I’m almost positive if the CIA gets wind of this youtube Bob could be getting a call in regards to a consulting gig for perfecting a new method of enhanced interrogation techniques.
Look at the suffering Murphy has to go through to bring his fans the best music. He even has to put up with hot women frolicking seductively around him and touching him. We should admire this kind of self-sacrifice.
Tex-
I made this comment on that site, we’ll see if it gets approved by the thought controllers:
Well, we do know that the monetarybase went from $800b to$2,800b during this downturn (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE). After a quiet period, it seems that the base is expanding rapidly once again (perhaps the $85b/month MBS buybacks, in order to allow banks to finance the federal deficit).
What Schiff, Faber et al are finding out is that there is more than just currency debasement needed to spark price inflation. Forgetting for a moment that the Fed continuously tinkers with the formula to calculate inflation (I believe we’re down to basing price inflation on the price of iPads): One reason why we don’t see the type of price inflation, is because the Fed is paying the banks to sit on the newly created money. Also, the US reserve currency status allows it to export a portion of that inflation.
Austrian economics does not predict Y% price inflation after an X% increase in the money supply.
Rothbard explains:
“Mises agreed with the classical “quantity theory” that an increase in the supply of dollars or gold ounces will lead to a fall in its value or “price” (i.e., a rise in the prices of other goods and services); but he enormously refined this crude approach and integrated it with general economic analysis. For one thing, he showed that this movement is scarcely proportional; an increase in the supply of money will tend to lower its value, but how much it does, or even if it does at all, depends on what happens to the marginal utility of money and hence the demand of the public to keep its money in cash balances.”
MMT isn’t winning. Soft communism (social democracy) isn’t winning either, at least if the standard is intellectual, and not guns and violence. Then MMT and social democracy “win.”
Social democracy communism? I don’t want to see the private sector abolished. Capitalism is a wonderful thing when it’s regulated and controlled by a democratic process. Universal healthcare is a must.
If you’re really not Major_Freedom (but your reference to a comment of mine ( “… five languages”) here that Major_Freedom clearly read makes me really wonder… ), merely appealing to me in this over-the-top way is an utterly unsound and poor argument.
In the end, only arguments and evidence matter, not the people who utter them.
Alternatively, if you’re M_F, you’re not doing a very good job, are you? Even your own chums here aren’t fooled.
I can assure you that I’m not MF and people have been making these rash assumptions and I’ve acknowledged that I went overboard with several of my comments.
I apologize for any inconvenience I have caused you and others here on this blog.
I am probably the last person in the world who would mention someone knowing 5 languages, including you, so if someone does mention it, it isn’t me.
Tex Avery:
Yes, social democracy is in fact a soft communism. Social democracy is a system of economic control that overrules the plans of individuals regarding their own property. No property is safe in social democracy, because anyone’s plans for their own property can be overruled by majority vote manifested in a small group of centralized control “representatives.”
The main difference between social democracy and full fledged communism is that whereas the centralized control “representatives” in communism do not require support from 51% of the population, in social democracy they do.
Other than that, if 51% of the population want to nationalize everyone’s houses, or places of business, or land, then there is nothing inherent in social democracy that says “this is not permitted.”
Typically however what happens in most social democratic countries is that the state (and to some extent the population) willingly abstain from manifesting the true nature of social democracy, by willingly practising non-social democracy ethics, such as (some) respect for private property rights, some respect for individual body rights, and so on.
True social democracy is not, thank the stars, practised in most countries that are typically defined as socially democratic.
In every country that the majority is NOT permitted to overrule the individual’s plans regarding their own property to whatever extent, is necessarily, to that extent, not socially democratic, but something closer to individualism/capitalism/republicanism.
Your claim that LK has read enough literature to “know” which system is the best is a hilariously stupid comment to make, even coffee spitting, considering the fact that no amount of reading can educate someone as to know what other individual’s goals and plans are.
Thus, if anyone is really educated, and has really done a lot of reading, these people would likely come to the conclusion that social democracy is something to be avoided, not embraced.
But thanks for exposing yourself as being empty headed who simply believes someone else on faith, rather than thinking for himself and coming to his own conclusions based on actual knowledge.
If you’re really not Major_Freedom (but your reference to a comment of mine ( “… five languages”) here that Major_Freedom clearly read makes me really wonder… )
Marxism is, by definition, totalitarian and genocidal by motive, design, practice, and result.
…
By philosophical design, Marxism in power must always use force to achieve its ends.
…
… socialism and force are synonymous in theory and practice.
…
Marxian Socialism begins and ends with violence and destruction.
…
As a philosophical system, Marxism is the wellspring of Communist mass murder.
Those Marxist regimes responsible for genocide are not abberations from true Marxism, but are, in fact, its fulfillment and living embodiment. They best represent what Marxism is and must be.
Terror is a necessary instrument of the Communist ideal.
…
In other words, the problem with Marxism is Marxism.
“Austrian economics does not predict Y% price inflation after an X% increase”.. etc.
Correct, the Austrian economists do not accept the crude quantity theory of money, but that did not stop plenty of Austrian-inspired pundits from predicting hyperinflation from QE – and failing to see that large base money supply growth does not automatically translate into large broad money growth.
And Murphy just lost his bet on the inflation rate, so no luck there either.
First, as you implied, not all Austrians predicted high inflation by 2013. Mish for one is partial to Austrianism and he predicted low inflation.
Second, those Austrians that did predict high inflation, did not make those predictions using Austrian theory. They made those predictions as speculators, forecasters, etc.
It’s misleading to say “Austrians predicted high inflation.” It’s misleading because it isn’t their Austrianism that lead them to predict that. It would be like saying “most black people predicted stocks will fall, but they rose, so…”. It could be technically correct as it stands, but it is easy to infer from that statement that it was their blackness that lead them to predict that.
It’s far more correct and not misleading to say “Some speculators…who just so happen to be Austrians…predicted high inflation.”
Just like how some Keynesians predicting recession after WW2 were wrong doesn’t imply that Keynesian theory is wrong, but rather that those speculators and forecasters who happen to be Keynesian made forecasting errors.
What Murphy and other Austrians who predicted high inflation did was to under-estimate the future demand for money holding. That’s really all they did wrong. They thought the demand for money would be lower than it ended up being.
Krugman however is inferring from the fact that some Austrians who made wrong predictions that this constitutes a refutation of Austrian theory, when as you point out, it doesn’t.
(2) bank lending is demand constrained as well as governed by the willingness of banks to grant credit – in the current US economy there is still a serious problem of excessive private debt and deleveraging. Neither households nor businesses have a great demand for credit.
And even if there was surge in credit, plants /corporations have unused capacity and carry inventories/stocks to meet increases in demand for products. Corporations set prices and often leave them unchanged even when demand changes. International trade and reserve status of the US dollar allows the US a massive capacity for imports.
Bank lending is not purely demand constrained, because bank lending ADDS to nominal demand.
The more that banks issue credit, the more new fiduciary media that circulates as money can be used for nominal spending.
When a bank issues credit, and it makes forecasts as to future demand, whether it knows it or not, its forecasted demand is composed in part of future bank credit issuance, because credit makes up a substantial portion of the total money supply.
Corporations don’t refuse to change prices forever. If they don’t cut prices, it’s usually because they either don’t want to incur losses on sales (since CGS is more rigid), or they really do expect higher inflation (as they have been conditioned to expect in an economy with a central bank).
I agree that banks are not lending is because they ran out of creditworthy customers, pure and simple. However, they still have the ability to lend any amount of money into existence, but in order to make money, it must be lent to customers who will/can actually pay the interest. So now they sell their crappy mbs portfolio to the Fed (at face value of course!) and use the money to buy uncle Sam’s slightly less crappy bonds. And the rest sits at the Fed, collecting interest. Why lend to risky small businesses, if you can make money at zero risk?
Here’s an example from The Las Vegas Review Journal:
Home prices in Las Vegas jumped 27.1 percent in January, picking up where they left off last year as the inventory of homes available for sale remains tight, the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported today.
Wealth Effect mentality is also prevalent. Here’s Dave Tina, president of the Realtors association:
“Everybody wants pretty,” Tina said. “It could be a $50,000 condo or a $100,000 house. Everyone wants a beautiful floor, granite counters. Why are flippers doing so well? It has new granite and new paint and it’s pretty. The ones that aren’t selling in this market aren’t pretty. They’re dogs.”
I see it in the stock market, commodities market, bond market, producer goods market, and other markets that you seem not to be involved with as you seem to be only looking at consumer prices. How surprising.
Speaking of knowing someone who speaks 5 languages. I was in a Thai restaurant near home and the waiter, with a german accent, spke to us in fluent English. The phone ranf and he spoke what seemed fluent Italian. A man came in and they spoke fluent French. He spoke what I assumed was Thai to the cook when she came out. This is just a few minutes. I asked him. He speaks 11 languages fluently, and another 9 well, and has a smattering of a couple more. He’s learning Finnish. Worked as a simultaneous translator at the UN, and he and his Thai wife own the restaurant. Incredibly impressive.
No wonder you and Krugman wanted to be economists.
Apparently Bob now has his own back-up dancers for Karaoke.
It’s really admirable of Bob, such a harsh critic of Bush and neo-cons, to confirm the existence of weapons of mass destruction.
I’m almost positive if the CIA gets wind of this youtube Bob could be getting a call in regards to a consulting gig for perfecting a new method of enhanced interrogation techniques.
So when does “Bob Murphy Sings The Hits” come out?
Look at the suffering Murphy has to go through to bring his fans the best music. He even has to put up with hot women frolicking seductively around him and touching him. We should admire this kind of self-sacrifice.
Even though I disagree with your philosophy and economics completely, I applaud you for your karaoke skills.
Thanks Tex.
Who’s the broad?
You sound like Frank Reynolds from It’s always sunny in philadelphia
Dr. Murphy, you should make a rebuttal to this humiliating post.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2013/02/remember-this.html
MMT is winning.
Tex-
I made this comment on that site, we’ll see if it gets approved by the thought controllers:
Well, we do know that the monetarybase went from $800b to$2,800b during this downturn (http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE). After a quiet period, it seems that the base is expanding rapidly once again (perhaps the $85b/month MBS buybacks, in order to allow banks to finance the federal deficit).
What Schiff, Faber et al are finding out is that there is more than just currency debasement needed to spark price inflation. Forgetting for a moment that the Fed continuously tinkers with the formula to calculate inflation (I believe we’re down to basing price inflation on the price of iPads): One reason why we don’t see the type of price inflation, is because the Fed is paying the banks to sit on the newly created money. Also, the US reserve currency status allows it to export a portion of that inflation.
Right. If new money never gets spent, then there won’t be price inflation.
Isn’t that called the velocity of money?
More money chasing the same amount of goods.
If the money supply doesn’t change, then prices will go down because the amound of goods will increase relative to the amount of money.
Price deflation is a good thing.
Austrian economics does not predict Y% price inflation after an X% increase in the money supply.
Rothbard explains:
“Mises agreed with the classical “quantity theory” that an increase in the supply of dollars or gold ounces will lead to a fall in its value or “price” (i.e., a rise in the prices of other goods and services); but he enormously refined this crude approach and integrated it with general economic analysis. For one thing, he showed that this movement is scarcely proportional; an increase in the supply of money will tend to lower its value, but how much it does, or even if it does at all, depends on what happens to the marginal utility of money and hence the demand of the public to keep its money in cash balances.”
MMT isn’t winning. Soft communism (social democracy) isn’t winning either, at least if the standard is intellectual, and not guns and violence. Then MMT and social democracy “win.”
Social democracy communism? I don’t want to see the private sector abolished. Capitalism is a wonderful thing when it’s regulated and controlled by a democratic process. Universal healthcare is a must.
“Social democracy communism?”
I said social democracy is SOFT communism.
“I don’t want to see the private sector abolished.”
Yes, parasites tend to not want to destroy the host.
“Capitalism is a wonderful thing when it’s regulated and controlled by a democratic process. Universal healthcare is a must.”
Soft communism. You want the benefits from private production, but not the responsibility.
Most social democracy, soft communist minded people want to extend their childhoods into adulthood.
Krugman: We are Going to Need Death Panels and Higher Taxes
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/02/krugman-we-are-going-to-need-death.html
That’s quite an assertion of you to make. LK knows five languages and has read enough economics literature to decide which system would be best.
Social democracy is not the same thing as the “soft communism” you described or the socialism that you try to brand everyone with a brush.
Tex Avery,
If you’re really not Major_Freedom (but your reference to a comment of mine ( “… five languages”) here that Major_Freedom clearly read makes me really wonder… ), merely appealing to me in this over-the-top way is an utterly unsound and poor argument.
In the end, only arguments and evidence matter, not the people who utter them.
Alternatively, if you’re M_F, you’re not doing a very good job, are you? Even your own chums here aren’t fooled.
I can assure you that I’m not MF and people have been making these rash assumptions and I’ve acknowledged that I went overboard with several of my comments.
I apologize for any inconvenience I have caused you and others here on this blog.
LK:
I am probably the last person in the world who would mention someone knowing 5 languages, including you, so if someone does mention it, it isn’t me.
Tex Avery:
Yes, social democracy is in fact a soft communism. Social democracy is a system of economic control that overrules the plans of individuals regarding their own property. No property is safe in social democracy, because anyone’s plans for their own property can be overruled by majority vote manifested in a small group of centralized control “representatives.”
The main difference between social democracy and full fledged communism is that whereas the centralized control “representatives” in communism do not require support from 51% of the population, in social democracy they do.
Other than that, if 51% of the population want to nationalize everyone’s houses, or places of business, or land, then there is nothing inherent in social democracy that says “this is not permitted.”
Typically however what happens in most social democratic countries is that the state (and to some extent the population) willingly abstain from manifesting the true nature of social democracy, by willingly practising non-social democracy ethics, such as (some) respect for private property rights, some respect for individual body rights, and so on.
True social democracy is not, thank the stars, practised in most countries that are typically defined as socially democratic.
In every country that the majority is NOT permitted to overrule the individual’s plans regarding their own property to whatever extent, is necessarily, to that extent, not socially democratic, but something closer to individualism/capitalism/republicanism.
Your claim that LK has read enough literature to “know” which system is the best is a hilariously stupid comment to make, even coffee spitting, considering the fact that no amount of reading can educate someone as to know what other individual’s goals and plans are.
Thus, if anyone is really educated, and has really done a lot of reading, these people would likely come to the conclusion that social democracy is something to be avoided, not embraced.
But thanks for exposing yourself as being empty headed who simply believes someone else on faith, rather than thinking for himself and coming to his own conclusions based on actual knowledge.
Maybe Tex Avery is really Lord Keynes.
😀
These assumptions are becoming even more asinine. I said several times that I am neither M_F or LK or whoever you want to think of me as.
MF, I will agree to disagree with you.
Tex:
You agree to disagree on the basis of faulty convictions.
If you really don’t understand how social democracy is a soft communism, you just aren’t thinking enough about it.
Quotes from C. Bradley Thompson:
“Why Marxism?” An Evening at FEE with C. Bradley Thompson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt58gg1DQGk
“Austrian economics does not predict Y% price inflation after an X% increase”.. etc.
Correct, the Austrian economists do not accept the crude quantity theory of money, but that did not stop plenty of Austrian-inspired pundits from predicting hyperinflation from QE – and failing to see that large base money supply growth does not automatically translate into large broad money growth.
And Murphy just lost his bet on the inflation rate, so no luck there either.
I keep wishing I had bet on something, anything, with Bob.
First, as you implied, not all Austrians predicted high inflation by 2013. Mish for one is partial to Austrianism and he predicted low inflation.
Second, those Austrians that did predict high inflation, did not make those predictions using Austrian theory. They made those predictions as speculators, forecasters, etc.
It’s misleading to say “Austrians predicted high inflation.” It’s misleading because it isn’t their Austrianism that lead them to predict that. It would be like saying “most black people predicted stocks will fall, but they rose, so…”. It could be technically correct as it stands, but it is easy to infer from that statement that it was their blackness that lead them to predict that.
It’s far more correct and not misleading to say “Some speculators…who just so happen to be Austrians…predicted high inflation.”
Just like how some Keynesians predicting recession after WW2 were wrong doesn’t imply that Keynesian theory is wrong, but rather that those speculators and forecasters who happen to be Keynesian made forecasting errors.
What Murphy and other Austrians who predicted high inflation did was to under-estimate the future demand for money holding. That’s really all they did wrong. They thought the demand for money would be lower than it ended up being.
Krugman however is inferring from the fact that some Austrians who made wrong predictions that this constitutes a refutation of Austrian theory, when as you point out, it doesn’t.
LK:
No theoretical predilection “stops” an economist from making predictions as a speculator.
Being an Austrian or Keynesian doesn’t “stop” one from predicting higher or lower inflation.
Pointing out that Murphy’s Austrianism “didn’t stop him” from making a friendly prediction bet is rather silly.
“One reason why we don’t see the type of price inflation, is because the Fed is paying the banks to sit on the newly created money”
That is not the main reason. The main reasons are as follows:
(1) the money multiplier is little more than a myth
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=1623
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=10733
(2) bank lending is demand constrained as well as governed by the willingness of banks to grant credit – in the current US economy there is still a serious problem of excessive private debt and deleveraging. Neither households nor businesses have a great demand for credit.
And even if there was surge in credit, plants /corporations have unused capacity and carry inventories/stocks to meet increases in demand for products. Corporations set prices and often leave them unchanged even when demand changes. International trade and reserve status of the US dollar allows the US a massive capacity for imports.
Bank lending is not purely demand constrained, because bank lending ADDS to nominal demand.
The more that banks issue credit, the more new fiduciary media that circulates as money can be used for nominal spending.
When a bank issues credit, and it makes forecasts as to future demand, whether it knows it or not, its forecasted demand is composed in part of future bank credit issuance, because credit makes up a substantial portion of the total money supply.
Corporations don’t refuse to change prices forever. If they don’t cut prices, it’s usually because they either don’t want to incur losses on sales (since CGS is more rigid), or they really do expect higher inflation (as they have been conditioned to expect in an economy with a central bank).
I agree that banks are not lending is because they ran out of creditworthy customers, pure and simple. However, they still have the ability to lend any amount of money into existence, but in order to make money, it must be lent to customers who will/can actually pay the interest. So now they sell their crappy mbs portfolio to the Fed (at face value of course!) and use the money to buy uncle Sam’s slightly less crappy bonds. And the rest sits at the Fed, collecting interest. Why lend to risky small businesses, if you can make money at zero risk?
Plenty of quantitative easing and I still don’t see a “debased” currency or this imaginary hyperinflation apocalypse anywhere.
You saw a doubling of gas prices, for one thing:
The truth about rising gas prices, the stock market, & Warren Buffett’s taxes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQYy25kLijA
And Schiff shows that the CPI is rigged:
Inflation Propaganda Exposed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwI3Nya5L9g
Also, there’s the “recovering” Housing Market – that’s not recovery, but inflation:
Pit Boss Bernanke Oversees 27% Rise in Las Vegas Home Prices
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/02/pit-boss-bernanke-oversees-27-rise-in.html
I see it in the stock market, commodities market, bond market, producer goods market, and other markets that you seem not to be involved with as you seem to be only looking at consumer prices. How surprising.
Ever heard of supply and demand? Ineleastic and elastic not ring a bell to you? This is Econ 101.
Yes and yes, respectively.
Your point?
Sorry, yes and no, respectively. I inferred the converse by mistake.
Speaking of knowing someone who speaks 5 languages. I was in a Thai restaurant near home and the waiter, with a german accent, spke to us in fluent English. The phone ranf and he spoke what seemed fluent Italian. A man came in and they spoke fluent French. He spoke what I assumed was Thai to the cook when she came out. This is just a few minutes. I asked him. He speaks 11 languages fluently, and another 9 well, and has a smattering of a couple more. He’s learning Finnish. Worked as a simultaneous translator at the UN, and he and his Thai wife own the restaurant. Incredibly impressive.
Purely out of interest @LordKeynes. Are you the SAME Lord Keynes that used to comment on the Cynicus Economicus blog?
If you go to his profile it says he follows that blog, so I’m going to guess “yes”.