The global economy is in serious danger

Tthe Dow Industrial average on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (Justin Lane/EPA)

Reported By Lawrence Summers, The Washington Post, 10/07/15

Lawrence Summers is a professor at and past president of Harvard University. He was treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Obama from 2009 through 2010. His Twitter handle is @LHSummers.

As the world’s financial policymakers convene for their annual meeting Friday in Peru, the dangers facing the global economy are more severe than at any time since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008. The problem of secular stagnation — the inability of the industrial world to grow at satisfactory rates even with very loose monetary policies — is growing worse in the wake of problems in most big emerging markets, starting with China.

This raises the specter of a global vicious cycle in which slow growth in industrial countries hurts emerging markets, thereby slowing Western growth further. Industrialized economies that are barely running above stall speed can ill afford a negative global shock.

Click here to see the whole article by Lawrence Summers in The Washington Post

From The Washington Post