Welcome to the Wall Street Week newsletter, giving you some investing food for thought from our conversations on Bloomberg Television with some of the best minds on Global Wall Street. I’m David Westin, and this week we include parts of our conversation with special contributor Larry Summers about where the Fed needs to head, with Harvard economist Greg Mankiw about the problem of the deficit, and with former Pentagon No. 2 Michèle Flournoy about the US defense posture. If you’re not yet a subscriber, sign up here for this newsletter and for daily markets analysis from Bloomberg Surveillance.

The wild market fluctuations at the start of the week had people speculating about a big rate cut in September — or even an emergency cut before that. Our special contributor, Larry Summers of Harvard, told us that any “emergency response would be lurching, panicked, overheated and counterproductive on current facts.” Far better, in his opinion, for the Fed to say “they’re watching carefully and they’ll do what’s appropriate.”