Larry Summers’ most recent column in the FT is not the most vivid op-ed you’ll ever read. When talking to the world of finance, Summers adopts a far more sober tone than when lecturing to academe. Truth is, if you didn’t see that famous byline at the top of the column, you probably wouldn’t get very far into prose like this….

While it would be premature to predict a US recession, there are now strong grounds for predicting that the US economy will slow down very significantly in 2007. Whether in retrospect 2007 will prove to have been a “pause that refreshed” a nearly decade-long expansion like the growth slowdowns in 1986 and 1995 or whether it will see the end of the expansion is not yet clear.

Tough sledding, eh?

Summers’ main argument is that a number of events prophesied by economic naysayers are now coming to fruition: mortgage crises, diminished foreign lending to the U.S., lessened consumer confidence and spending. These and other phenomena could lead to “further downward pressure on investment in plant, equipment, and commercial real estate.”

In other words, a recession.

Not much new there; people have been saying this for weeks if not months.

But Summers’ more original point is the question of how to respond to such a potentiality—and I wonder if, as he writes, he isn’t also talking about events in Cambridge.

Good economic policies operate counter-cyclically, slowing booms and mitigating downturns. It follows that when the dominant risk changes from complacency and overheating to risk aversion and economic slowdown, the orientation of policy must change as well.

Economic policymakers who seek to correct past errors by doing today what they wished they had done yesterday actually compound their errors. They are in their way as dangerous as generals fighting the last war. We do not yet know how much economic conditions will change or whether current concerns will prove transitory. But if recent developments mark a genuine change, let us hope that policymakers look forwards rather than backwards.

In warning of fighting past battles, is he talking about the economy…or is he giving advice to Harvard?

After all, the choice of Drew Faust is generally seen as a response to FAS complaints with Summers, and her leadership style is seen as a 180-degree reversal from his. As Morton and Phyllis Keller write in their history, Making Harvard Modern, the choice of each Harvard president seems to be a reaction to his (now her) predecessor. If that cycle is now coming true again, Harvard needs to be careful not to go too far.

Summers’ FT column may be dryly written…but embedded within that dryness is a dramatic warning to Harvard: Don’t turn your back on what I was doing. Don’t fight the last war.

He’s using the economy as an allegory and the FT as a Trojan horse. Clever man!

Only a few more months till Summers is back at Harvard full-time….