re: "You should have the government run a substantial deficit (although, as E. Cary Brown of MIT pointed out in the 1950s, it requires truly awesome deficit spending--on the order of deficit spending in World War II--to reverse a Great Depression like the U.S. in the 1930s or a Great Stagnation like Japan today)..." You wrote that over 15 yrs ago. Have you modified your apparent endorsement of Brown? It seems like it's often noted that The New Deal pulled the economy up pretty well by 1937 at which point he screwed up and allowed austerity to prevail, sending the economy back into depression (just like Europe a few years ago). I ask because I still hear this argument.