Summers takes the long view
When former Harvard President Lawrence Summers went to Washington in 2009 to lead President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, some economists were predicting a one-in-three chance of another Great Depression. Now, with economic collapse averted, a fresh crisis looms: a potential government shutdown. As Democrats and Republicans continue to butt heads over how to balance the 2011 federal budget, Summers jumped into the fray, offering his first public remarks at Harvard since returning to the University in January. “No one should be rushing to cut government spending or the deficit right now,” Summers said in a wide-ranging discussion at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Tuesday (April 5). With unemployment near 9 percent, America needs public-sector jobs, he added. “I don’t subscribe to the ‘sky is falling’ school,” said Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and Frank and Denie Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business...