Author Archive

Old News: Murphy vs. Karl Smith

I just sent this to someone over email, to make sure he realized that I’m not a complete nutjob. If I ever debate Krugman, I will probably not make it shirts and skins. Anyway, this was the online debate the Mises Academy hosted between Karl Smith (of Modeled Behavior) and me.

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Clarification on Sumner, Congress, and NGDP

It is clear from the comments of my last post that, as usual, people are not fully appreciating the cogency of my analysis. Before diving in, let me make sure the casual reader understands why I’m spending so much time on this guy Scott Sumner, of whom most may never have heard. It’s not that […]

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More Evidence That Scott Sumner Is Out of Touch

Look kids, I’m as sick of the Sumner-bashing as you are. But it is apparently my duty, since nobody else is catching this stuff. If not me, who? First of all, remember back when Garett Jones was talking about sticky prices and how he thought debt was a really good candidate for this? Then Sumner […]

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Inflation Is the Plan

I decide to go Bradley Manning on the economics profession. The world needs to know!

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There’s Really Been a Lot of Real Shocks to the Economy

The venerable von Pepe sends me a good post by Larry White, who isn’t as sure as many of his colleagues that the world economy today is primarily troubled by inadequate demand: Scott Sumner told us in September 2009 that “the real problem was nominal,” that is, the recession and its high unemployment were primarily […]

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The Fatal Conceit

[UPDATE below.] The title of this post refers, of course, to Hayek’s warning about really smart guys thinking they understand a complex system well enough to start tinkering with it. Nick Rowe has had the generosity (and intrepidity) to hang out in the comments of my post criticizing his optimism over QE3. He told me […]

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Quibbling With Chesterton

I’m reading (and loving) G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics. But in his essay on Bernard Shaw, Chesterton ends with a passage that seems a bit off to me: Mr. Shaw cannot understand that the thing which is valuable and lovable in our eyes is man–the old beer-drinking, creed-making, fighting, failing, sensual, respectable man. And the things that […]

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Nick Rowe Is Going to Excommunicate Me

Wow. I have been immersing myself in the monetary economics blogosphere discussions, and I don’t likes what I sees. In this post I’ll talk about Nick Rowe, whom you may recall I previously dubbed a kung fu master. As with Scott Sumner, so too with Nick: I want to preface this post by saying he’s […]

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