Reply to Mason Gaffney:

Reverie?  Heartwarming as it is to think that we are masters of our 
fate or the saviors of others, it seems quite unlikely on colder 
reflection that historians of economics forgoing the discussion of 
the calendar or the AEA abandoning its publication will affect the 
depth or the duration of the recession.  Life goes on -- as does the 
need for its small joys and the pleasures of its minor intellectual pursuits.

Kevin Hoover