Larry Summers

Despite his repeated failures of good judgment,

This is somebody who has a lot to offer intellectual life and was a valued teacher by many Harvard students.

Former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers announced today that he will fully step away from the university at the end of the academic year.

Summers has long been known to have been a close associate of Epstein, exchanging frequent correspondence and visiting Epstein's infamous island on several occasions.

The release of Epstein documents last November revealed that the two frequently emailed about women, politics, and projects related to Harvard.

Summers served as president from 2001 to 2006, but still maintained employment as a professor of economics.

While denying any legal wrongdoing, Summers has faced significant criticism from students and faculty alike.

It's too early to know.

And, you know, we've seen a lot that has been threatening to Fed independence, an unprecedented degree of rhetorical attack publicly from the president on the Fed.

involvement of the president in criticism of the Fed over a relatively minor matter, the construction of a building, announcements by the president of various kinds with respect to the composition of the Federal Reserve.

So I don't think there's any question

that we're facing the most severe challenge to Fed independence in the last two generations.

Well, I think that...

I don't know that I want to call it the beginning.

There have been various things that have happened in the past, but I would say it's the gravest, most extensive politicization of the Fed in more than 50 years.

And what we know from experience around the world and from our own historical experience, for example, with Richard Nixon and the then chairman of the Fed, Arthur Burns, is that when

monetary policy is politicized and when it is perceived as politicized, everybody expects higher inflation.

And then that higher expected inflation as wage earners bargain, as price setters set prices, becomes

a self-fulfilling prophecy and you get higher inflation.

And if you want to do something about it, then when everybody's expecting higher inflation and pushing prices way up, if you don't validate that by printing money, you end up getting a recession.