"Global capital markets pose the same kinds of problems that jet planes do. They are faster, more comfortable, and they get you where you are going better. But the crashes are much more spectacular"
About this Quote
Summers’s line flatters globalization with one hand and tightens the seatbelt with the other. By likening global capital markets to jet travel, he grants the obvious: speed, reach, efficiency. Money crosses borders the way aircraft cross oceans, shrinking distance and expanding possibility. The simile is disarmingly consumer-friendly - who wants to go back to propellers? - which is precisely the rhetorical trick. It nudges skeptics to concede the gains before they can plant a flag in nostalgia.
Then comes the bite: “the crashes are much more spectacular.” This isn’t just a warning about volatility; it’s an argument about scale, interdependence, and moral hazard. In a world of tightly linked markets, failure doesn’t stay local. Capital flight, contagion, leveraged bets, and synchronized panic turn what might have been a rough landing into a headline-making disaster. Jets don’t crash more often than smaller planes, but when they do, the consequences are cinematic. Summers is smuggling in a policy claim: modern finance requires modern safety engineering.
The subtext reads as technocratic realism. The choice isn’t “planes or no planes,” “markets or no markets.” It’s regulation, oversight, and crash investigation: better pilots (institutions), sturdier airframes (bank capitalization), air-traffic control (central banks), and rules that anticipate chain reactions. In the era of emerging-market crises and, later, the post-2008 hangover, the metaphor lands because it makes fragility legible. Progress isn’t free; it’s risk management with higher stakes and a larger blast radius.
Then comes the bite: “the crashes are much more spectacular.” This isn’t just a warning about volatility; it’s an argument about scale, interdependence, and moral hazard. In a world of tightly linked markets, failure doesn’t stay local. Capital flight, contagion, leveraged bets, and synchronized panic turn what might have been a rough landing into a headline-making disaster. Jets don’t crash more often than smaller planes, but when they do, the consequences are cinematic. Summers is smuggling in a policy claim: modern finance requires modern safety engineering.
The subtext reads as technocratic realism. The choice isn’t “planes or no planes,” “markets or no markets.” It’s regulation, oversight, and crash investigation: better pilots (institutions), sturdier airframes (bank capitalization), air-traffic control (central banks), and rules that anticipate chain reactions. In the era of emerging-market crises and, later, the post-2008 hangover, the metaphor lands because it makes fragility legible. Progress isn’t free; it’s risk management with higher stakes and a larger blast radius.
Quote Details
| Topic | Investment |
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