20 Jan 2014

My Presentation on Austrian Economics at “Save Long Island” Forum

Austrian School, Shameless Self-Promotion 13 Comments

This was truly a great event; I learned a lot from the other speakers. Here was what I told the crowd:

P.S. I also debated “The Money Masters” man, Bill Still, the day before the above talk. I will post on that separately.

13 Responses to “My Presentation on Austrian Economics at “Save Long Island” Forum”

  1. Ken B says:

    Still watching, but my sensors are going off with your airy dismissal of antidepressants. Is this just warmed over Szasz, or (tendentiousness warning) vaccer like conspiracism?

    Are you a vaccer (jenny McCarthy)?

  2. Cosmo Kramer says:

    Money Masters was still a pretty good work, and I look forward to seeing that topic’s post. I really hope you have that debate on video. Just hopefully it wasn’t as nasty as the David Friedman debate.

    “It leads you to believe If only Christmas were every month, the economy would be fine.”
    Oh man, good stuff.

  3. Gamble says:

    Lately I have been pondering the entire concept of “economy”. Sure there will always be scarcity but isn’t talking about a national or global economy a trap and decent to communism?

    The economy is bad, no its great, no it needs a little tinkering…

    Other than my personal economy, there is NO economy.

    • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

      I’ve read someone who made that point, Mises I think, not entirely sure, but basically said “There is no such thing as THE economy, everyone’s own individual economy is different and unique.”

    • joe says:

      Great, so you don’t care whether there is inflation in the economy since there is NO economy.

      • Major_Freedom says:

        I think he can care if individuals experience a relative rise or fall in purchasing power on account of inflation, without caring about inflation in “the economy.”

        Sort of like one can care about a stubbed toe on a person, but not on a leprechaun.

      • Gamble says:

        No joe, not really what I am saying.

        I am saying talk about the “economy” is what empowers central banks/politicians to create the inflation you despise.

      • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

        The people who get the inflated money first certainly don’t care about inflation in “the economy.”

      • Cosmo Kramer says:

        Does Joe even try?

  4. Dan says:

    I think Bill Still learned how to debate by watching Dwight Schrute. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kysRQP0ca7s&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DkysRQP0ca7s

  5. Karras says:

    Watched that debate earlier today. Listening to Bill Still talk was painful so I skipped through to whenever I saw you were talking. You did a great job dealing with their questions.

  6. George Stilglitz IIIV says:

    I stopped watching at the point when no one acknowledges reality.

    Wweellllp, at any rate, “the nearly constant level of prices throughout the 2000’s [twenties] was taken as a sign of macroeconomic health.”

    !!!

    Rothbard, theorizing at a lower level of aggregation, showed that policy-distorted interest rates give rise to a mismatch

    [at least Murphy says how this is done (not by fiat decree, with the exception of the discount window), but rather by buying bonds, to add reserves, this increasing supply]

    between the intertemporal production plans of entrepreneurs and the underlying intertemporal consumption preferences, the latter being expressed by people’s willingness to save”

    Which rightly, is suppressed further as the mis-matches are exaggerated, prolonged, the wealth transfer post-Volker is massive, economy contracting relatively as a result (not to mention the exacerbating tax/legal changes over the period) and the demand falls. With demand perpetually, and increasingly falling (people want to save rather than get into more debt when the economy is slowly degrading) and supply increasing, is it no surprise which way price goes??

    The ‘you can’t pay’ moment of above 0.75% on 10 year yen only happens when the currency is disposed of mentally in this new regime of fiat global mon sys.

    So whatddabout lending/assets/reflation then? Well, the mechanics dictate that reserves handed to banks from the Fed CANT BE LENT OUT DIRECTLY BY LAW

    so what happens then is something else… (let’s pause and ask why pay interest on reserves) To answer, simply refer to what was just explained about the preference, regarding the ‘price’ to get some of that supply — it’s headed lower (now, as well).

    Okay with that out of the way… er almost:

    “If Keynes’s theory of interest were right, interest rates would be highest at the bottom of a depression and lowest at the peak of a boom, which is almost precisely the opposite of their actual tendency.”

    Okay with that out of they way, what the reserves ARE doing (besides lowering short rates on reserves?) is acting as collateral.

    Just as YOU can create ‘money’ by a promise to pay interest to the monopolist, stating collateral and wham!

    They, are also “YOUS” and also have the right to privately create credit, fungible, asset buying, hard delicious, same damn money credit out of thin air on collateral. Why is this ignored, as it is how real assets today are bought up and how it ‘get’s into the system’.

    AND IT HAS

    This impacts other prices, beyond mechanical, order-book-moving purchases, subjectively. Which are negligible at best. For example, others remark, rethink and reoffer as a result of the ‘common knowledge’, and represents the greatest source of power–the control over economic man

    The shift between non-fiat, and fiat has people flipped on rates as monetarism rather than subjective logic dominates modern liberal discussion

    Rates rise in a depression when people pull supply. In a modern sense this means shortening collateral chains, or reusing assets less instances each, but if we can centralize risks around that, the counterparty issue at the heart of reuse, we can engender a trust mitigating the issue while filling reserves yet higher to keep the short end sub zzrerrroooo

    hence the 0.25%, got keep this thing up mang

    fukerzin the new systems go up in a non-historical fashion, yet still tightly, snugly, fitting Rothbardian/Misean money views, where the currency leads the bond market (perhaps by only a small fraction), but the driver is the loss of faith in the future purchasing power of the fiat, RELATIVE TO THEIR UPDATED indoctrination on the health for families for annual rising prices, rather than 1800-1900 period that truly built what Earth had yet to see

  7. George Stilglitz IIIV says:

    whoops, i stopped watching Bill Still vid “at the point when no one acknowledges reality.” not this one, sorta replying to a commenter, and wanted to correct as to not misconstrue. To me I loved this vid, and see the careful necessities of playing on a common field in varied audiences, yet wonder what can be done most about the credibility of Austrian theory in the short-run (JAPAN IS GLARING AT YOU ALL< DFOR SOOO SOOOO SOOOO LOOOOOOONG] and i think as this continues to be the case, people could point to Austrians and say: see, you said rates would rise, when we print (increase supply). Seems there has to be something I'm missing on how to better get to these issues not only in the Treasury, but in Japan, for a while now…

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