Today’s links Larry Summers’ inflation scare-talk incinerated climate action: Now can we please stop listening to this ghoul? Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Larry Summers’ inflation scare-talk incinerated climate action (permalink) Economists tell us that the market can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent, but how long can economists remain irrational? Judging from the inflation scare we just lived through, the answer appears to be “longer than you can remain solvent.” Experts of all description are prone to enduring folly in which the failure of some cherished intervention triggers more of that intervention. This is the famed “doing the same thing but expecting different results” and it’s a grand American tradition. Take bloodletting, a therapy that does not work and that only makes things worse, but which nevertheless served as the first recourse for “doctors” for centuries. Patients who worsened after a bloodletting were presumed to be undertreated, so their doctors would bleed them again, and again. Every turn for the worse was evidence of the need for more bleeding. If you grew up in America, you doubtless learned a lot about George Washington – even apocryphal stories about his boyhood, like the cherry-tree incident: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/ You know all about Washington, from his wooden teeth to his military victories. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ballad made Washington’s dream of a life spent “under his own vine and fig-tree” famous: https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/vine-and-fig-tree/ But it’s…Pluralistic: Larry Summers' inflation scare-talk incinerated climate action (20 Nov 2023)