Lawrence Summers & Steve Forbes

Financial policy experts Lawrence Summers and Steve Forbes provide unparalleled insight into the economic trends driving today’s markets.

Larry Summers is an expert on domestic economics and a leading authority on international finance. A distinguished voice on issues and policy, Larry’s commentary is regarded as essential input to crafting economic policy. Having served as Director of the White House Economic Council and the Secretary of the Treasury, Summers has remained for decades a well-respected statesman of the American economy.

Media titan Steve Forbes leads the most successful business news magazine in America. With the economy at the forefront of conversation on a global level, Mr. Forbes offers long-standing insights that capitalism, free markets, and a flat tax are essential to a healthy economy. Throughout his tenure, his keen ability to provide economic insights on the big issues of the day has been trusted by business leaders around the world and regular Americans looking for the answers to their big questions.

Consider Steve Forbes and Larry Summers for a robust program addressing the most pressing economic and political issues of the day.

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Lawrence  Summers headshot

Lawrence Summers

EXCLUSIVE NEW
  • Economic & Financial Thought Leader
  • President, Harvard University (2001-2006)
  • Director, White House National Economic Council (2009-2010)
  • Secretary of the Treasury (1999-2001)

An expert on domestic economics and a leading authority on international finance, Larry Summers is one of the most distinguished voices on the issues and policy impacting the global economy. His frequent commentary is regarded as essential input to crafting economic policy, and he has remained for decades a well respected statesman of the American economy.

Prior to serving in the Obama Administration as Director of the National Economic Council, Dr. Summers was 71st Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration, President of Harvard University, and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank. Dr. Summers’ tenure at the U.S. Treasury coincided with the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history. He is the only Treasury Secretary in the last half century to have left office with the national budget in surplus. During his tenure in the Obama Administration, Larry Summers emerged as a key economic decision-maker and continues to be called upon as the number one resource for the most pressing economic debates of the day. 

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Steve Forbes headshot

Steve Forbes

EXCLUSIVE NEW
  • Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media
  • Expert on Global Economy, Monetary Policy, and Politics
  • Frequent Contributor on FOX and Host, 'What's Ahead' Podcast
  • Bestselling Author of 'Money', 'Reviving America', and 'Inflation'

Steve Forbes is Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, and an internationally respected authority in the worlds of economics, finance, and corporate leadership. With the economy at the forefront of conversation on a global level, Mr. Forbes offers long-standing insights that capitalism, free markets, and a flat tax are essential to a healthy economy. This is a message Mr. Forbes has been delivering as editor of one of the world’s most successful business magazines for decades, and he continues to be one of the most sought-after speakers on this and other economic issues leading the economic debates around the world.

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Biography

Lawrence Summers's Biography

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers is one of America’s leading economists. In addition to serving as 71st Secretary of  the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, Dr. Summers served as Director of the White House National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, as President of Harvard University, and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Dr. Summers’ tenure at the U.S. Treasury coincided with the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history. He is the only Treasury Secretary in the last half century to have left office with the national budget in surplus. Dr. Summers has played a key role in addressing the major financial crisis for the last three decades.

During the 1990s, he was a leader in crafting the U.S. response to international financial crises arising in Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Japan, and Asian emerging markets. As one of President Obama’s chief economic advisors, Dr. Summers’ thinking helped shape the U.S. response to the 2008 financial crisis, to the failure of the automobile industry, and to the pressures on the European monetary system. Upon Summers’ departure from the White House, President Obama said, “I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team.” The Economist recognized his influence when it defined the “Summers Doctrine,” an approach to economic policy during financial crises that fuses a microeconomic “laissez faire” mentality with macroeconomic activism. “Markets should allocate capital, labour and ideas without interference, but sometimes markets go haywire, and must be counteracted forcefully by government.”

Summers’ five years as President of Harvard represented a time of major innovation for the University. He focused on equality of opportunity and removing all financial obligation from students with family incomes below $60,000 a year. He launched a major effort to make Boston, and Cambridge in particular, the global leader in life sciences research, with the formation of major programs for stem cell research and genomics. Perhaps most importantly, he led efforts to renew Harvard College with dramatic increases in study abroad programs, faculty-student contact, and collaboration across the University during his tenure.

Currently, Dr. Summers is the President Emeritus and the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University, where he became a full professor at age 28, one of the youngest in Harvard’s recent history. He directs the University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Summers was the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation’s Alan Waterman Award for scientific achievement and, in 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given to the most outstanding economist under 40 in the United States. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. He has published more than 150 papers in scholarly journals.

Summers chairs the board of the Center for Global Development and serves as vice chair of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and as a board member or advisory board member to a number of other non-profits and public policy organizations. He is a contributor to Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. He is an advisor to businesses and investors and serves on the board of Square, States Title/Doma and SkillSoft Corporation. He also consults with or advises a range of companies in the finance and technology sector, including D. E. Shaw & Co and Citi.

He has co-chaired major international panels ranging from the G20s High Level Independent Panel on Pandemic Preparedness and Response to the Council on Foreign Relations study group on the Transatlantic Relationship to the Center for American Progress’ Commission on Inclusive Prosperity. He launched a Task Force on Fiscal Policy with Mayor Bloomberg and chaired the Commission on Global Health, lauded by the UN Secretary General who noted that it “will bring more than health – it will bring equity, and contribute to a life of dignity for all.”

President Bill Clinton said that Larry Summers “has the rare ability to see the world that is taking shape and the skill to help to bring it into being.” He has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential thinkers by Time, Foreign Policy, Prospect and The Economist magazines among many others. In his speeches, television appearances, newspaper columns and public commentary, he continues to move forward the debate on national and global economic policy.

Steve Forbes's Biography

Steve is Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media.

His new book, which he co-authored with Nathan Lewis and Elizabeth Ames, is entitled Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How To Fix It.

Steve broadcasts a popular webcast called What’s Ahead, where he gives insightful analyses of events as well as engaging the world’s leading newsmakers, politicians and pioneers in business and economics in captivating conversations.

He helped create the highly acclaimed and award-winning documentary In Money We Trust? which was produced under the auspices of Maryland Public Television. The film was inspired by the book he co-wrote, Money. He was executive producer of the new, highly acclaimed documentary Coolidge: Rediscovering an American President. He also recently launched a series on the educational website Izzit.org/Forbes that presents inspirational stories and lessons from history’s greatest innovators—many largely forgotten—whose achievements have shaped modern life.

Steve writes editorials for each issue of Forbes under the heading of Fact and Comment.”

A widely respected economic prognosticator, he is the only writer to have won the highly prestigious "Crystal Owl Award" four times for the accuracy of his economic forecasts.

In 1996 and 2000, Steve campaigned vigorously for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Key to his platform were a flat tax, medical savings accounts, a stable dollar, a new Social System for working Americans, parental choice of schools for their children, term limits and a strong national defense. He continues to energetically promote this agenda.