1/N We should applaud @LHSummers recognition of the work neoMarxian economists Bowles, Gintis, Weisskopf, and Schor did on worker power...4 decades ago. Am willing to bet they are not cited in this paper anywhere. See https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v69y1987i4p584-92.html & https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Wasteland-Democratic-Alternative-Economic/dp/0860918238 for proof. https://twitter.com/annastansbury/status/1265411852923789315

2/N We should also applaud @LHSummers acknowledgement of power dimensions in macroeconomics. For decades, this has been 3rd rail, verboten. Careers were killed @Harvard because of this. Especially Sam Bowles. In this regard see https://indefenseofdegrowth.com/book/chapter-8/  & https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265369?seq=1

3/N Now as regards Larry and Anna's claim here https://twitter.com/annastansbury/status/1265411864714006532?s=20 this misses a crucial element of the neoliberal regime, of which @LHSummers was a key advocate/architect for most of his career. The reinvestment rate for US profits in productive capital has SUNK since 1986.

4/N Reinvestment of profits in productive capital is the raison d'être of capitalist growth. @LHSummers likes to tell a Hansenite (Harvard) Secular Stagnation story for the US every so often. The chart in thread 3 above is the heart of that story. But oddly, he won't go there.

5/N Why won't @LHSummers go there? Cuz then u have 2 admit neoliberal regime has been all about Trickle Up. Share repurchases r an upward income redistribution mechanism. This is also the heart of the US inequality story. Profits r paid out rather than reinvested. Growth dies.

6/N If u go there, you have to admit the neoliberal regime is really just Ouroboros Capitalism. The snake has caught its own tail, and is digesting itself. Capitalists have reduced their growth enhancing role by distributing profits rather than reinvesting them.

7/N Funny thing is, I laid this all out nearly 20 years ago. Using Minsky, Keynes in the original, Kalecki, & Godley. Presented it at UMass PERI conference on Financialization. You can read it here: https://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/assets/pdfs/parenteau.2.0.drft.pdf

8/N I am not the only voice in the wilderness. Bill Lazonick has been barking up the Ouroboros tree for decades as well at INET. See https://www.conference-board.org/retrievefile.cfm?filename=The-Financialization-of-the-US-Corporation.pdf&type=subsite There is a reason share repurchases were once illegal.

9/N & not to impugn anyone's integrity here, but suffice to say, in my personal experience, the fattest consulting and speaking fees, of the size the likes of @LHSummers pulls down, do not come from telling the C suite guys & gals the neoliberal emperor has no clothes on ;^}

10/N I am honestly grateful to see a former member of the Committee to Save the World, and a current advisor to the Democratic Party presidential candidate, coming around. Better late than never. But the hour is very late indeed. & a lot of damage was done under his neolib watch.

11/N Now if u r curious about what macroeconomics looks like when power isn't whitewashed out of the analytics, u can start here, but it will cost you more than it cost me in 1993. U got banished to the academic equivalent of Siberia for writing this then https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Capitalism-Competition-Command-Change-dp-0195138651/dp/0195138651/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

12/N Or if you want a less academic treatment of power in macroeconomics, with an application to the early days of Reaganomics, may I suggest you ditch the diluted and bleached Summers version and just go here:

13/N Or if that is still a tad too high brow for you, here is the trade union version, complete with comics, from South End Press. Very '70s wildcat strike vibe for you old schoolers. But you'll have to search far and wide for this: probably an FBI banned book.