Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the Ice House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on Markets leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE and indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE House exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Las Vegas, Nevada is nearly a continental away from Washington DC but as I descended into Harry Reed International Airport yesterday, I was reminded of politics and policy issues, old and new. Working on the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, Bill Clinton took the state's four electoral votes in both of those contests and Joe Biden equaled that feat in 2020, though the booty had risen to six electoral votes in the quarter-century gap. What's also increased dramatically is the population of surrounding Clark County now sitting around 2.3 million with a scarce housing stock to boot. Now it's against that backdrop that we are convening ICE experience, our annual gathering of the mortgage and mortgage technology industries now with renewed urgency and size, given that ICE has consummated its acquisition last September of Black Knight making the end-to-end mortgage ecosystem, something that we can apply our signature problem solving to to reduce friction, cost errors and speed up the process to get people around the country into their largest investment, their home, and one step further to achieve their definition of the American dream.
For a gathering of several thousand of the country's leading mortgage professionals, we try to convene the top experts and thinkers on the economy to help them become smarter about the country around them, especially as we head into an election year. One of them is Secretary Lawrence H. Summers a man I've known since he arrived to work in the Clinton administration from the World Bank in 1993 as then the undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. From there, Larry moved up quickly to become deputy secretary under Bob Rubin and then taking over for Rubin himself as secretary in 1999, working alongside administration officials and legislators like Senator Reed and others to address the financial crises that swept through Mexico, Asia, and Russia in the closing years of the 20th century, all while helping to deliver to the United States three budget surpluses of 69 billion in 1998, 124 billion 1999 and 230 billion in 2000. Feats that haven't been matched since and may never be seen again.
The last the Clinton years seem a world away. Secretary Summers went on to become the 27th president of Harvard University, then served as the eighth director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama before returning to Harvard as the Charles W. Elliott University professor. He's a man who's shown before and since leaving public service, little inhibition about calling balls and strikes when he sees policies heading off track. In a minute we'll ask Secretary Summers to call some of those balls and strikes as he joins us against the backdrop of ICE experience here in Las Vegas. That's all coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Here at the Wynn Las Vegas against the backdrop of ice experience. Our guest today is Larry Summers, the Charles W. Elliott University professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past three decades, secretary Summers has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington DC including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton and director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama. Among his many endeavors since returning to Harvard is his appointment last November to the board of directors for open AI. Larry, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House here at our temporary home Las Vegas, Nevada.
Larry Summers:
Good to be with you.
Josh King:
I guess let's start off with the most basic question you could pose to an eminent economist, something about supply and demand. According to some estimates, America is short around 3.2 million homes, which is about 2.5% of the existing US inventory. Why are we so short on housing and what do we have to do for the American homeowner looking to buy a new home?
Larry Summers:
We're short on housing in part because of regulation and zoning and limits on the ways in which people can build up within our cities. We're short on housing because too often it takes too long to complete all the necessary permitting. We're short on housing because sometimes we're short on construction labor because of policies that are overly restrictive in one way or another, including on immigration. We're short on housing because we've been surprised by the increased housing demand that is coming from the post-covid world where many people want bigger houses. Many people simply want different houses because their lives have changed given what's happened with covid. And we're short on housing because people are locked in because people who might otherwise have sold their houses don't want to sell their 2% mortgage that is giving them a source of very cheap money. And so for all those reasons, we've got a little bit of a disequilibrium situation. I suspect it'll be with us for some time to come, but I hope that we'll see more home building and we'll see more affordability of the American dream.
Josh King:
You hit the nail on the head of what was going to be my next question because I checked on the 30-year fixed rate last night, 6.86%, and I look at my house in Manhattan with my lovely 2.7% mortgage and there ain't any way that I'm going to leave that until we tick down or even refinance. What are the prospects for rates actually coming down and making at least the beginning of people who may be not as long into my mortgage as I am, but people who are in it 5%, they're somehow enticed to begin to flip or refi?
Larry Summers:
I think there are a couple parts of that, Josh. I don't think the fed's going to have room to cut rates a huge amount. I think there was nutty optimism a few months ago when people were looking for six rate cuts in 2024. I think we're now down to excessive optimism from nutty optimism in the current view of three cuts in 2024. I think given the strength of the economy, there's not a lot of room. I think given the magnitude of deficits, given the magnitude of investment pressures that the neutral interest rate is just substantially higher than it was a few years ago.
So I don't think we're headed back short of a major recession to 2.5%, 3% mortgage interest rates. I think there are things, and this is an area where I know your company has been active, there are things we can do to promote better functioning financial markets, which would reduce the spread between mortgages and treasuries. So even if we're not bringing down the federal funds rate or basic treasury rates, we might be able to bring down mortgage rates a bit and that would certainly help a lot of families. But I think we're headed back to a more traditional world of 5%, 6%, 7%, 8% mortgages from the rather unique world that we enjoyed after the financial crisis where rates were much lower.
Josh King:
So I will stick in my home for a while, but talk about things that sort of harken to old school American emotions and feelings over at the National Bureau of Economic Research, you and your colleagues, Judd Kramer, Carl Oscar Schultz, Maureen Bohus have a new working paper entitled The Cost of Money is Part of the Cost of Living, New Evidence of the Consumer Sentiment Anomaly. In it you write, "The economy is booming and everybody knows it except the American people." Why is the Misery Index not really capturing a consumer's misery?
Larry Summers:
Because when we measure inflation, we look at the price of a car, not the monthly payments on a car. We look at the price of a house, not the monthly payment to own a house. And that's not how people think about it. They think of the cost of money and the cost of borrowing as part of the cost of living. If you look at the way they used to compute the CPI, that 18% CPI under President Carter wouldn't have been anything like 18% under current conventions, but it did capture a reality. And so I think that the cost of money is a lot of the explanation for why people are unhappy, and I think that, unfortunately, suggests they may be unhappy for a while because while the cost of money probably isn't going to be rising as it has risen over the last few years, I don't think it's going to be falling real substantially either.
Josh King:
One person who is happy is Carl Oscar Schultz because he gets to co-author a paper with the eminent Larry Summers. He posted a story on X in the Harvard Gazette about the role that he played, he's the class of '24, in writing the paper. Do you see great things ahead for Oscar when he gets his Harvard diploma on May 24th at commencement exercises? And for you, do you still get the same charge out of working with a kid like that as you did in 1983 when you started?
Larry Summers:
Some ways I get more, there's a lot to be worried about in the world today, but I see these kids, kids like Oscar, kids like a friend of his who took 24 AP tests and got fives on all of them. I wouldn't have known there were 24 AP tests. And some of these kids are just extraordinary. They're eager to learn, they soak up knowledge, they move quickly, they're fresh. It gives me a sense of optimism about the world. Not everything's working out well, but I feel really privileged to get to work with some truly extraordinary students.
Josh King:
Talking about optimism, you can probably see from your room, The Sphere in Las Vegas here at the Wynn, your friend Bono and U2 wrapped up their residency a couple of weeks ago. I'm curious if you got to see the show, but even more curious, Larry, on the progress of the three proposals that you and Bono offered against the backdrop of the G20 in New Delhi last year to bring financial action on behalf of the world's poorest people.
Larry Summers:
I didn't get to see this show unfortunately. I've gotten to correspond and talk to Bono a bit, but I missed this show and even more disappointed than my missing it, my children are disappointed that we didn't, as a family, get to go see that show. Frankly, it's been slow-going. A congress that can't even pass basic support for Ukraine when freedom and stopping want and aggression is on the line is not a Congress that's going to be great on debt relief for poor countries or a Congress that's going to be great on supporting international financial institutions. So I think we're in a period when America is still on a holiday from history, but history is not ignoring America. And it is probably the most dangerous moment in my adult lifetime between what's happening in the Middle East, driven by Iran, what's happening in Europe driven by Russia, what's happening in Asia driven by China, and the ways in which our adversaries are connecting with each other.
It is the most dangerous moment in my adult lifetime, and I don't think the American people are getting it and responding adequately, and that is probably what worries me most. There is a ton that people criticize about United States, about all sorts of things we have done and we've certainly made mistakes domestically, we've made mistakes globally, but it's been 78 years since there was a war between major powers. And there has never been, in human history, since there were countries that were major powers, a 78-year period without a war between major powers and that's just something that's been very special. United States can take a lot of credit for that, but are we going to continue making the investments, taking the steps that are necessary to preserve peace and stability? That's what I worry about most.
Josh King:
Had on the podcast recently, a guy who's become my friend, Admiral Jim Stavridis, the former Supreme Ally Commander of NATO. His book 2034 imagines just 10 years from now, what happens when a couple of American destroyers come encounter some Chinese adversaries of the PLA Army Navy and things go nuclear pretty fast. So I want to get to history, not ignoring America in a second. But before we leave Las Vegas, Larry, I want to bring this back to the kitchen table of Mr. And Mrs. American Homeowner. I was talking to our mutual friend Kelly Friendly yesterday, who reminded me about your affinity for financial tools and technology that make life easier to navigate the difficult money decisions that we all face. You were on the board of Square for many years and here at ICE we're trying to make digital what's been analog for a century or more. There are things to be optimistic about and there are things to be pessimistic about. We've already covered them a little bit in our conversation, but where do you think technology is going to bring us?
Larry Summers:
Look, I believe in financial innovation for the sake of people, not for the sake of money, and that's what we need to focus on, whether it's trading stocks and being able to get the stock you bought immediately, whether it's being able to do it without paying a large commission, whether it's being able to borrow money without paying some big fee, whether it's being able to buy a house without all the frictions. A bunch of it is mortgage products and I know you guys are doing great work there. Another bunch of it is the title insurance. Title insurance is, and hear me, the last great American ripoff. The title insurance industry takes in $100 of premiums for every $5 in benefits that it pays out.
That is an affront to the idea of functional capitalism and it's something that technology, innovation, regulatory change should be eliminating and I suspect will succeed in taking that friction out in the next few years. But that's what I'm looking for when it comes to financial innovation, taking frictions out so that people can flourish and do what's best for them, whether it's paying for a college education, getting a home, being safe and insured in their retirements in case they live to 105, whatever it is, better functioning financial markets for people is something that's really very, very important. And it goes back to what I talked about a minute ago because the cost of money is really part of the cost of living as people experience it.
Josh King:
It's early days for you, Larry on the board of Open AI, and you join that body in the middle of a myriad issues facing the company. But on the larger issue of artificial intelligence, we have people like Reed Hoffman saying the power to make positive change in the world is about to get the biggest boost it's ever had. You listen to Google's Sundar Pichai, he proclaims AI more profound than fire or electricity or anything we've done in the past. Where do you fall on that continuum?
Larry Summers:
We don't know, but we know there is vast potential to change everything. This is the ultimate general purpose, technology. Because there's nothing that it can't touch or influence potentially because it has all the power that human thought has and we need to develop this technology. We need to maintain our leadership rather than our adversaries leadership. We need to make sure that it's deployed prudently and safely. As we develop this technology, we need to make sure that the resources are there. This is not just some little gizmo, the potential uses of electricity over time. The potential inputs of chips over time are vast and that's something we're going to have to deal with as a society. So this is going to require immense thought, but I think it is also an immense opportunity for human betterment.
Josh King:
You've served on so many boards in the periods between your government service, I can look to the 10 members of the ICE board, four Men, six Women, which include former public servants like Lauren Hague and Sharon Bowen, who's a former CFTC commissioner, can point to the specialties and niches that each of them bring to our body. When a company appoints Larry Summers to its board, what skills and approaches do you try to bring to the boardroom table?
Larry Summers:
I try to bring the combination of two things. Combination of somebody who's been fortunate enough to have a fair amount of experience in Washington and to understand how government works, how international negotiation works on the one hand. And someone, because I've spent most of my life in the university, who venerates scientific analysis progress iconoclasm of the kind that drives these companies forward through intellectual innovation. And I've always thought that if I have a sweet spot, and I'm not sure I do, it's the ability to operate at the boundary between geekdom and establishment. And to try to explain those two cultures to each other and to bring them together. And when I've been successful on boards and successful in some of my advisory work, perhaps it's because of that kind of ability to bridge the two cultures.
Josh King:
The boundary between geekdom and establishment, and in some ways, Larry things have not changed in the 28 years since you've come into my view because that was sort of the Larry Summers that we all knew of back in the international trips that we took when you were serving as President Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury with working with folks like my friend Cheryl Sandberg and Neil Wolin as your general counsel, Cheryl as your chief of staff. But what did you try to do as you succeeded Bob Rubin and then in a relatively brief period as secretary prepared that department to hand over to Paul O'Neill?
Larry Summers:
Well, I didn't think I was going to hand it over to Paul O'Neill. I was hoping that Al Gore was going to win and the policies that President Clinton had pursued were going to be continued. I took my mission, what was President Clinton's phrase when he ran for president as a reelection-
Josh King:
"Building a bridge to the 21st Century."
Larry Summers:
... candidate in 1996. "Building a bridge to the 21st Century." And so what were the things that I worked on in my time? Clearing the decks of the debt of the poorest countries, assuring that the United States was bringing down its debt so that both developing countries and the United States could go into the 21st century without debt overhangs preparing a financial infrastructure and a regulatory regime that was as modern as the markets. So we restricted when we needed to restrict, but we also allowed transactions that would let people hedge in better ways that would let people find efficiency in better ways, to build a tax system that recognize the realities of the internet and information economy.
For me, it was all about getting to the future in ways that works for people. I'm very proud of what I was able to support President Clinton in doing. Whether it was in the global area where we took an outmoded G7 and replaced it with a forum that included countries from every continent and represented where the real economic power was increasingly shifting towards the large emerging markets with the G20. Whether it was in the domestic arena where we worked on everything from electronic signatures to preventing the new technologies from facilitating financial crime, addressing questions like the dark side of capital mobility, money laundering, tax evasion, regulatory arbitrage. That was what we tried to do. Would we have done some things differently in retrospect, of course, but I am very proud of what I was able to accomplish for all eight years in the Clinton administration working in supporting secretaries Benson and Ruben as they supported President Clinton, and then having the opportunity to support President Clinton myself.
Josh King:
Talking about those electronic signatures, I'll never forget that moment at the Library of Congress when President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, not with a pen on parchment but with an electronic stylus on a pad of some sort back at the time. How do you think, Larry, your early days prepared you for those eight years? You're the son of two noted economists, Robert Summers of UPenn and Anita Summers who started her career in education at my alma mater at Swarthmore College, and then famously founded the Public Policy and Management Department at Wharton. And your uncles were no slouches either. As the eldest among the three summers boys, was there a heightened sense of pressure to pursue the family business?
Larry Summers:
No, my parents just wanted us to do what we wanted to do. Somebody said to my late mother, "You've had the perfect Jewish family," referring to my brothers, a doctor, a lawyer, and then referring to me, someone who went into the family business, but I didn't particularly think I was going to be an economist when I was a kid. I thought I was going to be a mathematician or a physicist. But then I got to MIT and I discovered on the one hand that I was fascinated by public policy. And on the other hand, there were some people who could do mathematics and physics in ways I couldn't dream of doing them. And so I found my way into economics and given the way in which the kinds of analysis that economists do has informed everything, from fighting aids to carbon markets to contain pollution, to modern approaches to finance, to thinking about government budgets. It's been a fascinating stretch to be an economist.
And so I've loved thinking about new economic ideas, I've loved working and negotiating to try to get the ones I think are better into place. And I've loved having the opportunity to teach thousands of students some of what I think are the most important ideas and then seeing the way in which they're able to take them forward.
Josh King:
Talking about some of those negotiations, I was finding myself going back and watching video of President Clinton's speech and Q&A session with the students of Peking University on the trip to Beijing in 1998, which I think you were on. So many things, it seems like a world away. And this week we have news that one of successors Steve Mnuchin is looking at potentially acquiring the TikTok part of ByteDance. And while that is only sort of one little shard of the question of US/Sino relations from a larger aperture, where do you see this relationship, this superpower relationship, potential superpower conflict going in the years ahead?
Larry Summers:
I'm very nervous. I think the US and China are like two guys who don't know each other very well, don't have any real basis for deep compassion for each other, who find themselves in a two ore'd lifeboat, in a turbulent sea, a long way from the shore. It doesn't really matter precisely how they feel about each other unless they find a modus vivendi, a way of cooperating, a way of rowing in sync and unison. They're not going to get to that shore and they're not going to survive.
And that's, I think, the right way to think about the United States and China. And that means that on both sides, there's an obligation of protecting oneself, yes, but also an obligation of reassurance of not appearing provocative, of not engendering suspicion. And I'm worried about the incentives on both sides. I've been very troubled by developments in China over the last few years where increasing economic challenges have led often to increase truculence in the rhetoric towards the United States, towards making all kinds of economic adjustments, but certainly not making any adjustment in the direction of scaling back military spending very much the opposite of increasingly aggressive efforts on the part of the Chinese to interfere in other societies or so it seems.
And I think that's very troubling and I think we need to be strong in responding. At the same time, I think we need to be careful not to project a sense that it is our goal to hold China down, to restrict China, to prevent Chinese society from flourishing. And so it is both to protect and to reassure that it seems to me is the task of crafting a economic strategy towards China.
Josh King:
There's very little protecting and reassuring as we look to our other superpower or former superpower competition. And that's in Russia. Russia has now officially banned you, Larry Summers, from entering the country, which I gather you take from your post on X as a badge of honor, you now join over 2000 people on the sanction list, including ICE's own CEO, Jeff Sprecker. I went back and found a speech that you gave as Deputy Treasury Secretary to the US Russia Business Council at Ellis Island on October 1996, in which you said, reflecting on the meetings that were going on at the time between Vice President Gore and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin, you said, "In my view, there is an excellent chance that we will look back on this period as the point at which Russia consolidated its progress towards stabilization and began serious sustainable growth." Where did Russia go wrong?
Larry Summers:
I suspect that I, like many people at that point underestimated the magnitude of the task because I didn't fully appreciate the burden of a thousand years of Russian imperial traditional history. So I suspect the prospects were not quite as good as I thought that they were. I suspect that President Putin just at a certain point, lost the thread and the thread of a new nation joining the modern world that President Yeltsin and his best moments had pursued. That thread was lost in favor of more traditional, much more hostile to the west Russian threads. I suspect that we may have made some mistakes of not showing enough respect for Russia, which may have encouraged aggressiveness on Russia's part, but certainly relative to the hopes that all of us in the Clinton administration had, what's happened in Russia is a grave disappointment.
Josh King:
Another disappointment, that you might say, is the university that you've spent decades at, beginning in 1993 when you became one of its youngest tenured professors at just 28 years old, back on January 2nd, you posted on X that, I'm going to quote you, "Alan Garber, who is universally liked, admired, and respected is a superb choice as interim president at this complex juncture there will be much to reflect on as Harvard sets its course forward." Now, Larry, this is sort of like asking Bill Belichick to come back in the locker room and tell Coach Jerod Mayo what he should do to turn the Patriots around. But if you were invited into the Harvard Corporation's locker room to make an inspirational pregame speech, what would you tell them?
Larry Summers:
Look, I think Harvard has made incredible contributions to American life, eight presidents, half the current Supreme Court, so many fundamental discoveries, and it's done that by standing for certain values, truth, excellence, opportunity. Truth, excellence, opportunity, and it's lost its way on all three of those values. Instead of truth, we seek a kind of emphasis on feeling and valuation of each other's feeling where we are reluctant to correct one another. Instead of excellence, we celebrate individuality and we value everything to the point where 80% of the grades that are now given are A. And instead of opportunity, we focus on identity and counting members of particular groups and defining diversity, not in terms of being open to all possible ideas, but only in terms of comparisons of our groups with groups in the broader population. And I think if Harvard can find its way back to the fundamental themes of truth through argument, debate, research, evidence, excellence being the best, being the clearest, being the most valuable, and celebrating that and singling that out and striving for it, and yes, even competing to be the best.
And if we can continue what has been a tradition for a century of widening the circle of people who can come, not giving preference to one group over another group, but making sure because it's the best way to be excellent, that we are open to as many people as possible. What I was so proud to do during my time as president was to say that anyone with an income under $60,000, and that'd be like a hundred thousand dollars today, wouldn't have to pay a penny to come from their family to Harvard and send a very important signal. And if we could build on that signal by way expanding Harvard's reach, I think our great universities are too much like the Augusta Golf Club, taking pride in their exclusivity rather than striving to expand their reach. But truth, excellence, opportunity, those need again to be our watchwords.
Josh King:
Truth, excellence, and opportunity, Larry, you might agree that the challenges facing American higher education in those three areas go much deeper and broader than the banks of the Charles River. My son's at the Naval Academy, I heard you say that you were the first president in Harvard's history to attend an ROTC commissioning ceremony. Campuses in our country have a long history of embracing the likes of Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. What is different about today?
Larry Summers:
We're seeing things that are the worst. It's been in nearly 50 years since the period when they were embracing Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara in the antisemitic ideas that are now accepted parts of the discourse on too many campuses. Look, people should be free to argue whatever they want. I certainly have been very, very sharply critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Israel, seems to me, has made egregious errors both in recent years and in recent weeks, but suggesting that it's okay to be for eliminating the Jewish state of Israel that's really beyond the [inaudible 00:42:02]. And I'm not saying that people should be prosecuted for it. After all, the Supreme Court allowed the Nazis to march in Skokie.
But academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism. And it is the obligation of those who lead these communities to condemn in the strongest possible terms, not just words that are blatantly antisemitic, but advocacy, that if taken seriously, even if the intent is not antisemitic, would be profoundly antisemitic in the effect that they have. And I think there has been an abdication of responsibility on the part of very, very many university leaders in that regard, and universities paid a huge price and we lost an enormous amount during the Vietnam period, and I think we're seeing some of the same mistakes being made again.
Josh King:
As we begin to wrap up. Back in 2009, you found yourself as director of the National Economic, counseling 47-year-old Barack Obama who had all of four years in the Senate to prepare him to face one of the worst economic crises in American history. Now we've got our old friend Lael Brainard in that role, counseling 81-year-old Joe Biden, who has 36 years in the Senate and another eight years of vice president as preparation for very different sort of crises that we're facing today. President Biden's achieved a lot, but what got him the first four years and going to get him another four years to finish the job. From an economic policy standpoint, can you teach an old dog new tricks?
Larry Summers:
President Biden has seen an enormous amount and all the themes that are necessary going forward are themes that have been part of his career at various points .we do need fiscal restraint. The United States budget deficit is now out of control and we're going to have to get it back in control. We are going to have to invest more in our national security. The post-war, post Cold War Peace dividend is probably mostly over, and our commitment to our defense industrial base, our commitment to growing the defense budget, that's something that President Biden is going to have to lead our country towards even as he addresses the need for budget problems. I think we're going to need to address the issues of parts of our country that have been left behind and alienated. That's in some ways ultimately what's led to the tragedies of Fentanyl, the tragedies of rising youth, unemployment, youth mental health problems, even suicide, and those issues of standing by young people, those have been themes through Joe Biden's political career.
And we are, I believe, entering into a period after a long period when it probably wasn't true, of extraordinary technical change. Artificial intelligence is part of it. What's happening in biotechnology, CRISPR is part of it. Energy and electricity are getting to be incredibly inexpensive to produce, though not yet to store and transmit, but that's coming and harnessing those technological changes to make life better for people everywhere is going to be a central challenge going forward. Those are issues that have parallels and analogs with what Joe Biden has worked very successfully on for many, many years. And I believe that there's every possibility that he can and will lead the country forward at a critical moment in our history. I suspect that the thing that historians will look back at when they look back at this period, I hope, and I expect though I'm not sure, that it is the genius of America, that it is capable of self-denying prophecy, that it is our capacity to become alarmed, to engage in Jeremiah's of despair about threats internal and external that sets in motion the forces of repair that lead those threats to be contained. And I suspect that our best days as a country are ahead of us.
Josh King:
There's a famous photo I've heard you reference Lunch Atop a Skyscraper from 1932 that shows 11 iron workers enjoying their meal, 850 feet above Manhattan on a steel beam during construction of the RCA building. Larry, they worked hard for day's pay, but could build a good life in the America of a century ago. Mindful of the lessons of the Delphi Oracles, which you invoke many times in your conversations, how do you imagine the economic landscape evolving for their successors in the years ahead?
Larry Summers:
I think that fewer people are going to have to do backbreaking labor. I think more people are going to learn more because with artificial intelligence, we're going to be able to reach people where they're at rather than trying to teach everybody in the same way. And that means that more people are going to be more productive and ultimately that's going to enable them to live lives of greater fulfillment with more leisure and more freedom from worry and fear. And so I am ultimately an optimist about progress, Josh. I think it's a very broad lesson of history that most events are bad and most trends are good, and the news every day is about events. But very importantly, history is shaped by trends. And many of those trends are favorable.
Josh King:
Many of those trends are favorable, talking about the broad issues of history. Larry, I saw some tweets that you sent out at the end of last year reflecting on the passing of Henry Kissinger and Charlie Munger, two fascinating characters with deep connectivity to the New York Stock Exchange, but what drew them together, and I think what is a parallel to you in this conversation that we've had is about the power of being curious. And as long as we keep on learning, keep on pushing these new frontiers, I think there's hope for all of us. And it's a good thought to end on. Thanks so much here at ICE Experience in Las Vegas for spending a few minutes with us inside the ICE House.
Larry Summers:
Thank you for having me.
Josh King:
And that's our conversation for this week. Our guest was former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President Emeritus, Lawrence Summers.
If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show or to hear a guest like Larry Summers, make sure to leave a review. Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Lance Glenn with production assistance, editing and engineering from Ken Abel. Pete Ash is the Director of Programming and Production at ICE. And I'm Josh King, your host, signing off this week from Las Vegas, Nevada. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week from the Library of the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
