links for 2009-10-05

• Felix Salmon: The good things about Larry Summers
• Menzie Chinn: The Dollar in Doubt?
• Menzie Chinn: "W" and the Stimulus Package in Perspective
• Jim Hamilton: Not much of a V
• Spencer Ackerman: Sure Hope The Iranians Overthrow That Jew President Of Theirs (And Other Tribal Conundrums)
  YWHW, moonlighting as a subpar Borscht Belt comedian, has given Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Jewish origins, according to the Daily Telegraph's inauguration of a geopolitical psychodrama. We have now determined that identity politics has a dank and silted basement. From here on out, Ahmadinejad can say whatever he likes about the Holocaust or Israel and it'll just be performative and tasteless, not an international outrage. Israel, in the most mindfucky course of events in its history, might be obliged to grand him citizenship. (Knowing Benjamin Netanyahu, he might bulldoze some Palestinian farmer's olive garden to build Ahmadinejad an apartment complex or something.) Ahmadinejad's detractors are now objectively antisemitic. His comment-thread defenders are caught in quite a thorny Hebraic trap of their own -- so diabolical that one wonders if the Jews planned this all along... We, as a people, have a lot of thinking to do. I haven't had so many mixed feelings about a fellow Tribesman since I
• Robert Lucas: The Current Financial Crisis (as of December 9, 2008)
• Matthew Baker and Lisa George: The Role of Television in Household Debt: Evidence from the 1950's
• Dana: Don't Ask, Don't Tell: An Object Lesson
• Plato: Symposium
• Calculated Risk: Comparing Employment Recessions including Revision
• Sebastian Jones: Dick Gephardt's Spectacular Sellout