Larry Summers: U.S. budget deficit, European economic woes just a 'fluctuation'

Summers needs to take Explaining Econ 101

By Dana Milbank
WashPost
Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Millions of Americans are out of work, the budget deficit is in the trillions and Europe is flirting with economic collapse.

Fear not, says Larry Summers, the chief economic adviser to President Obama. It is merely a "fluctuation."

Summers delivered this dismissive judgment during a speech Monday morning to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. In a Q&A session afterward, a man in the audience asked about the debt crisis in Europe -- and the former Treasury secretary and Harvard president answered in a most curious way.

"[M]y guess is that most of you, unless prompted, would not mention the move from a G-7 towards the G-20 as one of the most important things that happened last year," Summers said. "But I suspect that when historians look back at this time, after the precise details of this economic fluctuation have been forgotten, the establishment of a global forum that really does embody all the major economies in the world will be remembered as an important aspect of this moment."

(Original here.)