As Summers puts it, “The global imbalances have to add up to zero and so, if the US is going to be less the consumer importer of last resort, then other countries are going to need to be in different positions as well.”
Obama’s most important international assignment may turn out to be coaxing the rest of the world into accommodating this reshaping of the US economy.
Chrystia Freeland, FT July 10 2009

It needs to be recognised that in the months ahead there is the real possibility that significant financial institutions will encounter not just liquidity but solvency problems as the economy deteriorates and further writedowns prove necessary.
It is quite possible that we are now at the most dangerous moment since the American financial crisis began last August.
Lawrence Summers, FT, June 29 2008

Government sponsored enterprises
Capital infusions to date fall far short of prospective losses. Without new capital, the financial sector will operate with too much risk and leverage or will put the economy at risk by restricting the flow of credit.
Lawrence Summers, FT March 31, 2008

More than 10m would have negative equity in their homes and more than 2m foreclosures would take place over the next two years.
Lawrence Summers, Financial Times February 24 2008

Why America must have a fiscal stimulus
Lawrence Summers

Mr Palmedo is one of the adherents of what gold people call “Summers-Barsky”, a theory of the relationship between gold and real returns on investment developed by two Harvard professors in 1985.
One of them, Lawrence Summers, went on to become US Treasury secretary, president of Harvard University and, ultimately, an FT columnist.
FT January 2008
Gold

former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers described himself as a “chastened prophet”
– a description that former Chairman of the Fed Paul Volcker also embraced.
Both warned about the risks associated with large US current account deficits several years ago.
Brad Setser May 25, 2007

Wake up to the dangers of a deepening crisis
The odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis.
There is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.
Lawrence Summers, FT November 25 2007

Beware moral hazard fundamentalists
The world has at least as much to fear from a moral hazard fundamentalism
that precludes actions that would enhance confidence and stability
as it does from moral hazard itself.
Lawrence Summers, Financial Times September 24 2007

Over the past 20 years major financial disruptions have taken place roughly every three years
Financial crises differ in detail but, just as there are plot cycles common to literary tragedies, they follow a common arc.
Lawrence Summers, Financial Times August 27 2007

What if we get the other kind of apocalypse? Not the bond-friendly disinflationary kind that drives interest rates down
but the bond wrecking rising inflation and contracting economy–stagflationary–type?
That's what former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers believes.
ITulip 29/3 2007

If consumer spending declines and interest rates fall or appear likely to fall, there is the real possibility that the foreign lending to the US that has financed imports far in excess of exports will start to dry up,
leading to a combination of higher long-term interest rates and a weaker dollar.
Lawrence Summers, FT, March 26 2007

In retrospect, Japanese officials made several important policy errors.
In order to avoid further yen appreciation after the 1987 Louvre agreement, they followed easy monetary and financial policies that gave rise to huge asset price bubbles and expansions in credit that set the stage for the subsequent downturn.
Lawrence Summers, FT February 25 2007

The new year will begin with the greatest divergence for a generation between the general view of global risks as reflected by conventional wisdom and the risks as priced in financial markets.
Lawrence Summers, FT 27/12 2006

The headlines and opinion writers focus on how the US is badly bogged down in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; on an increasingly unstable Middle East and dangerous energy dependence; on nuclear proliferation that has already occurred in North Korea and that is coming in Iran; on the potential weakness of lame-duck political leaders in the US and other major democracies; on record global trade imbalances and rising protectionist pressures; on increased levels of public and private sector borrowing combined with record low saving in the US; on falling home prices and middle class economic insecurity.

At the same time, financial markets are pricing in an expectation of tranquillity as far as the eye can see. Stock prices in the US are at all-time highs. The risk premiums to cover the possibility of default that corporations or developing countries have to pay to borrow money are at or near historic lows. In addition, estimates of the volatility of the stock, bond and foreign exchange markets inferred from the prices of options are near record lows.

Full text

The more persuasive is this “liquidity” story, the more plausible it becomes that the correction is going to be more painful than conventional wisdom believes.
Commenting on Wolfgang Münchau and Lawrence Summers
Martin Wolf, FT 10/1 2007

Reflections on Global Account Imbalances and Emerging Markets Reserve Accumulation
Lawrence H. Summers, March 24, 2006

Harvard president warns on global imbalances
Financial Times 28/1 2006

Larry Summers: The US Current Account Deficit and the Global Economy,
Per Jacobsson Lecture, IMF, October 3 2004