Transcript: Larry Summers on Fox News Sunday – Economy, Chrysler
Chris Wallace, Moderator
Larry Summers, Council of Economic Advisors, Obama Administration
WALLACE: And hello again from Fox News in Washington. From the moment he took the oath of office, fixing the economy has been job one for President Obama. Now, as he nears the end of his first 100 days, that seems as big a challenge as ever.
Joining us to discuss where things stand is the president’s top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers.
Mr. Summers, federal regulators met with executives of the nation’s 19 largest banks on Friday to tell them how they did in those government stress tests. I know at this point you can’t reveal the individual results, but overall, what kind of shape is the system in?
SUMMERS: As Secretary Geithner said, the vast majority of the banks in the United States are well capitalized. There’s work that needs to be done. It can be done in many ways — by raising private capital, through exchanges, backstopped by government capital where necessary.
But I think we’re going to be in a good position to provide the support and set the framework in which the banking system can move along the process of recovery.
We’ve got a long way to go, but in just three months we’ve taken a whole set of important steps — mortgage relief for 9 million American homeowners that’s going to enable families who otherwise couldn’t have refinanced their mortgage to refinance their mortgage; substantial program of support for small businesses who have often been the group that bore the brunt of this credit crunch; measures to get the markets going so that you’ve got more of a flow of mortgage credit.
We’ve seen near — extremely high levels of mortgage refinancing, a substantial reduction in credit spreads for consumers. We’ve got a long way to go. There are still serious problems in this economy.
But both with respect to the financial side and, what’s obviously crucially related, with respect to the income side, the measures we’ve taken I think are very strong and offer the prospect of containing a very serious situation.
