Larry Summers: The Future of Market Capitalism

Speaking before being named President Obama's chief economic advisor, Larry Summers delivered a speech at Harvard Business School's Business Summit last October on the future of market capitalism and the challenges facing the next administration.

Summers told his audience that the next presidential administration (the election was still a few weeks away) will face three broad issues, in cooperation with other nations, whose outcome will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the planet:

• The challenge of maintaining stable prosperity and economic growth.
• The challenge of how prosperity is widely and legitimately shared.
• The challenge of building an economic system that works for citizens of all nations.

"That very challenge represents an immense opportunity. Because as the enormous array of people from so many different places in this room attest, in a much smaller world than we have ever had before, there are ... more opportunities to create more prosperity and more better lives for more people than any time in history.