Thought question for the day

Should the president of the NBER send out letters of recommendation for specific students to NBER email lists? If so, can I, as an NBER member, do the same?

Both strike me as bad ideas but I received such a letter today.

Addendum: Seems that the NBER actually agrees with me, as I just received the following email:

Please trash the earlier e-mail sent to you re letter of recommendation. It was an e-mail glitch.  Thanks.

I like it when things work out correctly.