Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Stephen Williamson Doesn’t Think He’s in a Cult

This made me chuckle. Here’s the opening portion of a blog post by Stephen Williamson: I thought I would offer some light entertainment today. This Paul Krugman post struck me as perhaps more deranged than usual on the topic of macroeconomists. Here are the two closing paragraphs, to give you the idea: In fact, the freshwater […]

Two Genuine Krugman Kuestions

Normally I think I have a handle on the mind of Paul Krugman. People often send me alleged “Krugman Kontradictions,” and while I admire their zeal, I have to tell the eager correspondents, “Nah, I know exactly how Krugman’s fans would reconcile those two positions.” But I am genuinely puzzled by two recent Krugman posts. […]

There Isn’t a Spending Category Called “Deficit Reduction”

[UPDATE below.] David R. Henderson over at EconLog praised my recent critique of a David Frum article on carbon taxes, but David had one quibble with me. I’m not sure if David and I have a genuine disagreement, or if it’s just a matter of him not understanding what I was trying to say. Let […]

Richmond Fed President Can Talk the Talk on Cantillon Effects

Richmond Fed President Lacker dissented from the recent Fed decision, and said in part: “I also objected to the continuing purchase of agency mortgage-backed securities. If asset purchases are appropriate, the FOMC should confine its purchases to U.S. Treasury securities. Purchasing agency mortgage-backed securities can be expected to reduce borrowing rates for conforming home mortgages […]

JP Morgan Says Fed Will Probably Buy “Almost All” New Treasuries in 2013; Market Monetarists Yawn

The fretful von Pepe sends this article, which quotes a JP Morgan analysis saying that with the new policy announcement, the Fed may very well end up adding (“almost”) the equivalent of the entire federal deficit next year to its balance sheet. In other words, the US government is going to spend more than it […]

G. K. Chesterton on Moral Relativism

From “On the Wit of Whistler” in Heretics: Unquestionably it is a very common phrase of modern intellectualism to say that the morality of one age can be entirely different to the morality of another. And like a great many other phrases of modern intellectualism, it means literally nothing at all. If the two moralities […]

Brad DeLong Has Met the Enemy, and He Is Him

Brad DeLong explains how it’s not easy being in a club of Cassandras: Back in the middle of 2011, in the circles in which I traveled–policy-oriented macroeconomists who actually knew something about the world and about financial history–there was a rough consensus that we all ought to make one last charge for more aggressive policies […]