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[Applause]
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um next up uh Larry Summers
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[Applause]
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we'll let your winners
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[Music]
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[Music]
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Larry is an absolutely incredible human
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being
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um he was the president of Harvard he
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was a treasury secretary under Clinton
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he was Obama's head of the NEC he's been
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on the board of some very well-known
00:00:49
Tech startups like Square now block
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um he's been a great friend of mine for
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12 or 13 years he taught my son calculus
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but I wanted to start with one very
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quick story Larry was staying at my
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house
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and uh
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he runs in to the kitchen and he says
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the internet is not working I have an
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extremely important Zoom
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and I said oh yeah no problem you can
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just use this thing over here and he
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goes oh I need you to help me get on the
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zoom so I'm like this it guy helping him
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get on the zoom
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pops a picture
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of the governor of the boj the bank of
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Japan and I was like what's going on
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and he says I'm a little peckish could I
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just get anything you have over here to
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eat so I go outside my mom's like what
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is going on and I said oh Larry Summers
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has a meeting with the with the head of
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the boj she goes dead of the brj and she
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stops me on that trip we must make him
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something to eat and so
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[Laughter]
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we made scrambled eggs and orange juice
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and then at the end of it she's like who
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is he this person talking to the head of
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the beer and I said it's Larry Summers
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blah blah and then once she heard that
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it was Clinton she hit me on the top of
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the head again and she worked for
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Clinton he said we should have given him
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fresh squeeze orange juice
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[Laughter]
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okay
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he is literally one of the most
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stimulating intellectual people that I
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know so let's start with uh the most
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impressing question CPI is going to come
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out tomorrow Larry you have basically
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become the shadow Secretary of the
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Treasury and the shadow fed Governor uh
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where are we going where are we in the
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cycle what is happening to the consumer
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give us just the five-minute Redux on
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the economy
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we have a thing in politics
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um chamoth it's called the management of
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expectations and you have just failed me
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[Laughter]
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again uh in that regard
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look there are two kinds of economists
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there's those who know they don't know
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and those who don't know they don't know
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I'm in the first category so I'll give
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you my best guesses but that's what uh
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they are
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what Samuel Johnson said about second
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marriage is true of soft Landings
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they represent the Triumph of Hope over
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experience
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[Laughter]
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[Applause]
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there's never been a time when inflation
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was above four and unemployment was
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below four and the U.S economy didn't go
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into recession before that situation was
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resolved
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that's why I've been kind of a Cassandra
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on uh inflation and the cyclical outlook
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for the last couple of years
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here's the way I think about uh soft
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Landing
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You've Got This Plane
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it's ultimately aspiring to fly very
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fast and then land on an aircraft
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carrier
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it was way off course and seemingly out
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of control
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pilate figured out that it was all
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screwed up
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and now the pilots got the plane on a
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reasonable uh course
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and that's good
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but it's still
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300 yards above the deck of the aircraft
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carrier
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and it still going very fast
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and it's still an open question
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whether it's gonna hit the aircraft
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carrier
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rather than land on the aircraft carrier
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or whether it's going to overfly the
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aircraft carrier
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and have to turn around
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and achieve a soft Landing
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and I think all of that
00:04:54
is still very much at risk
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the people who say it's all okay we
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never need to worry about inflation
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inflation was nine inflation's now three
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and a half it's all under control we're
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all done
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don't know what they're talking about
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could turn out to be right
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but
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inflation was never on an underlying
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basis anything like eight or nine
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it was like five
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artificially pushed up by used cars and
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airline fares and a bunch of stuff like
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uh that gasoline and the thing about
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stuff that mean reverts is that it mean
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reverse and so when that stuff was going
00:05:43
up real fast we had eight percent
00:05:46
inflation with an underlying inflation
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rate of five percent when that stuff
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collapses we have an underlying rate of
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inflation of four or five percent and we
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see inflation below that
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so that's what happened
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so if you try to measure what's happened
00:06:04
to the actual underlying rate of
00:06:07
inflation it's down a little maybe it's
00:06:09
down half a percent maybe it's down a
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percent that's more than I would have
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expected and that is genuinely good news
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but it's a long way from where we are
00:06:24
now
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to a soft landing and I think you've got
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risks on both sides I think you've got
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risks that the consumers going to slow
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down hard that monetary policy operated
00:06:42
with a lag the credit's going to be
00:06:44
crunched and that you're going to see
00:06:48
the economy have a bit the Wiley Coyote
00:06:52
aspect to bit the ball rolling off a
00:06:55
table aspect I think that risk is there
00:06:58
I think there's a larger probably risk
00:07:02
that we don't really have inflation on a
00:07:06
secure path down below three and a half
00:07:09
and that the FED thinks it's got it
00:07:12
under control and it doesn't and that
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it's going to have to go back to uh
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raising uh rates so you are nervous okay
00:07:24
you're nervous so if you're Jay Powell
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if you had Jay Powell's job right now
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what is the Delta from what he's doing
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what would you do differently do you
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think
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I I thought Jake Powell was a million
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miles off course two years ago I thought
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he was talking about zero interest rates
00:07:42
until 2024 he was talking about
00:07:44
inflation being transitory it was all on
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a different planet than the one that I
00:07:51
thought I was seeing
00:07:53
starting about a year ago
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he has recognized that the principal
00:07:59
problem is inflation
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that the Fed was way behind the curve
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that he needed to focus on getting
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inflation back to Target and so my
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differences would be small and on
00:08:17
tactics rather than large and
00:08:20
fundamental I think the FED probably
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needs to be investing a bit more in its
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credibility by
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emphasizing that it's prepared to raise
00:08:35
rates again if it doesn't see inflation
00:08:39
uh decline I think the FED should be
00:08:44
recognizing that the
00:08:47
extraordinary size of the U.S budget
00:08:50
deficit and where it is in Prospect is
00:08:53
going to complicate the macro policy
00:08:56
task and should be more willing to call
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that out
00:09:01
than it is I think the FED on matters
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relating to financial regulation should
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be giving more attention to market
00:09:15
prices and the market values of assets
00:09:19
and less to a variety of Book value
00:09:23
regulatory Concepts than it tends to
00:09:26
emphasize but again I think that what we
00:09:31
did in 2021
00:09:33
when the FED when the government
00:09:38
basically infused 2.9 trillion dollars
00:09:42
into a rapidly recovering economy and
00:09:46
when the FED promised it was going to
00:09:48
keep interest rates at zero till uh 2024
00:09:52
and when the FED bought Bonds on a
00:09:57
massive scale that put us way off course
00:10:02
since then we've been working our way on
00:10:05
the monetary policy side back to course
00:10:09
in basically reasonable uh ways but that
00:10:15
doesn't mean you know if you get all the
00:10:18
wrong answers on the first third of the
00:10:20
exam you can do great on the second two
00:10:22
parts the second two thirds of the exam
00:10:24
and you still won't get a very good
00:10:26
grade for the overall experience so it's
00:10:30
a hard problem so my interpretation
00:10:31
would happen in 2021 is in q1 they you
00:10:35
know they passed that two trillion
00:10:36
dollar American Rescue plan that last
00:10:39
coveted relief bill you absolutely
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nailed it by warning that this could set
00:10:43
off inflation and the politics of that
00:10:46
was that the administration everyone who
00:10:47
wanted the bill basically said oh no
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Larry doesn't know what he's talking
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about they sort of pooh-pooed your
00:10:52
warnings and then sure enough the
00:10:55
inflation came that summer and that's
00:10:57
when they they almost I think for
00:10:58
political reasons have to say was
00:11:00
transitory because they didn't want to
00:11:01
admit that you had been right and they
00:11:03
had been wrong three months before and
00:11:05
as a result of that the FED waited
00:11:07
another nine months to start raising
00:11:09
interest rates and so everything got
00:11:11
delayed they should have reacted back in
00:11:13
the summer of 2021. I know that's my
00:11:15
interpretation you know in terms of how
00:11:19
they behave to Sax's Point are they
00:11:21
thinking about
00:11:22
the politics and the current
00:11:24
Administration I or are they acting
00:11:27
independently like they're supposed to
00:11:30
first of all I don't I think I'm
00:11:33
I'm a spectator and commentator not uh
00:11:37
not the dominant uh actor by uh any
00:11:41
stretch I I I'll leave it to others to
00:11:44
speculate about everybody's motives it's
00:11:47
it's not only people in political
00:11:50
situations
00:11:51
who when they develop a strong View
00:11:55
change it only slowly in response to
00:11:59
evidence
00:12:00
I'm basically someone who mostly goes to
00:12:03
Washington and explains when I'm in
00:12:06
Washington that there are limits to our
00:12:09
knowledge and limits to our competence
00:12:11
and so it's often true that the best
00:12:14
thing we can do is get out of the way so
00:12:17
I I believe that
00:12:19
but I also think that it's a mistake
00:12:23
to think whenever anybody makes a
00:12:26
judgment that doesn't turn out right in
00:12:28
Washington
00:12:30
that it's because they had some bad
00:12:32
political motive and were playing
00:12:34
politics rather than they were using
00:12:36
their best judgment and they turned out
00:12:39
to be wrong and like human beings in
00:12:42
public environments they changed their
00:12:46
mind slowly in uh the face of evidence
00:12:51
look there's a very broad thing it you
00:12:56
all who work in companies experience it
00:12:58
you experience it in your personal lives
00:13:01
we experience it in our relationships
00:13:04
when something isn't going great
00:13:07
you always have to decide
00:13:10
is it that we need to give it time
00:13:13
persevere with what we think is right
00:13:15
double down and keep going
00:13:19
or do we need to say we got this all
00:13:22
screwed up you need to suddenly change
00:13:24
course and that's a decision we all are
00:13:28
always making and it's not that it's
00:13:31
always the right thing to change course
00:13:33
at the first hint of failure and so I
00:13:37
think a little more I think people
00:13:39
obviously made bad decisions and they
00:13:41
kept making them and they made them too
00:13:42
long and I was on the other side but I
00:13:45
think that it's a mistake really a
00:13:48
serious mistake to go quite so quickly
00:13:52
uh to uh to to to motive and I want to
00:13:58
say one other thing just because it I
00:14:01
was struck by what came before look I I
00:14:03
really
00:14:04
do worry a lot about regulation
00:14:07
but it's important to understand that
00:14:10
the largest part of the good that cops
00:14:13
do
00:14:14
is not that they catch people breaking
00:14:18
into houses or that they pull people
00:14:22
away when they're trying to murder
00:14:23
somebody
00:14:25
the large reason why cops are good is
00:14:29
because everybody knows that they're
00:14:30
cops around and they commit far fewer
00:14:33
crimes than they otherwise would
00:14:36
and therefore evaluating the police only
00:14:41
by the incidents where the police are
00:14:43
actively involved gets a judgment about
00:14:46
crime wrong
00:14:49
and the same thing is true with respect
00:14:53
to regulation and we do need to
00:14:57
recognize that all the things that we
00:15:00
take for granted that make this place a
00:15:03
very different place to do business than
00:15:06
Argentina and a much greater place to do
00:15:10
business than it was a hundred years ago
00:15:13
have to do with
00:15:16
institutions and regulations and so I
00:15:19
think that's a perspective you all need
00:15:23
to keep in mind if there had not been
00:15:26
major regulation
00:15:28
that was regarded as oppressive
00:15:32
totalitarian wrong and anti-market
00:15:36
beginning in the late 1940s
00:15:39
it would be impossible for this
00:15:42
Gathering to exist because the smog in
00:15:45
Los Angeles would be so profoundly
00:15:48
serious
00:15:49
where their excesses was the craziness
00:15:52
of course there was but let's also keep
00:15:55
in mind that you need Frameworks in
00:16:01
which Freedom can flourish let me ask
00:16:03
you a basic question
00:16:06
we had Ray dalio yesterday
00:16:09
um and he was you know going over the
00:16:11
arcs of history and maybe America being
00:16:14
you know past its peak in Decline uh and
00:16:18
I'm curious what you think about the
00:16:21
perhaps existential crisis for America
00:16:23
in terms of our spending Trump added a
00:16:25
trillion to the deficit Biden already
00:16:27
four trillion we've had this debate on
00:16:29
the pod
00:16:30
are we in an existential crisis in terms
00:16:33
of how much we're spending debt to GDP
00:16:36
ratio is that the most acute issue for
00:16:38
America and then what are your thoughts
00:16:40
about America on the global stage versus
00:16:43
other emerging Powers China and India
00:16:47
so there are a lot of parts of that
00:16:48
question yeah
00:16:49
I think
00:16:51
the most important theme
00:16:54
in American history
00:16:56
is resilience
00:17:00
I'm old enough I'm not that old but I'm
00:17:03
old enough I'm old compared to the
00:17:05
people in this room I guess
00:17:07
um but I'm old enough to remember when
00:17:11
Jimmy Carter declared a crisis of the
00:17:13
national spirit
00:17:15
and a pervasive malaise
00:17:19
I'm old enough to remember when the
00:17:21
country was being torn apart
00:17:24
by the Vietnam War
00:17:26
and the president United States couldn't
00:17:28
go speak anywhere in the country pretty
00:17:30
much except on a military base
00:17:34
and where there was gunfire
00:17:37
on college campuses
00:17:40
I'm old enough to remember when I'm not
00:17:44
old enough to remember but I've read
00:17:46
about when Joe McCarthy had the country
00:17:51
uh in his thrall and people on
00:17:56
University campuses were afraid to
00:17:59
express Progressive beliefs
00:18:02
if you read the history
00:18:04
almost everyone advised FDR in 1932
00:18:08
that he needed to use his inaugural
00:18:11
address to declare dictatorial powers
00:18:14
to take the country over
00:18:18
to deal with the depression because
00:18:21
democracy wasn't up to it
00:18:24
Patrick Henry said in 1792
00:18:27
1792. that the spirit of the revolution
00:18:30
had already been lost
00:18:34
and so I think the theme in American
00:18:37
history
00:18:38
is the capacity for self-denying
00:18:41
prophecy
00:18:43
it is the capacity for the Jeremiah's
00:18:47
that generate all this alarm that set in
00:18:51
set in motion the processes which uh
00:18:57
lead uh to renewal
00:19:01
and it won't be that way always they'll
00:19:03
come the end just as there comes that
00:19:06
come the end for everything uh
00:19:09
uh great historically
00:19:12
but I'd rather be playing the hand of
00:19:16
the United States
00:19:19
than the hand that Xi Jinping has played
00:19:23
then the hand that India is playing
00:19:26
certainly then the hand that Societies
00:19:30
in Asia where they're only going to be
00:19:32
half as many people a century from now
00:19:34
are playing
00:19:35
certainly than the societies of Western
00:19:40
uh Europe that doesn't mean that those
00:19:45
of us who are financially minded
00:19:49
don't need to be terribly terribly
00:19:53
concerned
00:19:54
that
00:19:55
the government's finances are not on a
00:20:00
sustainable path and won't be on a
00:20:03
sustainable path until we figure out how
00:20:06
to raise the revenue that a society
00:20:10
facing grave National Security threats
00:20:13
and aging population
00:20:16
and a rising price of medical care and
00:20:19
education relative to flat screen TVs
00:20:23
and houses
00:20:25
needs to finance its government
00:20:29
that doesn't mean that there aren't huge
00:20:34
challenges as well as opportunities
00:20:37
associated with everything that's coming
00:20:40
out of information
00:20:43
uh technology
00:20:46
that doesn't mean that
00:20:49
I'm not
00:20:50
fearful
00:20:52
of so much that's happening
00:20:55
in our educational
00:20:58
uh system and I think that we have in
00:21:04
our educational system
00:21:06
and this is true of our great
00:21:08
universities and it's true of our
00:21:10
unionized elementary schools
00:21:12
we have gone from thinking
00:21:15
that self-esteem
00:21:19
comes from Achievement
00:21:21
sort of thinking that achievement comes
00:21:24
from self-esteem
00:21:27
and that is a
00:21:35
embarrassment
00:21:37
that the grade point average
00:21:40
of the average student at Harvard
00:21:41
University
00:21:43
is above 3.7
00:21:47
that by far the most common grade is a
00:21:52
right and that the big education reform
00:21:55
idea of the moment
00:21:58
is to eliminate standardized tests
00:22:01
that actually measure
00:22:03
what people uh what what people know
00:22:09
and so this kind of moves away
00:22:14
from Traditional Values of Excellence
00:22:21
achievement
00:22:23
the importance
00:22:25
of learning
00:22:29
is something that I think is very much
00:22:33
uh
00:22:35
uh a uh a problem so yeah am I worried
00:22:40
about the national sociology problem
00:22:44
represented by the fact that we used to
00:22:47
be a country 60 years ago where four
00:22:50
percent of men between 25 and 54 were
00:22:53
not working
00:22:54
and now we're a country where 14
00:22:57
are not working at any point in time and
00:23:00
a quarter of them don't work for more
00:23:03
than three months within a two-year
00:23:05
period am I worried about that yeah I
00:23:07
absolutely am am I worried about the
00:23:08
finances am I yes am I worried about uh
00:23:13
our inadequate investment in technology
00:23:17
leadership
00:23:19
am I worried about a kind of broad
00:23:24
constipation
00:23:27
um there's many of you have probably
00:23:29
been to Harvard Square there's a bridge
00:23:32
the bridge goes over the Charles River
00:23:35
it's 362 feet long
00:23:39
it had been around for a hundred years
00:23:42
it needed to be fixed
00:23:45
did need to be fixed
00:23:47
62 months
00:23:50
five years and two months with one lane
00:23:54
of traffic closed in order to renovate a
00:23:59
362-foot bridge
00:24:01
to put that in perspective
00:24:03
patent built a bridge over the Rhine
00:24:07
3000 feet in one day
00:24:11
but
00:24:13
but
00:24:14
they're better things about spending
00:24:16
your life hanging around in a university
00:24:19
and so I wandered over to the classics
00:24:21
Department one day
00:24:23
and I learned that Julius Caesar
00:24:26
Julius Caesar
00:24:28
built his Bridge Over the Rhine three
00:24:32
thousand feet not 300 feet in nine days
00:24:36
and this is what it took us so do we
00:24:39
have huge problems yes
00:24:42
is this the first time we've had huge
00:24:44
problems hell no is there the prospect
00:24:47
that we can solve those problems yes I
00:24:51
think uh there is do I think we all
00:24:54
things considered
00:24:56
have a more solvable set of problems
00:24:59
and a more Dynamic Society for solving
00:25:03
them
00:25:04
yeah I do then uh the other places
00:25:09
and never forget them never forget this
00:25:13
no we always forget it when we make
00:25:16
policy in the relevant area Larry but
00:25:18
but the best
00:25:20
the best test
00:25:22
is we are the place
00:25:25
that people from every part of the world
00:25:28
want to come to
00:25:29
[Music]
00:25:30
um
00:25:34
I want to ask you a question let's just
00:25:36
actually go to that quickly which is you
00:25:38
were the president of Harvard there was
00:25:41
a very let's call it important divisive
00:25:44
foundational case that just went through
00:25:47
the Supreme Court on affirmative action
00:25:49
um you wrote actually a pretty
00:25:51
interesting op-ed about all of this give
00:25:54
us your thoughts about what is working
00:25:55
inside of higher education what you
00:25:58
think about that ruling just Society in
00:26:00
general as a reflection of that
00:26:04
I wish that ruling hadn't happened
00:26:07
I wish that great universities were in a
00:26:10
position to set their course and to
00:26:13
compete with each other and to admit
00:26:15
students as uh they uh saw fit
00:26:22
but I think after that ruling
00:26:25
it is clear what the right theme should
00:26:27
be
00:26:29
and that theme is opportunity
00:26:33
the great strength of our universities
00:26:39
should be that they make it certain
00:26:42
everyone
00:26:44
has an opportunity to succeed and get to
00:26:48
the top no matter where and in what
00:26:51
circumstances that they were born
00:26:55
and I think there's much more
00:26:58
that
00:26:59
our great universities can do and
00:27:03
they're things that are much more
00:27:04
important
00:27:05
than arguing about diversity policies
00:27:09
that could get us there
00:27:11
here are some of them
00:27:14
whatever the right way to think about
00:27:16
this was 40 years ago
00:27:20
the time for legacy admissions is over
00:27:27
problem solved if there are scarce spots
00:27:32
in our great universities
00:27:35
having your father
00:27:37
hire a fantastic coach
00:27:41
to teach you to play a country's Club
00:27:44
sport
00:27:45
at an extraordinary level
00:27:48
should not be a path to admission to our
00:27:52
leading intellectual institutions let's
00:27:56
end athletic recruiting for Aristocrat
00:27:59
for
00:28:01
aristocratic uh Sports
00:28:04
it's really a nice thing it's a nice
00:28:07
thing it's a good thing it has a lot of
00:28:10
good things
00:28:11
for most of the people in this room that
00:28:15
there exists early decision and early
00:28:19
action
00:28:21
but it basically Works to help the
00:28:24
privileged
00:28:26
and it basically prevents the
00:28:28
underprivileged less privileged from
00:28:31
shopping their financial aid authors and
00:28:33
getting the deals they should we would
00:28:36
not permit Goldman Sachs to make
00:28:39
exploding offers to our MBA students
00:28:42
why should great colleges make exploding
00:28:46
offers to
00:28:49
admitted students
00:28:51
you guys it's like the word like I
00:28:54
didn't
00:28:55
I didn't really know until I got
00:28:57
involved with Silicon Valley that scale
00:29:01
was a verb as distinct from a noun I
00:29:04
thought it was something you kind of
00:29:05
stepped on in uh the bathroom
00:29:10
about it
00:29:11
any Institution
00:29:14
almost any
00:29:17
in the society
00:29:19
nearly a tenth as successful as Stanford
00:29:22
or Harvard
00:29:24
would have far more customers today
00:29:27
than it did 50 years ago right obviously
00:29:30
and yet our universities
00:29:32
have not grown
00:29:34
their size of their students on campus
00:29:37
and they have moved only glacially
00:29:43
to use the incredible opportunities that
00:29:47
technology presents
00:29:49
provide education
00:29:51
which and this is what's remarkable
00:29:53
about educational technology if you
00:29:56
think about it
00:29:57
it can be much vaster scale
00:30:02
and at the same time
00:30:05
be much more personalized
00:30:07
you can go at your own pace you can hit
00:30:10
you can hyperlink you can go deeper in
00:30:12
things that you're interested in and so
00:30:14
scale plus personalization creates
00:30:19
incredible possibility
00:30:22
and our great universities have only
00:30:24
scratched uh the surface of what's
00:30:29
possible so there's an immense amount
00:30:31
they can do last question because we're
00:30:33
running out of time I just want to make
00:30:34
sure you touch free speech on campuses
00:30:36
and how it's actually
00:30:38
affecting the rest of society as well
00:30:42
look uh
00:30:44
uh vigorous argument
00:30:47
in which all ideas
00:30:50
can be put forward
00:30:53
and in which no idea
00:30:57
gains its Authority
00:31:00
from who said it
00:31:03
or some fashion
00:31:06
rather than its Merit in open debate
00:31:10
that is the essence of liberal Society
00:31:14
that is the essence of great
00:31:16
Universities at their best
00:31:18
it is the essence of a great University
00:31:21
at its best that when I was president of
00:31:24
Harvard and I was teaching a freshman
00:31:26
seminar some freshmen some some freshman
00:31:29
could come in and read my paper and
00:31:31
explain how those kind of an interesting
00:31:33
paper by President Summers but it was
00:31:35
really pretty completely confused
00:31:39
thing
00:31:40
he wasn't right but it was a fantastic
00:31:44
it was a fantastic
00:31:47
thing and yet so much of what we should
00:31:52
be able to argue about and discuss
00:31:56
is off limits
00:31:59
some of that is the speakers who get
00:32:02
disinvited and that's terrible
00:32:04
but much more of it is a culture
00:32:07
that there are only certain views you're
00:32:10
allowed to have
00:32:12
on
00:32:15
questions about identity that they're
00:32:18
only certain questions you're allowed to
00:32:20
have on questions about markets and
00:32:23
redistribution that there are only
00:32:26
certain views you're allowed to have
00:32:28
about how children should be raised
00:32:31
there shouldn't be any views you're not
00:32:34
allowed to have
00:32:35
[Applause]
00:32:40
freedom
00:32:41
be an app an absolute
00:32:44
but
00:32:45
academic freedom does not mean
00:32:48
freedom from criticism
00:32:51
freedom from debate freedom from
00:32:53
challenge that is what that is the
00:32:55
essence of the most successful human
00:32:58
institutions
00:32:59
and our universities should be modeling
00:33:02
and demonstrating that rather than
00:33:05
leading a charge is it too often seems
00:33:09
they are towards an orgy of mutual
00:33:13
self-regard
00:33:14
respect and care rather than getting
00:33:19
closer to the truth in the most
00:33:22
excellent way ladies and gentlemen
00:33:24
Larry Summers
00:33:28
another standing ovation
00:33:32
and Summers
00:33:35
[Music]
00:33:39
you'll let your winners
00:33:41
[Music]
00:33:47
we open source it to the fans and
00:33:49
they've just gone crazy
00:33:50
[Music]
00:33:56
besties
00:33:59
[Music]
00:34:18
rolling
00:34:26
[Music]
