The world’s only superpower faces its share of tough economic and political challenges, but the past seven years should make people more — not less — encouraged about the future.
That’s the message from an unlikely source: Larry Summers, the prominent economist and former U.S. Treasury Secretary who for the past year has been arguing the U.S. is facing a prolonged period of slow economic growth.
Yet Summers made a compelling and passionate defense of America’s progress and its future despite the pessimism found in politics and the media.
“This is not a society that is stuck. It is a society that is uniquely able to be resilient through a constant process of savage self-criticism,” Summers, the former top economic adviser to President Obama, said on Friday at SkyBridge Capital’s SALT Conference.
The comments drew cheers from the hedge fund crowd at the conference.
