Bob Murphy

Author Archive

“Why Jesus?”

I’ve been watching a lot of Ravi Zacharias lately. If you’ve never heard him, try giving him a chance. He is very educated and of course his voice is transfixing.

A Possible Scenario In Which the SNB Wouldn’t Want 100% of GDP in Euros

What is really odd in the econoblogger debate over the SNB’s recent decision to drop the Swiss franc/euro peg is that some people (including prominent monetary economists) are acting like there is not even a possible danger here. Bill Woolsey actually asked me in the comments here at Free Advice: “Is the argument here that […]

Scott Sumner Busts Krugman

Scott Sumner has been lighting it up at EconLog in his running commentary against Keynesians, notably Paul Krugman. (The two most recent examples are here and here, but it goes back further.) Scott’s running theme here is that guys like Krugman picked the U.S. austerity episode as the hill to die on, and then when […]

Mr. Reporter, Don’t Make Tom Woods Angry. You Wouldn’t Like Him When He’s Angry

Apparently Tom knew that someone from the Washington Post was in the crowd, presumably to get juicy tidbits about what secessionist nutjobs Ron Paul was associating with. Here’s the speech Tom gave: BTW Tom’s opening joke is on the audio version here. It’s the Bruce Banner before he turns into the Hulk.

Scott Sumner’s Incredible Arguments on the Swiss Currency Peg

My latest at Mises CA. If you’re in a rush, here’s the graph to accompany Scott Sumner’s defense (made in December before the dropped it) where he said it was a piece of cake to maintain the peg: I found some monetary base data that is quite interesting. From January to September 2011 the Swiss […]

“Ain’t That a Kick in the Head”

My friend Sam is my chief karaoke accomplice in Nashville. He made this video because he’s bored.

Potpourri

==> At IER, I discuss the refreshing honesty from James Hansen. ==> My colleagues at IER assembled a fact sheet on ANWR. ==> I don’t think I linked this here yet? Anyway Matt Ridley’s recent post on why he’s a climate “lukewarmer” is really good. He sounds like the epitome of a reasonable guy. Naturally […]

Swiss National Bank vs. the Federal Reserve

In light of the recent announcement of the Swiss National Bank abandoning its peg to the euro, I thought people should realize just how much the SNB had inflated. The following chart compares the SNB “monetary base” (you can think of it as its balance sheet, close enough) with that of the Fed. They are […]