14 Comments

I listened this morning. Summers answers were hesitant, elusive, and marginally unresponsive. He inserts a comment against Trump. It is not a good thing to think can this guy be trusted?

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Larry Summers was one of the architects of the 2008 financial disaster. Brooksley Born tried to sound the alarm about derivatives, but Larry Summers and others silenced her. He is an arrogant man.

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If I can recall correctly, this interview concluded with Summers extolling the virtues of Biden’s economic policies. I was disappointed Moynihan did not inquire further as I’m genuinely curious to understand what they are and what concrete good they have done. I know trillions were borrowed but what else???

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Summers has obviously never really read the Trump republican platform. The centerpeace is ‘fair’ trade. Meaning reciprocal treatment, and tariffs to maintain overall trade balance, and lower taxes to incentivize work and investment. The ending of tax on tip income, expanded child tax credits, low interest mortgage loans for married couples, expanded standard deduction for married workers with children, tuition vouchers for school choice by mid and low income families, and dropping of federal tax on SS income. Harsh and total enforcement of immigration law.

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Larry is the adult in the room as opposed to Niall and Donald who propose pandemonium.

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Interesting, this interview has been nearly scrubbed from theFP.com. Canceled?

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I am somewhat confused, did Larry forget to mention that all the optimism about America always making it through the storm is the same logic used by the Victorian's? The market's one day drop and self-correcting is in itself irrelevant. But he cannot be serious, that a country where we are rapidly approaching a situations where 50% of GDP is going to go to servicing the debt has no issues. If that were not enough, his comment about the FED having the ability to inject liquidity IS WHAT GOT US INTO THIS MESS!

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Well you did a reasoned impression of the economy at this point in time. However, you seem to have forgotten that Mr Summers IS a partisan and his answer to your last query was , as expected, full of foreboding about a future Trump administration and a little measured hope for a future Harris one.

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If Larry Summers is your financial advisor, you are in a world of hurt. He bombed with the get rich schemes Harvard and other Ivy's sold to Russia as the Soviet broke up, was thrown out as President of Harvard and spent the rest of his life trading on the Clinton currency.

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Why does the fed have so much control over our fiscal policy? The Fed is not the be all, end all. But you can bet your bottom dollar rates will go down in September, we have an election coming.

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I listened to Larry and thought who is he talking to? I am 61, been investing since I was in my 20s, so I have a nice nest egg, (though worth less today - not worried), I live in MA and my house is worth twice what I paid for 17 years ago, I am married to a retired police officer with a nice pension and I work for a privately held software company run by a brilliant man who pays me well, so I am not worried. Even if things break down, I've survived on nothing, so I will be fine. But when he describes how wonderful it is to be in America and how financially blessed we are, I can't help but think about the many people around me, including my divorced friend who did gave so much for their children, are not part of the American dream. Companies get richer, investors get richer, but many do not. And though I try to be open minded about the facts, even if they are against my beliefs, I felt Larry had a little, "but Trump". He wanted to make sure you had a little bad taste in your mouth about the future if he is elected president.

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founding

I would agree with Larry Summers that in terms the real economy this doesn’t matter. If you don’t have any money in the stock market you would never know this happened. I think in terms of stock market trading something notable is happening.

We’ve been in a tech bubble for the last decade perhaps. It was popping in 2022. Look at the historical share price of Netflix and Meta. But then ChatGPT came out in November of 2022 and the tech sector was off to the horse races again. I think a massive deflation in the prices of tech stocks could be starting. But it will likely play out over an extended period of time like in 2022 or even 2001. Not a sudden, in a few days crash.

Theres a lot of money to be made right now long-term. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel and the worse it gets the better it gets. If you pick stocks and can dance around the damage.

Also, I think you interviewed the wrong guy. Larry Summer is an economist not a stock market investor / trader. Next time interview Meb Faber, he would be a much better source of information on movements in the stock market. I’ve listened to his podcast for years. Practitioner > Ivory Tower. You guys do this weird thing that is the equivalent of calling the CEO of Ford when your car breaks down vs. calling an experienced mechanic. Aka the car talk guys.

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Aug 6·edited Aug 6

I gotta tell ya... I first encountered Michael Moynihan during Vice's reporting on the Evergreen/Bret Weinstein story. Later I saw him around in other places, and finally had extended exposure to him on The Fifth Column podcast. And when I see that he's been consistently contributing to the Honestly podcast as an interviewer, I couldn't be more pleased to know I was helping to pay his salary. I doubt you're reading this, but just in case you are, keep up the good work Moynihan. Guys like you are becoming more and more important these days, but are also seemingly becoming more and more rare as well unfortunately.

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I struggle to trust the thoughts of a man like Summers, who would have promulgated the same policies hoping for a different result. I'll pass.

When the fed assists the "crack cocaine" of political policy (pump a couple of trillion dollars into the economy) you get a massive amount of money chasing the same, scarce resources. It's academic that massive inflation will follow.

What we really need is a much-much-less influential federal government; they always make bad decisions.

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