Saturday to announce agreement on a deal that will create a more worker-centered global economy.
This agreement is arguably the most significant international economic pact of the 21st century so far. It is built around a profoundly important principle: Countries should cooperate to raise corporate taxation, not compete to reduce it. At a time of much cynicism about government, this agreement is a triumph of American leadership, for Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and her colleagues. It also demonstrates the power of ideas to shape economic policy, as tax scholars have for years been pondering the conundrums of taxing global companies.
The banking industry is throwing stones at a key Biden nominee. But it lives in a glass house.
The banking industry is vigorously protesting the Biden administration’s nomination of Cornell University law professor Saule Omarova to be comptroller of the currency, arguing that she is not interested in the kind of cooperation that should exist between banks and the government. If the industry were interested in working with the government in good faith, I would be more sympathetic to its concerns about the professor’s provocative views.
Let’s get one thing out of the way from the outset: Attacks against Omarova based on her country of birth — she was born in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union, and came to the United States in 1991 — are unacceptable and un-American. READ THE FULL COLUMN
Why Washington Can’t Quit Listening to Larry Summers
New York Times, June 25, 2021 – Larry Summers has split his pandemic time between houses in Massachusetts and Arizona. He also seems to live inside the collective mind of the Washington economic establishment.
When the 66-year-old veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations talks, Washington’s policy apparatus — journalists and think-tank types, economists and communications people, administration researchers and Capitol Hill staff — stops to listen. It disputes, debates and ultimately disseminates his ideas. Sometimes, it does so almost in spite of itself. Deploring the way he dominates the narrative is its own catalyst to his dominance, though his critics often miss the paradox. Read the full article.
New Day With John Berman and Brianna Keilar
This morning, John Berman CNN New Day asked me today what I would do about inflation. This is what I said.
First I’d recognize that our challenge right now is no longer insufficient spending. It’s the economy overheating.
Larry Summers and Paul Krugman Debate Stimulus
Princeton University’s Bendheim Center for Finance hosted a discussion today with Larry and Paul Krugman on President Biden’s stimulus package.
Larry Summers today for CNN’s Brianna Keilar
“When America looks like a dysfunctional society that costs us a great deal in terms of national security especially at a moment when you have some important threats from Russia and the possibility of what could happen in China. This is an inexplicable abdication of responsibility.”
Shrinking the Tax Gap: Approaches and Revenue Potential
Between 2020 and 2029, the IRS will fail to collect nearly $7.5 trillion of taxes it is due. It is not possible to calculate with precision how much of this “tax gap” could be collected. This paper offers a naïve approach. The analysis suggests that with feasible changes in policy, the IRS could aspire to shrink the tax gap by around 15 percent in the next decade—generating over $1 trillion in additional revenue by performing more audits (especially of high-income earners), increasing information reporting requirements, and investing in information technology. These investments will increase efficiency and are likely to be very progressive.
NBER Working Paper No. 26475 with Natasha Sarin, Lawrence H. Summers
November 2019
Whither Central Banking?
In an environment of secular stagnation in the developed economies, central bankers’ ingenuity in loosening monetary policy is exactly what is not needed. What is needed are admissions of impotence, in order to spur efforts by governments to promote demand through fiscal policies and other means.
Aug 23, 2019 Lawrence H. Summers, Anna Stansbury in Project Syndicate
