Larry Summers and the way forward

As anyone who has paid any attention to my musings here knows, I have been very critical of Obama's choice of Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner as economic advisers. Strangely, though, based on the piece Summers published on Monday in the Financial Times (behind paywall), Summers, now that he has left the Administration, has started giving good advice to the president. He reviles the idea of a budget crisis as our main economic problem, supports a program of public investment to create jobs and develop infrastructure, and warns against a potential "lost decade" like Japan's in the 1990s (which is really 20 years and no end in sight). Timothy Conover and Ian Masters discuss this here (link to audio file); and if you only listen to one segment of Ian Masters' excellent Background Briefing radio program on KPFK-LA (kpfk.org... archives... Sun 1100 and M-Th 500 PM), make it the first segment of this one.

{The third segment, beginning around 2/3 through, on the travesty of what's being done to public higher education in California is also well worth listening to.}