Economics
Summers Floats Idea of Sustained Government Stock Purchases
- Industrialized world facing low neutral rates for long period
- Central banks nearing ‘end of the rope’ with current tactics
Larry Summers.
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers floated the idea of continuous purchases of stocks as a potential ingredient in a recipe for the developed world to strengthen economies struggling with subdued growth and inflation.
Among the proposals that deserve “serious reflection” is the purchase of a “wider range of assets on a sustained and continuing basis," Summers said in a lecture at a Bank of Japan conference in Tokyo Friday. "I’m not prepared to make a policy recommendation at this point,” he told reporters later.