Larry Summers

Is it really this president?

tweeting, saying things that don't turn out to be exactly accurate on a real estate-related loan application as being the end of the world?

That is a sin of which the president has stood accused on many, many occasions, has been found guilty by courts, has engaged in settlements, has paid fines.

And so if somehow

misleading statements on loan applications are disqualifying, I think that that's a brush that should paint very, very broadly.

Look, I don't think we have yet had access to all the facts.

I don't think the president has access to all the facts.

And that's why jumping to any conclusion without any sort of process, without any sort of fact finding, was, I think, completely inappropriate.

So I don't feel in a position to judge the results of lawsuits.

But I can judge the process.

And I have to say, I don't understand quite what Secretary Besant was saying.

The view that previous administrations have had is that the independence of the Fed is in part reflected in statute, that it reports to the Congress that it is not part of the executive branch, what the Supreme Court reports.

recognized when it distinguished the Fed from other agencies with respect to the president's ability to hire and fire.

So in part, it's rooted in law, and in part, it's rooted in tradition.

Secretary Rubin and I, I remember very well, told President Clinton that it was our advice to him that engaging in public debate with the Fed was a fool's game because the Fed wouldn't listen.

And so short term interest rates wouldn't be changed very much.

But the markets would listen as credibility was lost.

and long-term interest rates would rise.

And that's why we have an established tradition, which Secretary Besant has endorsed very recently, of administrations not engaging on the question of monetary policy and how interest rates should be set and at what level they should be set.

But we have an administration that is disregarding the superstructure of norms that has really been what has made our democracy and our economy so strong for decades.