Bob Murphy

Author Archive

David Beckworth Adopts Scott Sumner Criterion for “Market Expectations”

In this post, David Beckworth uses federal funds futures contracts to glean information about “the market”‘s expectations of future monetary policy shifts. Obviously there are caveats about reasoning from an expected price change, but I think this is a good avenue for the Market Monetarists to win skeptics over. In particular, if people in (say) […]

Slow Motion Train Wreck

Long-time readers know that I have been warning for years that the U.S. stock market was being driven by Fed policy. Last summer (in 2015) my co-author Carlos Lara and I began a three-part financial/economics seminar on “The Coming Storms” to Paige McKechnie of CCC Corporation in Nashville. We had already done the first one […]

Contra Krugman Ep. 20: Krugman Blames Government Water Crisis on Free Market

Make sure you don’t misinterpret my argument: I’m not saying that any one disaster invalidates a whole system. What I’m saying is that you can’t point to government officials screwing up water supply as *further evidence* that we need government officials to provide water, as Krugman tries to do.

Forgiveness

Peter asked Jesus if people should forgive a brother who transgresses up to seven times? Jesus famously answered, “Seventy times seven.” The traditional point with this story is NOT, of course, to say that you should forgive someone up to 490 times, but then be merciless on the 491st offense. However, I am pretty sure […]

Potpourri

==> Rob Bradley wants Resources for the Future to pay attention to Judith Curry and me. (Here’s an old RFF paper which shows how powerful the “tax interaction effect” can be.) ==> David Stockman is not bullish at the moment. ==> Jeffrey Rogers Hummel explains some technicalities of the budget deal, that affect Fed accounting. […]

Murphy Twin Spin

==> At IER I explain how the NYT gets it wrong on the carbon tax. ==> Costco magazine featured an exchange between Kshama Sawant (yes the Seattle socialist) and yours truly, on rent control. (The previous sentence was one you never expected to read, I’m sure.) You can adjust the magnification if you want to […]

Isaac Was a Willing Sacrifice

In the course of my Bible study with my cousin I recently learned something that blew my mind: When Abraham obeyed the Lord’s command to (do everything up to) sacrifice his own son, Isaac wasn’t a young boy. In fact, he was probably in his 20s or 30s. (Some think he was 33, presumably because […]

Time for Bryan Caplan to Give Rothbard Another Look

Alex Tabarrok has a post explaining that (government) water systems have been bad on lead contamination for a century; it’s not just an isolated problem in Flint. There’s no way I can talk about this without sounding like a punk, so I simply remind everyone of Bryan Caplan’s EconLog post from 2014 entitled “Why Do […]