Some of us who cherish little wax dolls of President Summers to stick pins in from time to time have not the honor to possess either doctorates in economics nor MBA’s from the H*rv*rd Victory School , which means that there is some danger of missing the point when we read technical accounts of the man such as Professor Johnson's remarks and then Dr. Posters’s glosses on Prof. Simon on President Summers.

To begin with an area of assured agreement, Dr. Poster finds "President Summer's clear annunciation of his first idea ... unnerving. I read it as a ‘stuff happens then eventually it stops’. " Prof. Simon wrote it up as follows:

1. All crises must end. The "self-equilibrating" nature of the economy will ultimately prevail, although that may take massive one-off government actions. Such a crisis happens only "three or four times" per century, so taking on huge amounts of government debt is fine; implicitly, we will grow out of that debt burden.

Somebody told me at an impressionable age that Mr. Keynes had shown the contrary: an economy can be "in equilibrium" at a level of zero-equals-zero, or at any rate, at a level where anybody who does not possess two or three counties of real estate (or other such concrete and non-monetary assets) would speak of ‘crisis’. Still, His Excellency does confuse the old plot with new-fangle stuff fetched from Chicago when he counts "massive one-off government actions" as part of Ms. Natura Selectrix regaining her balance.

Perhaps H. E. considers that the State automatically spends more in recessions and depressions nowadays, even as my knee jerks when hit with the little hammer of the philosopher? [1] I daresay on that basis it must have been Ms. Selectrix herself who caused Mr. Obama to engage President Summers at precisely this moment. O marvelous consilience of all things! And happy we who live to enjoy it!

The present keyboard admits to being far more interested in Summers-side notions about what is natural (huzzah!) and what, if anything, is to be deplored as ‘artificial’ (boo! hissss!) than in any of His Excellency’s strictly professional ingenuities. Nevertheless, Axiom I here does seem to establish that President Summers is, on balance, a Nature fan. Possibly his chosen Goddess is not 100.0% omnipotent and needs a helping hand every twenty-five years or so, yet in twenty-four years (96%) out of the twenty-five, She can manage well enough. [2]

Dr. Poster worries rather about the practical consequences of equilibrium worship:

I would like to know more about Larry's reference to more investment in key public services [and less in ‘the FIRE sector’]. Is this contained in the budget? Or is there more to come? A second stimulus perhaps? Frankly, I am left wondering if the teabaggers might not be on to something that the Obama plan is simply for government spending to slowly rise and take up the slack that will be left from a dramatic reform of the financial industry.

Myself, I am not sure His Excellency will not be satisfied with simply Whatever Comes Next, assuming it is not too godawful or blatantly unnatural. But confusion sets in at this point, I fear, insofar as a Moynihanoid benign neglect seems to be the plan arrived at during the mad hatters’ recent tea parties also. Perhaps His Excellency must be forever stigmatised in the eyes of mad-as-hell hatters and other teapersons by that flagrant crimson ‘H’ that he used to have to wear on his figurative bosom If they were judicious enough to see past that that the real drift of President Summers’s views is pretty much the same as their own, they would also be judicious enough to be in serious danger of adopting more sensible views themselves. [3]

I have hesitated to criticize President Summers quâ pro mammonologist, and perhaps Dr. Poster ought to join me, if he cannot attribute anything more presentable to him than this:

Part of me wonders if perhaps the O team has been seduced by an idea that we can inflate without inflation. That because of the worldwide economic downturn and the resultant 'flight to safety' to dollar denominated T-bills that we can run the presses without worry of raising interest rates rise to attract buyers. I mean, in these circumstances who is more credit-worthy than Uncle Sam?

President Larry may be an insufferable ratfink, an irregular guy who never met an inequality he did not like [4], but he is assuredly too smart a hate-equality ratfink for "we can inflate without inflation." Let's have some proper respect, please!

Happy days.

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[1] Qu'est-ce que nos principes naturels sinon nos principes accoutumés? Et dans les enfants ceux qu'ils ont reçus de la coutume de leurs pères comme la chasse dans les animaux. Une différente coutume en donnera d'autres principes naturels . Cela se voit par expérience et s'il y en a d'ineffaçables, à la coutume. Il y en a aussi de la coutume contre la nature ineffaçables à la nature et à une seconde coutume. Cela dépend de la disposition.

[2] That grave critical or philosophical mistake merits a pin or three by itself.

[3] An old song! It is familiar from the cadenzas and arpeggios of Senator Moynihan, already mentioned, and from those of B. Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, as well. President Summers is, me judice, that more or less stock figure, the hyperclever defender of what are substantially Stupid Party views.

That is all very well in its way, I suppose, but one cannot help being a little annoyed that President Summers should insist on being a hedge-fund DEMOCRAT, even after allowing for the fact that if he had registered honestly in Massachusetts he might be taken for a talk-show crank. But God knows best.

[4] Inegalitarianism and the Cult of Equilibrium seem to have been joined at the hip when first hatched.