More Epiphanies: Lawrence Summers
My mistakes [at Harvard] were of impatience and insufficient coalition-building. And failing to recognize that its best to have a few priorities and simply build goodwill in every other area so as to maximize the chance of success in priority areas. I saw the way confidence returned in Mexico after there was a response to ...
My mistakes [at Harvard] were of impatience and insufficient coalition-building. And failing to recognize that its best to have a few priorities and simply build goodwill in every other area so as to maximize the chance of success in priority areas.
My mistakes [at Harvard] were of impatience and insufficient coalition-building. And failing to recognize that its best to have a few priorities and simply build goodwill in every other area so as to maximize the chance of success in priority areas.
I saw the way confidence returned in Mexico after there was a response to its financial crisis, the way confidence returned in Asia after a sense that there would never be growth in Asia again. I learned that because markets can easily overreact, theres probably no more important responsibility of financial officials than [to seek] to maintain financial stability. And it doesnt just happen on its own.
If you surround yourself with as able people as you can, and you create an environment where they are able to say, think, and debate anything that comes to their minds, including why you are all wrong, you will be able to vastly increase the influence you are able to have.
Fires dont simply burn out on their own without doing staggering amounts of damage. One can avert huge amounts of damage by responding aggressively to a financial crisis. And its the job of government and international institutions to do just that.
If you want to get it right, it is terribly important that you are very much aware of all the downsides of your proposed course of action.
When I was at the World Bank, I visited an area of Brazil where the bank had been very sharply, and rightly, criticized for making a loan that had enabled environmental destruction. [So,] the loan was cancelled. I went to a village and there was a kind of town meeting. The first person said, We used to have a nurse who took care of our children. But since the loan was cancelled, we cant afford that anymore. And the next person said, Our schools are now open only four months a year. And it made me realize not that the environmental destruction was not a problemit was an enormous problembut if you werent paying close attention to what was happening on the ground, it was easy to make mistakes.
Keynes was right about the ultimate power of ideas. The longer I was in Washington, the more I realized than in a real sense we were snakes wriggling in a tunnel as we set policy. A tunnel whose direction had been set by how we had all learned to understand the world years before.
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