The story coming into the Yellen Fed was that Janet was a monetary dove, that she wasn’t up to the task of pulling back the stimulus, that she was going to keep pushing money into the system until things collapsed, that she was a loose woman who would lead the monetary system to perdition. All very 19th century—and, as it turns out, all wrong.

Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen the market pop (on Friday), drop (on Monday), and pop again (yesterday). Admittedly, there was some news there—the Russian invasion of the Crimea over the weekend—but still, pop/drop/pop seems a bit strange.

I was talking with a reporter the other day who asked me a very reasonable question: “Is there a rational reason for all this activity?” He clearly didn’t think so, and while I certainly saw his point, I took the side of a rational market: given the Russian invasion, it clearly made sense to take risk off the table, and then (in theory) to move back in when it seemed the invasion was over. In the short term, you can make a reasonable case that the market response was rational.

The Ukraine crisis appears to be stalled for now, with Putin—having made his point and essentially occupied the Crimea—deciding to hold there, while the Europeans determine how to proceed. This is probably where we will be for some time, and the markets seem to concur, as they have bounced right back. Move along, nothing to see here.

I don’t necessarily think this story is over, but for the moment, let’s return to a longer-term issue that I discussed on Friday, the U.S. budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office’s projections are below.

Add another to the list of “best since 2008” stats (although a better phrase might be “least worst since 2008”). The federal budget deficit for 2013 should come in around $680 billion, down from about $1.1 trillion in 2012.

As a citizen, I can’t help but applaud the drop. We are moving in the right direction. If we consider the deficit as a percentage of the economy as a whole, the improvement is even more substantial, since, in dollar terms, the economy has grown even as the deficit has shrunk. For 2013, the deficit is about 4.1 percent of the economy, down from more than 10 percent at the peak. In 2014, there’s a good chance it may shrink further, to a level below that of economic growth—which means the debt could actually start to shrink as a percentage of the economy. This is exactly where we need to be headed.

What is most interesting in the news is usually the dog that’s not barking. Economics and finance are pretty much absent from the headlines today. Instead, front-page articles in the major newspapers cover childhood obesity, NSA phone surveillance, the Ukraine, and seed-company data harvesting.

This is a shame, but pretty typical. Usually, the best place to look for what will be important in the future is deeper in the paper. Tomorrow’s front-page stories come from further back, and today they’re focused on taxes.

When Janet Yellen testifies to Congress for the first time as chair of the Federal Reserve, she will have a very unusual second chance to make a first impression.

With regard to the title, I am aware of the rule that says never end a sentence with a preposition. But I stand with no less an authority than Winston Churchill in saying that this is the sort of nonsense rule up with which I shall not put. So there.

I got some interesting feedback the other day from a Commonwealth advisor who was commenting on a piece I’d written about the economic recovery. His point of view is fairly common and can be summarized as follows: “The fact is that the sheer size of government has doubled over the past 10 years.” He made other points, but they hinged on government growth being out of control. A fair point, if true, but before we get too far into it, I thought it would be useful to see how much government actually has grown.

Let’s look at employment first. We can see from the following chart that total government employment is up by 322,000, or 1.5 percent. Over the same time period, the U.S. population—a reasonable comparative metric—is up by 8.2 percent, so government employment has grown much less than population.

I want to be excited about the new federal budget deal, I really do. I get it: it’s big news that we actually have an agreement—for two years even! We can look forward to an absence of catfights, reduced uncertainty, and less of all the good things that go with minimally responsible government.

And yet, I can’t help but feel depressed that such a minimal agreement warrants front-page news in both major national papers. What does this say about our governance? The other thing that worries me is the extensive caveats in those stories—how the deal may well not pass since the conservative Republican elements in the House are dead set against lifting the sequester spending cuts, while many of the more left-leaning Democrats are dead set against the spending limitations and letting extended unemployment benefits expire.

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” — Herbert Stein

I’ve been using this quotation in speeches for years. Like several of Churchill’s, it is so wise in its generality that it just keeps suggesting itself.