Tom Woods Defends Slaver Nullification on NPR
I am not a legal expert, but I do believe in this appearance on NPR’s “OnPoint,” Tom Woods was debating a law professor who didn’t understand what the ostensible function of a constitution is. That doesn’t mean the guy was wrong, it just means the whole discussion was pointless from the get-go. At one point I actually think the guy suggested that the US Constitution explicitly allowed for the federal government to intervene in matters characterized by adverse selection. (!)
Here are Tom’s reactions. I think halfway through he asked Jeff Tucker to cut his eye.*
*Rocky Balboa reference, can’t find it on YouTube.
David R. Henderson vs. David Frum
I know some of us associated with the Mises Institute like to think we have a monopoly on awesomeness when it comes to principled discussions, but David R. Henderson has been lighting it up over at EconLog. Take a look at this post where he first criticizes David Frum’s “Republicans should have played nice with Obama and worked on the health bill” stance, and then Henderson goes on to say:
Of course, with or without their cooperation on this bill, the Republicans will have trouble, as they have always had, standing for limited government. Think bailouts, torture, nationalizing airport security, surveillance on Americans, supporting two wars of aggression, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the drug war, to name a few. But when I find someone willing to ally on holding back government, I treat him as an ally.
I don’t mean to let you down, kids, but I have to admit that if I had been offered the coveted #3 slot at EconLog (after Bryan Caplan and Andrew Arnold Kling), I don’t think I would have been as saucy as David has been. I probably would have focused on really neutral stuff like capital structure, not wanting to rock the boat.
But then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. David has a regular column at AntiWar.com, and he teaches at…the Naval Postgraduate School.
So the moral is, when you are making your generalizations about how the world works and how you need to conduct yourself to get a good job etc., make sure you are aware of the case of David R. Henderson.
(Disclaimer: David very graciously allows me to publish occasional EconLib articles, so it’s in my interest to brownnose him. Weigh the above praise with that in mind.)
It Takes Time for Things to Sink In, Even in the Geeconosphere
Paul Krugman is a moody bully, lashing out at people who mispronounce his name. (I’m not saying he officially gives that as the reason, but I really do think he starts blowing people up on his blog after they mispronounce his name.) Greg Mankiw, on the other hand, is far more subtle. Ever since it was suggested that the Obama Council of Economic Advisers had bigger guns than Mankiw’s (not in so many words but that was the implication), I can’t help but detect that Mankiw has been launching attacks on the people involved.
In any event, Mankiw doesn’t come right out and say, “Michael Kinsley is right and Krugman is an idiot.” (I explain this debate here.) But what the subtle Mankiw does is (1) give some links to the debate with no comment, and then (2) in a seemingly unrelated post totally expose Krugman’s partisan hypocrisy. Mankiw does it in a very subtle way, as always. Check it out.
I think Krugman must have crossed some sort of line. In the comments sections of Krugman’s blog (and at Mises.org), we have been pointing out for many months (maybe more than a year, even) old Krugman columns from the Bush years that completely contradict his current writings defending the Obama budget deficits and ridiculing anybody who thinks deficits could lead to high interest rates. But I think Mankiw is the first big gun I’ve seen to quote Krugman’s past writings against him.
I don’t believe that it took this long for people to be aware of this juicy material. I think they held their fire, either out of courtesy or because they didn’t want Krugman analyzing their own stuff.
In any event, the gloves are off. Mankiw decided that Krugman’s treatment of Kinsley was too outrageous to be ignored. (And it’s not that Mankiw is a hero; Kinsley had cited Mankiw’s textbook, so that’s why Mankiw jumped in.)
Michael Kinsley Gets Bullied By Krugman, Yglesias Fans
Back in the day, when I actually daydreamed about being on CNN’s Crossfire–this was about the time that I had a crush on Paula Abdul, to give you some perspective here–I always liked Michael Kinsley. I couldn’t stand his political views, but he seemed like he actually believed in what he was saying, and that it would be anathema to him to misrepresent his opponent’s views just to win through a cheap debating ploy.
With that background, you can imagine my anger when I read of Kinsley’s back-and-forth with Paul Krugman regarding inflation. Kinsley wrote this piece wondering how it can be possible that we got through the financial crisis just by printing up a trillion dollars and there won’t be any (price) inflationary consequences. Then Krugman put the dunce cap on Kinsley. Kinsley came back here with the following great paragraphs:
Krugman should stop bullying people with accusations of economic ignorance. I would never pretend to know a tenth of economics Paul knows. But if he means, in calling this distinction a matter of “textbook economics [subtext: you idiot],” that economic textbooks make this distinction, he is wrong. Or at least no such distinction between inflation and hyperinflation is made, despite an extensive discussion of inflation, in the leading economics textbook, by Harvard Professor Gregory Mankiw.
…
I have been waiting for Paul Krugman to tell me how we are going to handle the debt, once we get this recession out of the way. No, really. There’s no economist whose judgment I trust more. (About economics, that is.) I’ve been all for the stimulus and the jobs bill and even, I guess, the sundry bailouts. But don’t we at some point have to start paying the money back? And how are we going to do that? Krugman’s failure (unless I’ve missed it) to give us an answer to that question is one of the things that makes me worry.
But Krugman’s bullying is par for the course. What really drove me over the edge (as I waited in Goodyear so I was primed to be irritable) was reading the comments section in Matt Yglesias’ post. Just skim them. Not only do they claim Kinsley is an idiot for worrying about price inflation, but they also claim (a) Kinsley is a rich white guy and that has something to do with this, and (b) the financial markets aren’t forecasting inflation so it must be a dumb worry.
This is the same group of people who want stricter regulation to rein in the excesses displayed during the housing boom years, remember.
But the thing that’s really aggravating about all this, is that if, say, the dollar crashes in 8 months and we start running 12% annualized CPI growth, it’s not as if Krugman, Yglesias, et al. are going to say, “Gosh, I apologize for trashing Kinsley back in March 2010.” I don’t know what they’ll say, but I imagine it will involve international crackdowns on currency speculators.
Austrian vs. Fed Debate
Yesterday at Campbell Law School in Raleigh, NC I had a friendly debate with Matthew Martin, a senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The topic was, “Did the Fed Avert a Second Great Depression?”
The format was a 15-minute intro by Matt, a 15-minute intro by me, then 5-minute rebuttals by each, and then audience Q&A. Matt was very intellectually honest, and I hope I was too.
Here is the full video, but on my computer I’m having trouble watching it; it’s rather choppy. Let me know in the comments please if you are able to watch it. (Thanks to Mitch Kokai of the John Locke Foundation for recording it.)
Psssst… Come to Nashville in July.
OK kids, let’s keep this to ourselves, but on Friday July 16 Carlos Lara and I are hosting “A Night of Clarity.” It’s going to be in downtown Nashville and will feature talks by Paul Cleveland, Nelson Nash, and Tom Woods. (And of course I will steal the mic at some point.) Oh yes, we will also hear a talk from Robert Wenzel, international man of mystery. [Update: Wenzel has another business commitment and won’t be joining us. We’re lining up a replacement.]
The following day, Carlos, Nelson Nash, and I will hold a workshop on Austrian business cycle theory and the Infinite Banking Concept. Carlos and I are launching our new book at the event.
We are tidying up some loose ends before the registration website goes live. You would not believe how many little things have to fall in place before you can start accepting sign-ups (credit card acceptance on the website, hotel contract, etc.).
In the meantime, if you are interested you can sign up at Carlos’ site to receive advance registration. What this means in practice is that once we are ready to go, we will first email the link to the people who have signed up on this list. Then after 24 hours or so we will go public with the link.
We have a large room, so I don’t think there’s a danger of selling out for the Friday night event. However, the hotel is giving us a block of rooms at a significant discount, so if you know you want to go there is an advantage to signing up for this crack at the registration before the general public sees it.
There is no obligation if you follow the link above and plug in your email. All you are doing is getting on Carlos’ mailing list. In addition to notification for this event and future ones that we will be hosting, Carlos also sends out a financial or economics article about every other week. (Half the time they are reprints of my Mises.org columns.) You can obviously ask to be taken off the list if it annoys you.
Carlos and I are very excited about this event. I spoke at Nelson Nash’s think tank earlier this year and had one of the warmest receptions ever. These two groups–fans of Nash and fans of Rothbard–need to become acquainted. We hope to facilitate the introductions in Nashville in July.
Oh, one last thing: On Friday night I have also reserved the VIP section of Lonnie’s Western Room and Karaoke Bar. We will have our own roped off section where bouncer mercenaries enforce our private property rights. But we are still in full view of the main stage. Come see where I received my training from the Jedi masters in Music City!
Links for Federalist Society Debate on the Federal Reserve
[UPDATE below.]
This post supplements the opening remarks by Robert Murphy in today’s Federalist Society debate, “Did the Federal Reserve avert a second Great Depression?” held at Campbell Law School.
* This video documents my claim that Ben Bernanke has consistently misdiagnosed the state of the economy, both during the housing bubble and then in the aftermath.
* This chart casts extreme doubt on the claim that the Federal Reserve (in combination with TARP) restored lending to small businesses with its aggressive policies. Commercial lending had built to an all-time high until October 2008 (when TARP passed), and then it fell like a stone. Of course, it’s possible that without TARP and the Fed’s rescue of AIG etc., lending would have fallen even faster than it did. But my point is that the data paint the opposite picture from the one offered by the Fed’s defenders. Occam’s Razor supports my interpretation, namely that the Fed actively made the economy worse.
* This essay offers evidence that the Fed caused the housing bubble. If you want more reading on this topic, follow the links in the early part of the essay.
* This article casts doubt on the viability of the Fed’s “exit strategy.”
* Here’s an infomercial for my book on the Great Depression. All your questions answered!
* Finally, in the talk I alluded to the 1920-1921 depression, in which the federal government cut the budget tremendously and in which the Fed hiked rates to record highs. According to the conventional wisdom, this should have been the worst thing in the world for policymakers to do, and should have made the 1920s the most miserable decade in American economic history. But of course, the “Roaring ’20s” were arguably the most prosperous decade in US history. In social science we can’t run controlled experiments, but the contrast between the government’s response to the depression in the early 1920s versus the 1930s is pretty suggestive.
UPDATE: Forgot an important one. Here is the CBO’s March 5 forecast of the White House’s budget request for 2011. You have to use some algebra because they report figures in terms of % of GDP, but just from playing with the bullet points in the cover letter, you can compute that the CBO is saying the interest on the federal debt in 2020 will be $925 billion.
Econogeeks, Rally to Raleigh!
I should have announced this earlier, but Tuesday at noon I will be debating a (current?) Federal Reserve economist on the issue, “Did the Federal Reserve prevent a second Great Depression?” We are doing a coin toss to see who gets which side; I really hope I get the negative.
The event is hosted by the Federalist Society at Campbell Law School in Raleigh, North Carolina. I think they start handing out free sandwiches around 11:30, so you might seriously consider attending.
They tell me they will videotape it. But like I say, free sandwiches, baby.
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