I Wish Larry Summers Had a Blog

He would be a good blogger.

The illusion that the companies were doing virtuous work made it impossible to build a political case for serious regulation.

Ah, this is a rich sentence. Because not only is it impossible to seriously regulate them, it's impossible to not unseriously regulate them! This goes back to at least Jack Kemp in Bush Sr.'s HUD who enunciated the vision of home owenership and sought to privatize some public housing projects by selling units to tenants. It could not happen without lender participation. But then witness Congress through the 90s wanting to make credit available all the way down the ladder but doing nothing substantive to effect that. Lay out the vision and a threat. Unserious regulation indeed.

When you stray into the concept of stakeholders, lots of people show up with their stakes. That's the big problem I have with creative capitalism.

Yes - great stuff.

The problem, as so often, is a failure to examine the incentives generated by a proposal.

Creative Capitalism is embarrassing nonsense - quite clearly a retrograde step: a de-differentiation; a reduction in complexity; a reassertion of politics over the economy; a merger of functions which will inevitably serve to limit societal efficiency.

I can see it. But I can't read it in that font size.