Larry Summers ‘Can’t Imagine’ A Bigger Waste Of Money Than Sending You Some
Larry Summers is sticking with it. By "it" I mean what's morphed into a professional gig centered almost entirely around criticizing Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion virus relief plan, and especially the direct payments at the center of the proposal.
It's worth taking a step back to remember where the idea for $2,000 stimulus checks came from in the first place.
Donald Trump proposed those checks in a surprise video posted to his now defunct Twitter account late in December. The video, which caught t
So is it time to start buying TIPS, H?
My sophomore English composition prof had a list of several things we couldn’t say in the 170 papers we wrote in his (year-long) class. One thing he prohibited was starting a thought with, “I don’t know …” or “I don’t understand …” or any one of several similar phrases because they reflected an admission of ignorance we probably didn’t want to transmit to our readers before trying to make our point. Sorry, Larry.
While your prof had a good point, “I can’t imagine…” is not so much an admission of ignirance as a failure to conceive the inconceivable. For me, at least, that makes it less problematic. Larry Summers isn’t exactly the poster child for out of the box thinking. Wasn’t he the bat boy on Robert Rubin’s ‘Team to Save the World?’
I respect Summers opinion. But I respect Yellen’s more and a risk management approach to the stimulus is proper in a crisis. If the Fed has to raise short rates to slow the economy down because the vaccine rollout went better than expected and the economy outperformed to the upside that would indeed by a high class problem to have. And we know how to solve it (raise short term rates). And it would get the Fed some ammo back. How about the downside of a stimulus that was not enough? Slow growth, suffering, and another populist backlash with a more dangerous version than Trump. I think I will pick the first approach.
Larry is still trying to salvage his reputation from the GFC when he urged Obama to go low. Many professorial types hate to ever be wrong.
I am guessing we won’t see Larry out to dinner with Stephanie Kelton anytime soon. I think the checks should be more targeted, but we should not left perfect be the enemy of what is a needed outcome for so many.