Lawrence Summers
Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Contact:
Website: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~lsummer/
Publications: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~lsummer/publications.htm
AP Photo
December 28, 2008
"Obama's Down Payment"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
"Investments in an array of areas -- including energy, education, infrastructure and health care -- offer the potential of extraordinarily high social returns while allowing our country to address some long-standing national challenges and put our economy on a solid footing for years to come."
AP Photo
October 26, 2008
"The pendulum swings towards regulation"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
"We need to reform tax incentives that encourage financial risk taking, regulate leverage and prevent government policies that give rise to a toxic combination of privatised gains and socialised losses. This offers the prospect of a prosperity that is more firmly grounded and more inclusive."
September 29, 2008
"A Bailout is Just a Start"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
"It is impossible to predict the ultimate cost to the Treasury of the bailout and the other commitments that financial authorities have made -- this will depend primarily on the economy as well as the quality of execution and oversight. But it is very unlikely to approach $700 billion and will be spread over a number of years."
June 29, 2008
"What we can do in this dangerous moment"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
"It is quite possible that we are now at the most dangerous moment since the American financial crisis began last August," says Lawrence Summers. Summers, a member of the Belfer Center's Board of Directors, says the staggering increases in oil prices and other commodities has brought consumer confidence to new lows and raised serious inflation concerns. He urges Congress to pass the housing bill immediately, to promptly pass other fiscal measures in response to the nation's economic difficulties, and to address non-monetary factors causing inflation concerns. In addition, Summers says, regulators should do what is necessary "to assure that in the event of an institution becoming insolvent they can manage the resolution in a way that protects the system while also protecting taxpayers."
(AP Photo/Christian Lutz)
September 19, 2011
"The World Must Insist That Europe Act"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
In his celebrated essay “The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine”, published in 1972, Daniel Ellsberg drew out the lesson regarding the Vietnam war that came out of the 8,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, which he had secretly copied a few years earlier. It was simply this: policymakers acted without illusion. At every juncture they made the minimum commitments necessary to avoid imminent disaster – offering optimistic rhetoric, but never taking the steps that even they believed could offer the prospect of decisive victory.
(AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
June 13, 2011
"How to avoid a lost decade"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Even with the massive 2008-09 policy effort that prevented financial collapse and depression,writes Summers, the United States is now halfway to a lost economic decade.
AP Photo
June 15, 2009
"A New Financial Foundation"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and Timothy Geithner
In developing its proposals, the administration has focused on five key problems in our existing regulatory regime -- problems that, we believe, played a direct role in producing or magnifying the current crisis.
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January 21, 2013
"End the Damaging Obsession With Deficit"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
In the two and a half months between the election and this week’s inauguration of President Barack Obama, America’s public policy debate has been focused on prospective budget deficits and what can be done to reduce them. Lawrence Summers writes that while we should address budget deficits, we should "not obsess over it in counterproductive ways – nor lose sight of the jobs and growth deficits that will ultimately have the greatest impact on the way this generation of Americans lives and what they bequeath to the next."
December 16, 2012
"How to Fix Costly and Unjust U.S. Tax System"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
"Sooner or later the American tax code will be reformed...," writes former Treasury Secretary and Harvard Kennedy School professor Lawrence Summers. "Raising revenue will be the main motivation, but at a time of sharply increasing economic polarisation, issues of fairness will be prominent too. There are also legitimate concerns about the complexity of current tax rules and their adverse effects on the economy."
September 19, 2012
"Britain Risks a Lost Decade Unless it Changes Course"
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor
Americans can take some comfort in knowing they are rebounding from the 2008 financial collapse faster than their British counterparts, writes Lawrence Summers. With the U.K. growth rate lagging, Summers says, British leaders face the choice of changing course after four years of failed economic policy, or doubling down on the same aggresive fiscal consolidation that has yet to generate demand or provide the growth needed.
