Don't take economic advice from Larry Summers

Apparently Larry Summers doesn't think Donald Trump will be a positive force towards getting America's economy back on track. According to Summers, when he thinks of a Trump presidency, he is frightened:

It scares me. I don't know of a greater threat to our prosperity. I think policy would be extremely erratic, I think there are great risks to the global economy from the truculence that would manifest. I think there are great risks even going to the government's credit domestically. I think it would put an uncertainty premium the likes of which we haven't seen before into the markets ... I don't think the U.S. government is meant to be run like a questionable real estate deal. And I think his experience and his way of doing things comes out of his past."

Summers was the director of Barack Obama's National Economic Council from January 2009 through the end of 2010. And as we all know, this was a very prosperous time for the U.S. economy.

Under Summers' leadership, the following economic miracles took place:

 The "official" unemployment rate -- which greatly underestimates actual unemployment -- increased from 7.8% to 9.3%.

 The number of "officially" unemployed increased by 2.3 million.

 The cumulative growth in real per capita GDP over two years was just 0.8%.

 The real median household income declined by 3.3%.

And the worst part about Summers' legacy is that the U.S. economy has never recovered from the damage inflicted upon it from the first two years of the Obama administration.

The real median household income is still well below where it sat in 2008, and it is not increasing. The U-6 unemployment rate is still about 10%, and inflation-adjusted GDP growth has flatlined.

If well-respected academic economists knew how to run the U.S. economy, it would be booming nearly eight years later. But it is not.

Henry Kissinger, who almost singlehandedly wrecked U.S. foreign policy, once suggested that Summers "be given a White House post in which he was charged with shooting down or fixing bad ideas." Looks like that notion didn't turn out so well.

Instead, the best advice for Summers is that he should avoid throwing rocks from within that glass economic house he built.

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