Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Niall Ferguson’s 3-Part Critique of Krugman

I think Ferguson misses the mark on a lot of these, but there were 3 or 4 gems in here that I hadn’t known about. (I’ll blog them separately so as not to lose track of them.) Anywhere, here are the links: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 My favorite paragraph of the series, from […]

Danny Sanchez Interviews Me, Part 2 of 5

This is the second of five parts of a detailed interview Danny Sanchez had with me, over the summer when I was at the Mises Institute. It is partly to promote my upcoming Mises Academy online class, but we discuss a lot about Austrian economics in general.

Danny Sanchez Interviews Me About Basics of Economics Etc. Part 1 of 5

This is the first of five parts of a detailed interview Danny Sanchez had with me, over the summer when I was at the Mises Institute. It is partly to promote my upcoming Mises Academy online class, but we discuss a lot about Austrian economics in general.

Two Views on the HealthCare Exchanges

CBS News has a story on the ObamaCare website, with the bold from me: Healthcare.gov launched more than a week ago, and while millions of Americans have signed into the site, not many have been able to actually sign up for insurance because of glitches with the website. … No one knows how many people […]

Two Obvious Facts on the Debt Ceiling Showdown

Big “showdowns” in Washington are always hype, with both sides distorting the facts so that the hapless citizen–whether he watches Fox or CNN–focuses on irrelevant details and misses the big picture. When it comes to the recurring conflict over raising the debt ceiling, here are two obvious facts that explode just about everything that the […]

Tyler Cowen on Treasury Default

This is my favorite Tyler post of all time, with the only possible exception being his unwitting out-of-sample defense of Austrian business cycle theory. First, Tyler uses his extraordinarily powerful mind to concoct a scenario in which the economy collapses from the debt standoff: As the evening of October 16th approaches, John Boehner is preparing […]

Resolving (Sort of) Krugman on Bond Vigilantes and Debt Default

OK so for the last month or so I’ve been asking: How can Paul Krugman have been arguing repeatedly that an attack by the “bond vigilantes” (because they’re worried about high levels of a government’s debt) be “expansionary” and hence good for an economy currently stuck in a liquidity trap, while at the same time […]

Obama to Nominate Yellen for Fed Chief

Details here. And holy cow did you folks know this?! [Yellen] is married to, and has co-authored a number of papers with, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof, whom she met in the fall of 1977 when they were both economists at the Fed board. Must…resist…lemons…joke…