Larry Summers Blasts ‘Woke Central Banking,’ Warns of Economic Stagnation and ‘Japanization’

Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers makes remarks during a discussion on low-income developing countries at the annual IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington on April 13, 2016. Mike Theiler/AFP via Getty Images

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who has repeatedly criticized loose central bank policies and has forcefully sounded the alarm on the upside risks of the current bout of inflation, has warned that global financial markets seem to be pricing in slow growth and low real interest rates for the next several years.

“The stimulus that we’ve enacted is 5 to 10 times—depending on how you do the calculation—as large as the fiscal stimulus enacted after the [2008] financial crisis,” Summers said in a Nov. 10 lecture hosted by the London School of Economics (LSE).