Summers’ influence was immense, but so were his blind spots. It’s time for economics that values people and the planet over power and prestige.
The era of Larry Summers’ dominance in American economics is over. It’s a good moment to take stock.
Investigations into the possible effects of the fiscal consolidations required under the new European fiscal rules on Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio find that the new governance framework may lead to the pro-cyclical tightening, weaker growth and adverse debt dynamics that characterized earlier phases of EU fiscal governance.
Europe’s revamped fiscal rules promise discipline and stability, but Italy’s numbers tell a different story. Once realistic multipliers and hysteresis are built in, consolidation pushes debt up, growth down, and recessionary pressure outwards across the eurozone, hardly a recipe for sustainability.
In this episode of Economics and Beyond, Rob Johnson and John Fullerton discuss his new book, Regenerative Economics which explores flaws in traditional economic thinking, and the need for a new framework that views the economy as a living system.
A Global History
AI was sold as a tool to broaden the marketplace of ideas. Instead, a handful of platforms now control how truth travels, shaping what we see, starving journalism, and locking new AI rivals out of the data democracy needs to survive.
In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that truth prevails when ideas compete freely. This marketplace of ideas metaphor has shaped our democracy: when ideas circulate and compete, truth wins out.
Venture-backed “tech capital” is reshaping U.S. politics through campaign finance, platform gatekeeping, defense/AI procurement, and policy entrepreneurship. In an interview with Nick French, INET's Research Director Thomas Ferguson discusses these channels of influence, examining their macro-distributional consequences, and outlining guardrails to restore democratic accountability and broadly shared gains.
Nick French
Since 2007, recurring food-price spikes reveal hunger as a problem of market design and underinvestment, not scarcity. With Brazil’s COP30 on the horizon, aligning climate commitments with food systems could cement policy space to manage markets and advance the right to food.
Elon Musk secured shareholder approval for a new stock-based package designed to double his voting power at Tesla, potentially making him the first trillion-dollar employee. As this plan cements Musk’s control it ties vesting to audacious market-cap and production targets and diverts focus from progressive value creation. Musk’s governance, layoffs, and politicization could imperil Tesla’s EV leadership and ambitions in AI and robotics.
Elon Musk is, once again, taking stock
As the government shutdown drags on, official economic data has slowed to a crawl, leaving policymakers, markets, and citizens increasingly reliant on private-sector numbers. That’s a problem.
If the 2008 financial crisis proved anything, it’s that economic stability is not a given but a fragile construct – one that can collapse at warp speed when trust, transparency, and accountability erode.
Reality has a way of reminding us if we forget.
