Wealth & Money Quote by Lawrence Summers

A throwaway observation from an economist, delivered like a weather report, that quietly smuggles in a worldview: globalization isn’t a theory anymore, it’s the morning paper. Summers points to USA Today - a symbol of mass-market, middlebrow America - and uses it as a cultural seismograph. If even this relentlessly domestic, standardized product is tracking Asian markets daily, then the old story of the U.S. as the self-contained center of gravity has expired.

The intent is partly descriptive, partly disciplinary. He’s telling policymakers and the public that economic sovereignty now has a time zone problem: what happens overnight in Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Seoul shows up at breakfast in Ohio. The subtext is a nudge toward acceptance. Global integration isn’t being debated here; it’s being normalized through routine media habits. The news cycle becomes proof of inevitability, and “inevitability” becomes an argument for the kinds of reforms Summers often favored: liberalized trade, open capital flows, and a workforce adapted to global competition.

Context matters. In the post-Cold War 1990s, “the new global economy” was both triumphal slogan and warning label, especially as Asian markets surged and crises (like the 1997 Asian financial crisis) revealed how quickly contagion travels. Summers’ line captures that tension: global reach as sophistication, global interdependence as vulnerability. The power of the remark is its banality. It frames a massive reordering of economic life as just another daily update, implying that resistance is not only futile but behind the times.