Larry Summers Says that Reinhart-Rogoff Type Mistakes Are "Distressingly Common" Then Goes on to Prove His Point

Larry Summers weighed in on the famous Reinhart-Rogoff Excel spreadsheet error in a Washington Post column this morning. His first big lesson from the debate is:

"Anyone close to the process of economic research will recognize that data errors like the ones they made are distressingly common."

Summers immediately demonstrates the truth of this assertion as he tries to make a second point about inferring the future based on statistical regularities from the past.

"Trillions of dollars have bee...