Lawrence Summers Quotes
It's important to remember how fortunate we are as a country to have a currency and a bond market that is seen in every way as a source of strength and it's a huge responsibility for us to keep it that way.
Summers, Lawrence H. Press Briefing. The White House, 2009.
Prince de Benévant. Alexander Hamilton had devised a system of bonds to assume the revolutionary war debt, and, despite the objection of many other politicians like Jefferson, assumed a national debt. But the Untied States was growing and Hamilton’s bonds were so well implemented, that even the sophisticated leaders of Europe were openly admitting that U. S. Bonds were excellent investments and Europeans and other foreigners have been buying American debt ever since.
An American soldier volunteered to spy for Russia and East Germany.
This quotation came into play in 2011 when the Tea Party tried to cause the US to default on its debts rather than raise the debt ceiling. Even their unsuccessful attempts caused much loss of confidence for America the world over, violating McKinley’s principle.
This is a remarkable quotation in that it proposed exactly what the United States did in the Nixon administration. We went off the gold standard and backed American money with the wealth and “full faith and credit” of the nation and all its assets. It has been the strongest and most sought after currency in the world despite the fact that it is not backed by gold or silver as earlier American currency was.
Lawrence Henry Summers is an American economist, former Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank (1991–93), senior U.S. Treasury Department official throughout President Clinton's administration (ultimately Treasury Secretary, 1999–2001), and former director of the National Economic Council for President Obama (2009–2010). He is a former president of Harvard University (2001–2006), where he is currently (as of March 2017) a professor and director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
