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