The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated.
Global capital markets pose the same kinds of problems that jet planes do. They are faster, more comfortable, and they get you where you are going better. But the crashes are much more spectacular.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Global capital markets offer great advantages but also carry significant risks that can lead to catastrophic failures.
Lawrence Summers' quote draws an analogy between global capital markets and jet planes, highlighting that while both provide remarkable benefits such as speed and efficiency, they also come with inherent risks. Just as jet crashes can be dramatic and destructive, the failures in capital markets can have far-reaching and severe consequences, reminding us that advancements in technology and finance come with the need for caution and responsibility.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a financial conference, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of managing financial risks.
More from Lawrence Summers
All quotes →It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today.
A good rule of thumb for many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.
Most investors want to do today what they should have done yesterday.
We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises.
The idea that we should be open to all ideas is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.
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Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises”. Here is an article he wrote in 1951, some two years after his magnum opus Human Action appeared, where is lays out his case in a more popular form. The money sentences are “Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too.
It certainly is dangerous that there are only a few clubs left in Europe that can afford to pay millions. At the end of the day however, the spectators decide the rates of pay - by watching the games and consuming the goods and services advertised on sports TV programmes.
Tax breaks and other financial breaks that favor the wealthiest among us do not create greater prosperity for all; they simply siphon off more and more money to those who already have it, and more and more money away from those who do not.