Potpourri
* I deconstruct Brad DeLong’s stimulus accounting.
* My former student Gennady Stolyarov II reviews my Depression book. I don’t think he is accusing me of confusion but I can’t be sure.
* I don’t really see what the big deal is here. The White House has announced that it will formally pledge to commitments that it doesn’t have the authority to make, on the condition that Congress passes legislative targets that everyone already knew Obama supported.
* In a similar vein, it is apparently newsworthy that the White House has announced that it will announce a decision on Afghanistan. Could we bump it an even higher level? What if they had said, “Next week we will announce our deadline for announcing our deadline for announcing our Afghanistan strategy”?
* Some paranoid holiday thoughts: Notice how lately the government has been springing stuff on us during the weekend? If the central bankers of the world have a scheme up their sleeve involving gold and the USD, the long Thanksgiving weekend would be a great time to implement it. (Apparently the dollar tanked during Thanksgiving 2006. Not sure if that’s relevant.)
