You could almost imagine Larry Summers making the announcement, pinky finger to his lip and affecting his best Dr. Evil impersonation, “We’ll call him…Mini-Stimulus.”

Summers, President Obama’s top economic policy wonk, this week advocated a second, smaller round of stimulus measures in order to sure up the precarious economic recovery. About $200 billion ought to do it, so says Summers. Never mind that this is the same “recovery” Summers could, until very recently, be heard lauding for its strength and resilience. Now, apparently, it needs a bit of help; help that comes, as usual, from involuntary contributions by taxpayers – present and future – and the ongoing, though increasingly worn, kindness of foreign strangers. More debt, in other words…precisely what the nation does not need. But we’ll let Summers do the talking: