“The central irony of the financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending, and too much spending it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending and more spending.”

Larry Summers said that the other day and people marveled at how cogent and spot on that really is.  That figures because Larry was not only the President of Harvard University but also one of the primary spokesmen for financial deregulation.  You have to appreciate it when the professor show up to school us all.  Now for all those who don’t have a Harvard Phd. let me translate for you:  basically what Larry is saying is that when the chips are down, I mean really down– you are penniless.  The hookers are all gone and your scratching around on the floor of the motel room trying to find a few grains of cocaine on the carpet.

your problem is not that your broke, diseased, strung out

your problem is that you need more money, more hookers and definitely more cocaine.  So, ironically, the only thing to do is go back out on the street, hit grandma over the head for her life savings in the form of some deregulated financial product, toot up, bend the hooker over and repeat.

I think that is what Larry Summers is getting at. And, with this kind of laser sharp insight from the former President of Harvard, is it any wonder that there are so many Harvard grads out there in the finance industry?