Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Summers received his PhD in economics from Harvard University, where he became the youngest tenured professor in the university's history. He served as Chief Economist of the World Bank, Deputy and then Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton (where he helped manage the Asian financial crisis, the Russian debt default, and the LTCM bailout), and President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. He returned to government as Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama from 2009 to 2010, where he was a principal architect of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus response to the 2008 financial crisis. Summers is one of the most prominent and prolific economists of his generation, known for his bluntness, intellectual combativeness, and willingness to take controversial positions. He was a strong advocate of financial deregulation in the 1990s — including opposition to the regulation of derivatives — a position he later acknowledged contributed to the 2008 crisis. More recently he revived the concept of "secular stagnation" to describe the structural tendency of developed economies toward insufficient aggregate demand. He has been a prominent critic of excessive monetary accommodation and a vocal commentator on inflation, fiscal policy, and international economics. He is one of the most cited economists and most widely read commentators on economic policy globally.