It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today. Our prosperity is linked inextricably to the maintenance of a strong world economy, an open international trading system, and stable global financial markets.
Lawrence SummersStart with the idea that you can't repeal the laws of economics. Even if they are inconvenient.
Lawrence SummersOne of those disturbing tendencies in academic life is that there is a desire on the part of many in the name of open-mindedness to fall into a kind of relativistic denialism in which all positions are equally legitimate, all positions must be respected, and compromise must be entered into no matter what the starting point or reasonableness of the two parties.
Lawrence SummersWhere countries have been able to carry through on their reform commitments - as in Korea, Thailand and the Philippines - results are starting to come in the form of lower interest rates, new investment and increased growth.
Lawrence SummersWhat's the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls, plans. That's the consensus among economists. That's the Hayek legacy.
Lawrence Summers