Larry Summers, who once chaired President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, criticized the current economic recovery on Thursday evening, telling an audience at Harvard that while the Obama administration helped the country avoid a “depression” in 2009, the pace of economic growth was too slow.
The Harvard Crimson‘s Forrest K. Lewis reports on Summers’s remarks to Harvard’s Institute of Politics:
“We did the right things and we avoided a depression in 2009 and that is hugely important and satisfying,” Summers, who aided the Obama administration’s response to the recession and is a former president of the University, said. “But if you look at economic growth since 2009, it’s slower than the potential of the American economy to grow given population and given technological change.”
Summers was president of Harvard University until resigning in the wake of a controversy over his remarks in a private meeting speculating about women’s aptitude for science. He served in the Clinton administration as Secretary of the Treasury and was recently considered a frontrunner for the leadership of the Federal Reserve Bank before withdrawing his name in the face of stiff opposition from the Democrats’ “progressive” left wing.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.