EXCERPT:
SUMMERS: “Nothing is inevitable or certain in economics, Chuck. The painful facts, though, is that historically when we’ve had inflation above 4 and we’ve had employment below 4, essentially always, since World War II, that’s been followed by a recession within the next two years. Perhaps we will be fortunate and there will be sufficiently rapid adjustments in commodity prices and other bottlenecks that will make that not happen. Perhaps the fed will be extraordinarily skillful. But I think the — and lucky. But I think the fed has a very, very difficult job. I think we can make a contribution by doing things like the strategic petroleum reserve release that holds down where oil prices would otherwise go. I think this is the time when we need to be looking at tariff reduction, because potentially that could take a percentage point off of the CPI. I think we need to look wherever we can at buying things more inexpensively when the federal government is purchasing. We need to look at immigration flows so as to address this labor shortage.”