Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Paul Krugman’s Eyes Are Smiling

In this post, Krugman takes Marco Rubio to task for claiming that government deficits crowd out private investment. Amongst his points, Krugman produces the following scatter plot: …and then comments, “Contractionary policy has proved contractionary.” Wait a second. Look at that chart. Even on its own terms, it’s not nearly as obvious as Krugman makes […]

Potpourri

==> I make a modest point about fracking and federalism. ==> Simon Lester thinks Krugman is up to no good on his post about protectionism, but I don’t really have a dog in that fight. BTW, my Krugman takedowns are still coming, I’m just digging myself out of a pile of stuff. ==> Consumers are […]

An Odd Proposal to Tax Oil, From the CFR

In this IER post I take on a new paper (published through the Council on Foreign Relations) to impose a $50/barrel tax on crude oil. Some excerpts: The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) recently released a study by Daniel Ahn and Michael Levi showing how a new tax on oil—which would ultimately raise pump prices […]

Krugman Bask

OK kids, I’m back on the job. In my absence (as I worked on a major deadline) my colleagues (1, 2, and 3) have picked up the slack, but now I’m back to keep Krugman’s toes to the fire. However, it would help if one of you could find a good example of Krugman walking […]

Israel Kirzner and the Invisible Hand

Von Pepe sent me this nice video of Israel Kirzner accepting an award (posted at Coordination Problem): As Kirzner explains, even though he of course understands the scientific study of “spontaneous order,” nonetheless he sees the hand of God behind events. This is yet another example of how atheists and theists can look at the […]

Uptown Girl

“The Banker” Needs to Call Me for a Lifeline

This video is ridiculous. They’re trying to simultaneously make it look like (a) the banks won’t be taxed a lot and (b) the banks will be taxed a lot.

Dean Baker vs. Dean Baker on Government Debt and Interest Rates

On Monday Dean Baker was upset that Robert Samuelson thought the two-decade Japanese experiment in stimulus policies should somehow be taken as a warning note against stimulus policies. Baker wrote: Whether Japan’s debt is “excessive” can be debated, but it certainly does not have an excessive interest burden. Its interest burden is currently around 1.0 […]