Some Links

Is religion happiness insurance? (VOX) Does Dr. Frey's self-plagiarized work railing against self-plagiarism discredit him?
A counter-cyclical asset?(WSJ)

...recent data show diaper sales are slowing and sales of diaper-rash ointment are rising.

Does Republican tax profligacy in the short run signal support for higher taxes in the long run (or worse - that they care more about their own electability than about the public)? The conservative Tyler Cowen says yes.

candidates are more worried about having to publicly endorse tax increases than they are about the tax increases themselves. If that’s true, it is all the more reason to watch out for our pocketbooks; it means that the candidates are protecting themselves rather than the taxpayers

Cowen dislikes the Keynesian IS-LM model; DeLong does. Big surprise. My two cents: It's easy to toss peanuts and point out flaws in economic models because every model has flaws - flaws that are well-known even  to the people who come up with them. They have flaws precisely because they are models: they are abstractions from the real world. Like George E. P. Box said, "All models are false, but some are useful."