1. Will
Treasury bondholders run our government?
Follow-up questions:
a. Will they run it better than we did?
b. Do they run it already, as if by an invisible hand? I
often ask myself, WWBD? And then I ask whether that’s close to what we’re
doing. For U.S. states, a good first
approximation.
Inspired by Arnold Kling’s Econ Journal Watch essay on the long run fiscal situation.
2. Do
waves and droughts of innovation partly drive short-run fluctuations?
Yglesias,
Delong,
and Smith
all offered commentary.
3. Why did
the stock market collapse occur weeks after the Lehman bankruptcy?
My partial explanation: Anticipated regime worsening, a guess that our politics and institutions were taking a turn for the worse. Someday textual analysis of media chatter during
the Eight Days’ Descent (weekdays, 9/1-9/10) will test whether I was on to
something.