Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

Hillary Has a Sense of Humor

(BTW, I only call her “Hillary” because “Clinton” would be ambiguous.)

Glenn Greenwald linked to this State Department press release. This is simply hilarious. I don’t know what would bother me more: (a) the people who wrote this didn’t see why it was funny, or (b) the people who wrote this understood full well that it was funny.

Anyway, for your amusement, the opening paragraphs:

Press Statement
Philip J. Crowley
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs
Washington, DC
December 7, 2010

The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 – May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press.

The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.

Naomi Wolf Says What Guys Can’t

Here is her letter to Interpol (which I assume was an open letter, not something that was leaked):

Dear Interpol:

As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating.

I see that Julian Assange is accused of having consensual sex with two women, in one case using a condom that broke. I understand, from the alleged victims’ complaints to the media, that Assange is also accused of texting and tweeting in the taxi on the way to one of the women’s apartments while on a date, and, disgustingly enough, ‘reading stories about himself online’ in the cab.

Both alleged victims are also upset that he began dating a second woman while still being in a relationship with the first. (Of course, as a feminist, I am also pleased that the alleged victims are using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings. That’s what our brave suffragette foremothers intended!).

Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone – there is an entire fraternity at the University of Texas you need to arrest immediately. I also have firsthand information that John Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, went to a stag party – with strippers! – that his girlfriend wanted him to skip, and that Mark Levinson in Corvallis, Oregon, did not notice that his girlfriend got a really cute new haircut – even though it was THREE INCHES SHORTER.

Terrorists. Go get ’em, Interpol!

Yours gratefully,
Naomi Wolf

Dissect the Fed With Bob Murphy!

The full infomercial is here. We’ve slashed prices yet again; the 8-week class is yours for the low-low price of $145. (Don’t tell Doug French we’re giving the class away; he’d fire us.) Also, make sure you catch this part:

The pool of students who have enrolled in a Mises Academy class has been steadily growing since the first course in the spring of 2010. However, we want to give a helpful nudge to the process and give existing students an incentive to recruit their friends and colleagues to sign up as well.

To that end, we are making a special promotional offer for this inaugural course on the Anatomy of the Fed: If the number of enrolled students breaks the 300 mark, then every student will receive a free hard copy of the textbook for the course, Murray Rothbard’s Mystery of Banking. This offer includes shipping, even for international students. (Note that there are PDF and ePub versions of the book already available for free online.) So to help reach the goal, please spread the word at work, at the gym, and especially on Facebook and Twitter.

Here’s the snazzy looking syllabus. (You may have to use your “magnifying glass” to click on it, depending on your browser.)

Lara-Murphy Report: November’s Interview With Doug French

Some of you may be interested in last issue’s interview with Doug French. You can see that the LMR doesn’t ask the same old questions…

If you want to see more, we put up more samples in the middle of this page.

John Carney: “We’re All Austrians Now”

I have been so busy I haven’t had time to lavish praise on John Carney, who has been doing his part to bring Austrian business cycle theory to the table at CNBC. For example, a few weeks ago he ran this interesting piece. Here’s the intriguing intro:

It’s no accident that Austrian economics is newly popular. It provides the best explanation for the business cycle we just lived through.

But the resurgent popularity of Austrian economics may actually be hampering the ability of the Federal Reserve to reflate the economy with low interest rate policies. Businesses, now aware of the dangers of a low inflation- sparked economic bubble, may simply be refusing to fall for the age-old boom-bust trap.

I’m very sympathetic to Carney’s position. In fact, I had the same intuition when I wrote up a formal model–which relied on entrepreneurs who updated their beliefs according to Bayes’ Law and obeyed rational expectations–where manipulation of interest rates could (a) cause more booms than would otherwise other and (b) lead to more sluggish growth than would otherwise occur.

However, in that model (as well as Carney’s exposition), business people wouldn’t necessarily fall for the bait of lower interest rates. In my model, the idea was that the interest rate gave a signal about the underlying state of the economy, and the Fed’s interventions introduced noise.

I don’t think that is the whole story, but I do think it is closer to the original spirit of the Mises-Hayek exposition, than the Carilli-Dempster attempt to frame ABCT as a prisoner’s dilemma. For one thing, in a genuine prisoner’s dilemma, nobody ever slaps his head and says, “I can’t believe I defected! What was I thinking?!” But in the standard exposition of Austrian business cycle theory, the entrepreneurs do say, “Oh no, there aren’t enough resources to get me through this project. I wish I hadn’t started it.”

I wrote the paper when I was a professor at Hillsdale. I sent it to the RAE, thinking they would surely like an exposition of ABCT that was consistent with rat ex and Bayesian updating. But the referees were fools, which just means they didn’t like my paper.

Here is the latest version of the paper. As I put in a note, I no longer necessarily endorse the first section where I critique Carilli-Dempster. But the rest of the paper is still worthwhile, I think.

Obama Says “Go Ahead, Make My Day”

…in his own way. Check out the understated, rhetorical way that Obama says, “Bring it” to the Republicans. I found it really funny.

The Bernank Steps In It

Jeremy Osell (as well as others on FB and email) kept telling me to watch this. Oh my gosh I can’t believe how badly the Daily Show busted Big Ben. You have to see this. It couldn’t have been better.

Jeff Tucker Interviews Murphy About The Econ Textbook

This is 24 minutes or so, but it moves fast…