Bob Murphy

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Two Posts on Energy Issues

A little awkward talking about the UN Climate Change meetings in Paris in light of today’s tragic events, but anyway here are my two latest Institute for Energy Research posts: ==> This one shows that oil prices (adjusted with CPI) are higher now than the 1950-2015 average. ==> Check out the frankness of the UN’s […]

An Interesting Hypothesis

So it’s a puzzle: Ben Bernanke as an academic recommended policies that, in the opinion of market monetarists, would actually have required a smaller expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Yet inexplicably, once Bernanke assumed a position of immense power, all of a sudden those beliefs went […]

Potpourri

==> I’m tied up on this business trip, so somebody please explain to Scott Sumner the difference between time deposits and demand deposits. ==> BTW I am tough but I am fair: I think I forgot to blog it at the time, but this Sumner post on Krugman from September was the best takedown I […]

Potpourri

==> This is an unexpectedly good episode of the Tom Woods Show. He debates Matt Zwolinski on a basic income guarantee. I went into it thinking it would be like debating whether Kevin Spacey was a better Lex Luthor than Gene Hackman, but actually it was very entertaining. ==> An Austrian tries to assert her […]

Dr. Charles Stanley on Victory Over Anger

I really think [EDIT: that many] people who are very hostile to Christianity don’t understand what a typical sermon is like. They are like this: Of course the primary purpose of “going to church” isn’t to make people better members of society and family, but my goodness people going and hearing stuff like this week […]

Contra Krugman Episode 8

We have special guest Gene Epstein on this one, to help evaluate Krugman’s arguments about Democratic economic growth.

Explaining the Parable of the Thermostat

At first I was getting really frustrated with Craw and then Gene in the comments of this post. I couldn’t believe they were accusing me of misrepresenting Scott Sumner’s views; I thought I was almost literally quoting him, with the exception of translating the discussion into the world of a household thermostat (which of course […]