Larry Summers Worries The World Is Turning Japanese

Larry Summers Worries The World Is Turning Japanese

Former Treasury Secretary & White House Economic Advisor Larry Summers is interviewed by FOX ... [+] Business' Maria Bartiromo at FOX Studios on May 24, 2017 in New York City. Déjà Vu abounds as Larry Summers warns the U. S, and indeed the global economy, is fast becoming Japanese. Twenty years ago, it was America urging Tokyo to get its economic act together—to "put deflation in the rearview mirror," as then-U. S. Treasury Secretary Summers told me in his office back in early 2000. In my Washington reporting days, I'd interview Summers from time to time. And before he took the top Treasury job in 1999, it was the occasional chat with his predecessor Robert Rubin. Each time, Japan's stagnant growth was a central theme. Oh the irony that it's now the U. S. risking the kind of fallen-down-and-can't-get-up trajectory that has long since became the Japan brand. Fears of a multi-year economic funk appear to be more pervasive than fears of 1970s-like inflation. "What markets are seeming to price in is a return to secular stagnation, or Japanization," Summers said at a London School of Economics event on Wednesday. Summers, now a Harvard University professor, adds that "extremely low