Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Can Fiscal Austerity Work With Tight Money?

[Disclaimer: Bob Wenzel doesn’t like me using the term “fiscal austerity,” since he thinks the public associates it with jacking up taxes and cutting social programs in order to bail out bankers. He has a point, but it will just get too cumbersome in this post if I try to come up with some alternate […]

Don’t Let Scott Sumner Write the History Books

Despite my title, this is actually a post about Brad DeLong, where I’ve noticed this trend the most. Now despite the recent unpleasantness, I’m not even criticizing DeLong in this post. I’m simply pointing out a rewriting of history that I am watching unfold before my very eyes, and I want to point this out […]

Interest Does NOT Equal the Marginal Product of Capital, Even in Equilibrium

Oh man, here I’m trying to really be productive. I have even come up with strict limits on my Facebook time. And then Nick Rowe goes and starts posting on capital & interest theory! Here’s the situation in a nutshell. In mainstream economics, it is commonplace for people to say that in a competitive equilibrium, […]

Thoughts on Glenn Beck

Well the big to-do in my Facebook circles is Glenn Beck’s announcement that he’s rebranding his “The Blaze” as a global libertarian network (HT2 DK). Not sure if you guys remember, but years ago I had thought Glenn Greenwald was being too harsh on Beck. “Hey the guy is obviously putting on a show, but […]

America’s Platinum Express

I have a question and a comment: ==> The “trillion dollar coin” thing is just because a billion is too little, and a quadrillion is too much, right? For example, there’s nothing to stop them from using this “option” but doing so by minting, say, 10 coins each with a face value of $100 billion? […]

Two Visions

==> On the one hand, you can listen to Danny Glover and write-in Paul Krugman for Treasury Secretary. ==> On the other hand, you can sign up for Joe Salerno’s 6-week Mises Academy class on Austrian macroeconomics.

Potpourri

==> Jeffrey Karl made up this cartoon based on the numbers I calculated for the so-called fiscal cliff. ==> You can’t imagine how many people sent me this link about Krugman for Treasury Secretary. ==> Steve Landsburg disagrees with David R. Henderson’s (limited) defense of the recent budget deal.

Don’t Rush to Judgment

I can’t give any of the details, but there were several incidents this week in my personal life where a few different people, observing just snippets of my actions, might very understandably get upset with me. The thing was, in each of the cases, if the people could see the bigger context and why I […]