Wednesday assorted links

1. How your junk mail shows if you are rich or poor.

2. My remarks on the humanities at the OECD Singapore meeting.

3. “Ms. Gruenfeld, 53, focused on how power leads people to do stupid things.”

4. Trick or treat for economists (cartoon).

5. Profile of George Scialabba, the private intellectual who never had tenure or anything close to it, well physically he was close to it.

6. A lengthy, analytical Paul Krugman post on what it would take for Abenomics to still work.  If I understand him correctly, he wants to increase fiscal policy so that monetary policy can become potent again, so that fiscal policy can then be consolidated; otherwise it seems difficult for Japan to achieve “escape velocity.”  My view is that with low unemployment there simply isn’t that much more water to be squeezed from the turnip, thus no escape velocity.  Preventing any pending tax hike/spending cut from being a macro problem is a real concern, I say let the Japanese central bank purchase a wider range of assets than is currently the case.