ECONOMIC POLICY
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
December 24, 2008
"Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus"
Op-Ed, Wall Street Journal
By Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
"A temporary rise in DOD spending on supplies, equipment and manpower should be a significant part of that increase in overall government outlays. The same applies to the Department of Homeland Security, to the FBI, and to other parts of the national intelligence community."
AP Photo
December 22, 2008
"Arab Sovereignty and Sovereign Wealth Funds"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
"This is a moment when some Arabs should be thinking more in terms of enhancing the wealth of their sovereignty, rather than merely bemoaning the erratic performance of their sovereign wealth."
AP Image
December 8, 2008
"Pay For Performance"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"For the CEOs to say that they will work for a dollar a year if Congress forks over the cash ignores the vital importance of providing compensation carrots (and sticks) for the key executives who, as a team, will have to defy auto history and transform the industry, which these executives had a hand in creating."
iStock Photo
December 2008
"Wall Street Lays Another Egg"
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Vanity Fair
By Niall Ferguson, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Not so long ago, the dollar stood for a sum of gold, and bankers knew the people they lent to. The author charts the emergence of an abstract, even absurd world-call it Planet Finance-where mathematical models ignored both history and human nature, and value had no meaning."
AP Photo
November 26, 2008
"Will euro survive the current turmoil?"
Op-Ed, The Korea Herald
By Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
"Even if officials do not want to abandon the euro, they may come to do so as a result of a strategy of trying to get other countries to agree to a policy change. A country that believes that monetary or fiscal policy is too tight may threaten to leave if policy is not changed."
AP Photo
November 20, 2008
Fiscal Stimulus: What should be done now
News
Top economists affiliated with Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs weigh in on what steps the President and Congress should take to stimulate the economy. Lawrence H. Summers and Martin Feldstein are members of the Belfer Center's Board of Directors, and Jeffrey Frankel is a faculty affiliate.
AP Photo
November 18, 2008
"How to Help People Whose Home Values Are Underwater"
Op-Ed, Wall Street Journal
By Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
"The increased supply of homes for sale will create a vicious cycle, further depressing house prices, further raising the number of homes with negative equity, and weakening the balance sheets of financial institutions. This is the primary cause of the dysfunctional credit markets. None of the existing proposals to help homeowners with negative equity would eliminate the incentive to default."
AP Photo
November 18, 2008
"A Chapter For Detroit To Open"
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Martin Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University
"The simplest solution is to allow GM and the others to file for bankruptcy. If the companies file under Chapter 11, they would be able to continue producing cars, and the workforce would remain employed while the firms reorganized. The firms would also be able to get short-term credit under bankruptcy protection."
istock
November 4, 2008
"Financial Leaders Go AWOL in the Meltdown"
Op-Ed, Bloomberg
By Ben Heineman, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"What's happening is a crisis of capitalism, though not because there is a debate about the ultimate virtues of capitalism over socialism -- that argument is long over. Rather, the failure of business leadership on an almost cataclysmic scale has brought front and center the issue of how government should rein in business."
