Jon Stewart Rips Larry Summers Over Take On Economy: ‘I Think You’re Misdiagnosing The Sickness’

Published

2 years ago

March 19, 2023

admin

Comedian and political commentator Jon Stewartand former U.S. Treasury SecretaryLarry Summersgot into a heated exchange about the state of the economyduring an episode of Stewart's eponymous show, "The Problem With Jon Stewart."

On Friday, Summers argued that the U.S. government's stimulus measures have resulted in inflation, rising prices and wages.

"What happened to us is we had massive stimulus and an economy that could only produce so much. So we had a huge level of demand, and those huge levels of demand kept pushing up prices and pushing up wages," he explained."But ultimately, it was, you put too much water in the bathtub, you put too much demand into the economy, and you get high and rising prices."

In discussing wages and employment,Summers said, "There are certain sicknesses you can have where there's a drug, and it has side effects, and everybody hates the side effects, and no doctor wants their patient to suffer the side effects. But if you don't address the sickness, you can have a bigger problem down the road."

Stewart, however, fired back, saying,The stock market assets have gone up 150%. CEO pay has gone up 1,500%. Workers wages haven't gone up at all. I think you're misdiagnosing the sickness.

"The most serious problem in the U.S. economy has been the cleavages between those like you and me, who are very fortunate. That's why we need a strategy and strengthening economic labor power. Is it an issue that somebody whose control is over setting interest rates and printing money can do much about?" Summers askedin response.

Read Also:Larry Summers Says Soft Landing 'Looks More Possible': Unemployment Vs. Inflation

Speaking later about economic recovery, Stewart said,This pandemic was the first time the government, in my opinion, did the thing that they're supposed to do in a crisis. When you look at the stimulus payments that went out, you know, 70% of it was being used for rent and food.

And if you look at the recovery in the pandemic versus the recovery from 2008, when you stimulated the economy at the demand level, jobs had plunged in the pandemic and then they shot back up. The recovery in 2009 was painstaking, but the stock market did great. So our fiscal policy and our monetary policy has always been on the side of corporate easing, he added.

"If you talk to African American voters, if you talk to Hispanic voters, talk to voters who don't have college degrees, they regard the country's biggest problem as having to do with inflation," Summers retorted. "So while you may see this as having been tremendously successful, our fellow Americans who don't live as comfortably as you and I do have a lot of questions."

Touching on the topic of corporate profit,Stewart told the former Treasury Secretary,Butwhat you're not addressing is not all of inflation was stimulus. The tools that we have, though, are basically saying to somebody, everyone's paying more for gas and groceries, and that's really hard. So here's what we're going to do:We're going to throw 10 million of them out of work so that we all don't have to share that burden.Why aren't we attacking corporate profit in any way? Because that's been estimated to be 30% of inflation,40% of inflation?

Summers responded by saying that he didn't think that "it's a tenable view that all of a sudden corporations became greedy.

At that point, Stewart cutSummers off, pointing out that there had beenrecordings and reports wherecorporate executives had spokenhighly oftheirincreased profits during earnings calls.

The former Treasury Secretary had earlier said that the Federal Reserve shouldn't be spooked by the recent banking crisis into easing its campaign to contain inflation.

"It would be very unfortunate if, out of solicitude for the banking system, the Fed were to slow down its rate of interest-rate increase beyond what was appropriate given the credit contraction," Summers said during aninterviewwith Bloomberg.

Read Next:Larry Summers Says It Would Be 'Catastrophic' For US To Default On Debt: 'God, I Wish We Could Move Past This'

Photo: Shutterstock

Politics

Man arrested over arson attacks after fire at Sir Keir Starmer’s house

Published

50 mins ago

May 13, 2025

admin

Man arrested over arson attacks after fire at Sir Keir Starmer's house

A 21-year-old man has been arrested over a series of arson attacks, police have said, after a fire at a house owned by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

The suspect was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life, according to the Metropolitan Police.

He remains in custody.

Emergency services were called to fires at the doors of two homes in north London within 24 hours of each other – one just after 1.35am on Monday in Kentish Town and the other on Sunday in Islington. Both properties are linked to Sir Keir.

Detectives were also checking a vehicle fire last Thursday on the same street as the Kentish Town property to see whether it is connected.

Part of the area was cordoned off as police and London Fire Brigade (LFB) investigators examined the scene.

Neighbours described hearing a loud bang and said police officers were looking for a projectile.

The prime minister is understood to still own the home, which was damaged by fire on Monday, but nobody was hurt. Pictures showed scorching at the entrance to the property.

Sir Keir used to live there before he and his family moved into 10 Downing Street after Labour won last year’s general election. It is believed the property is being rented out.

In the early hours of Sunday, firefighters dealt with a small fire at the front door of a house converted into flats in nearby Islington, which is also linked to the prime minister.

In a statement, police said: “As a precaution and due to the property having previous connections with a high-profile public figure, officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command are leading the investigation into this fire.

“Enquiries are ongoing to establish what caused it. All three fires are being treated as suspicious at this time, and enquiries remain ongoing.”

The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “I can only say that the prime minister thanks the emergency services for their work and it is subject to a live investigation. So I can’t comment any further.”

Kemi Badenoch has condemned the suspected arson attacks.

Writing on X, the Conservative leader said: “This is a shocking incident. My thoughts are with the prime minister and his family. No one should face these sorts of threats, let alone people in public service.

“It’s an attack on our democracy and must never be tolerated.”

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick told Sky News on Tuesday: “It’s important that the prime minister and anyone in public life has their family, their homes, protected.

“It is absolutely wrong, disgraceful, for any individual to take the kind of action that we saw against the prime minister’s home.”

UK

Man arrested over arson attacks after fire at Sir Keir Starmer’s house

Published

50 mins ago

May 13, 2025

admin

A 21-year-old man has been arrested over a series of arson attacks, police have said, after a fire at a house owned by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

The suspect was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life, according to the Metropolitan Police.

He remains in custody.

Detectives were also checking a vehicle fire last Thursday on the same street as the Kentish Town property to see whether it is connected.

Part of the area was cordoned off as police and London Fire Brigade (LFB) investigators examined the scene.

Neighbours described hearing a loud bang and said police officers were looking for a projectile.

The prime minister is understood to still own the home, which was damaged by fire on Monday, but nobody was hurt. Pictures showed scorching at the entrance to the property.

Sir Keir used to live there before he and his family moved into 10 Downing Street after Labour won last year’s general election. It is believed the property is being rented out.

In the early hours of Sunday, firefighters dealt with a small fire at the front door of a house converted into flats in nearby Islington, which is also linked to the prime minister.

“Enquiries are ongoing to establish what caused it. All three fires are being treated as suspicious at this time, and enquiries remain ongoing.”

Kemi Badenoch has condemned the suspected arson attacks.

“It’s an attack on our democracy and must never be tolerated.”

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick told Sky News on Tuesday: “It’s important that the prime minister and anyone in public life has their family, their homes, protected.

“It is absolutely wrong, disgraceful, for any individual to take the kind of action that we saw against the prime minister’s home.”

UK

M&S says customers’ personal data taken by hackers

Published

50 mins ago

May 13, 2025

admin

M&S says customers' personal data taken by hackers

Marks & Spencer has revealed customers’ personal data has been taken by hackers after it was hit by a damaging cyber attack.

The retail giant’s chief executive Stuart Machin said the data had been accessed due to the “sophisticated nature of the incident” but stressed that this does not include “usable payment or card details, which we do not hold on our systems”.

There is also no evidence that account passwords have been shared, according to the statement.

M&S did not say how many customers had been affected but in a social media post, Mr Machin said there is “no need for customers to take any action”.

“To give customers extra peace of mind, they will be prompted to reset their password the next time they visit or log on to their M&S account and we have shared information on how to stay safe online,” he said.

M&S had 9.4 million active online customers in the year to 30 March, according to its last full-year results.

A cybersecurity expert told Sky News, however, that the lack of sensitive data being shared “does not mean that customers are not at risk”.

“With simple data such as names, email addresses, and potentially other personal details like addresses or phone numbers, which have been reported as accessed, attackers can use this information to create highly targeted and convincing phishing emails or text messages,” said Tim Grieveson, CSO at ThingsRecon.

“These emails from attackers can appear very legitimate because they use real personal information.”

He added that stolen personal data can be used “as pieces of a puzzle by fraudsters”.

“For example, if an attacker has your name and address, they might combine it with other publicly available information to attempt to open accounts or conduct other fraudulent activities.”

M&S has been struggling for weeks after hackers, reportedly from the Scattered Spider group, attacked their networks.

The British retailer was forced to halt recruitment amid the ongoing attack that became apparent on Easter Monday.

Shelves around the country have been bare and customers are unable to shop online.

Agency staff at some distribution centres were also told to stay at home because of the attack.

Last week, an M&S insider told Sky News it could be “months” before the retailer fully recovers from an ongoing, severe cyber attack – and that the company had no plan for such an incident.

An employee at M&S’s head office, who spoke to Sky News on condition of anonymity, said that last week had been “just pure chaos”.

“We didn’t have any business continuity plan [for this], we didn’t have a cyber attack plan,” the source said.

“In general, it’s lots of stress. People have not been sleeping, people have spent their weekends working, people sleeping in the office – just reactive response.”

The Co-op also faced a similar major incident and was forced to apologise after hackers managed to access the data of a “significant number” of past and current members.

In the same week, luxury department store Harrods also suffered an attempted hack and temporarily restricted internet access across its sites as a precautionary measure.

The National Crime Agency has said it is investigating the attacks individually but is “mindful they may be linked”.