Robert Farley notes that rather than drop a bomb on Anwar al-Awlaki, the Obama administration “potentially could have launched an SOF raid in Yemen to grab/kill al-Awlaki.” They did so with Osama bin Laden but when it came to Awlaki “judged that the political cost-benefit analysis of a similar mission to grab al-Awkali was negative, and decided to blow him up instead.” Which is to say that there’s no argument of strict military necessity that required him to be killed.

This returns us, I think, to a disturbing issue raised around the time of bin Laden’s killing. Wouldn’t it have discomfited the U.S. government a great deal had he surrendered? After all, it’s pretty clear that President Obama has no desire to engage in the political and legal controversies that would be posed by the capture of new high-value detainees. Having abandoned his campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the president clearly would prefer for the whole issue of the legal status of detainees to go away. And a “take no prisoners” attitude toward alleged al-Qaeda ringleaders suits that agenda quite well. But you can’t give no quarters orders to soldiers. So it seems more appealing to rely on death from above via aerial drone, regardless of the consequences for due process. That, however, is not only not a question of military necessity, it’s a mighty ugly kind of political motive. Of course it’s hard to prove anything about motive, so maybe that’s not what’s driving what’s going on, but given the administration’s previous handling of detainee politics I have my suspicions.

Robert Samuelson’s column on excessive risk aversion holding back the economy raises a number of interesting points. I think, however, that he develops an unduly psychological view of the problem that leads him to a mistaken policy conclusion that “the call for stimulus can cause consumers and businesses to retrench by focusing their attention on the economy’s weakness.”

A better way to think about this is as a problem of coordinated expectations. Some stuff goes wrong, and people come to believe that growth is likely to be slow. They recognize that many workers and production facilities are idle, and therefore could be hired at low cost. But they also assume that many workers and production facilities will continue to be idle, and therefore that sales will be low even for sound businesses. What’s needed to resolve this isn’t a pep talk, but coordinated policy action. The monetary authority needs to say “we are committed to closing some of the gap in total nominal spending.” That way, if you’ve got cash on hand you’re eager to unload it. Either there will be a large increase in real output, meaning that your investments will be profitable, or else there will be a spurt of inflation and your cash will be devalued. If you’re an optimist by nature, you respond to the new policy commitment by investing in business capacity. If you’re a pessimistic, you just buy consumption goods and services. Either way, the commitment to increase total spending causes total spending to increase. There is then an important question of whether or not the monetary authorities in some sense (legal, political, institutional) need the cooperation of fiscal authorities to make this commitment in a credible way. Perhaps only money-financed government purchases will get the job done. But however you like it, the point is that the role of policymakers isn’t to play psychologist-in-chief it’s too take advantage of the fact that the government is really gigantic and has the ability to create money out of thin air. Those powers, plus a little Rooseveltian resolve, should be able to change expectations around.

You’ve probably heard it said from time to time that we can boost long-term growth by encouraging more investment and less consumption. But what does the investment category of national spending really consist of? Mostly it’s housing, according to Karl Smith:

Smith says this casts doubt on the whole investment = productivity story, because investment is “overwhelmingly housing, then shopping.”

I’d say it’s a reminder that you need to treat government statistical categories with a grain of salt. The “residential investment” category should probably be thought of as a form of consumption. But that means it’s important to ask, when faced with a tax policy concept that’s allegedly pro-growth due to its investment properties, whether it’s not just really a proposal to shift consumption out of some sectors and into housing.