Bob Murphy

Author Archive

More Krugman Re-Writing of His Stimulus Views

I really had decided I was going to lay off Krugman for a while, but this one was too much. In light of the 5th anniversary of the Obama stimulus package, Krugman is claiming that he never understood the Christy Romer’s team’s rosy forecast of a quick recovery back in early 2009. Greg Mankiw winces […]

David R. Henderson on CBO and ObamaCare

The opening paragraphs from my new Mises Canada post: The good thing about the Internet is that there is a Hayekian safety net: When a bunch of free-market economists are idiots and overlook an obvious point, eventually somebody comes along to rescue them. For today’s example, we have the arguments over the CBO’s estimate that […]

Scott Sumner Statistics: Trust, But Verify

I am being sincere when I say that I’m not accusing him of skullduggery, but I’ve noticed that sometimes Scott Sumner’s descriptions of the data lead the reader to imagine something far different from the reality. A good recent example of this is Scott’s discussion of his theory that it was (purposelessly) tight monetary policy […]

Financial Sector “Suicides” Mounting

Yet another JP Morgan employee has apparently committed suicide: A third JP Morgan employee has died under mysterious circumstances in a matter of few weeks. A still unidentified “Chinese male in is thirties” jumped from the roof of Charter House, the 30 floor Hong Kong headquarters of JPM. An eyewitness told the South China Morning […]

Follow-Up On India’s Ban on Child Labor

In a recent post I asked people to draw me a picture, illustrating the claim floating around the free-market blogosphere that India’s ban on child labor perversely led to more children being employed. (If you don’t know/remember the context, you need to go read that first post for this one to make any sense.) Well, […]

Administration Celebrates the ARRA (“Obama Stimulus Package”)–And Cites Bastiat!

I am pretty sure this qualifies as heresy. At least Paul Krugman has the decency to call French classical liberals cockroaches when discussing their relevance to fiscal multipliers. But Scott Sumner alerts us to page 33 of the Obama Administration’s 5-year report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), aka the Obama Stimulus Package […]

Has QE EVER Worked?

I ask at my latest Mises Canada post. On Twitter, Josiah Neeley wanted me to defined “worked.” I responded: “Economy was awful, central bank doubled (at least) balance sheet in short time, economy seemed fine, balance sheet back to normal.”