Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Failed I Have

I have been warning you guys for a long time now that Scott Sumner was the real guy to watch. Now Christina Romer writes in the NYT–the NYT for crying out loud!–that Ben Bernanke needs to get his Volcker on: Today, inflation is still low, but unemployment is stuck at a painfully high level. And, […]

A Video Trying to Make Nominal GDP Targeting the New Normal

This is pretty good, and has the endorsement of lots of market monetarists (see the comments here). If I were going to make a video to introduce a newcomer to Scott Sumner’s ideas, it would look something like this.

John Carney Smells a Rat, Too

Seeing that I criticized Sumner lo these many years and have lived to tell the (boring) tale, John Carney has lately been launching broadsides against the Brawler from Bentley, here and here. We’ll see if Scott plays bad blogger, good blogger with Carney like he did with Kelly Evans. Evans & Carney, some Free Advice: […]

How Are Sujatha Reddy and Scott Sumner Alike?

Well, neither has been in my living room. But beyond that, they both have far more expertise in their respective fields than I do, and yet I confidently claim that they are being very misleading when they “debunk” conventional wisdom. I’ve already complained about how Scott says that inflation poses no problem at all (or […]

Sigh, I Think the Blog Is Working Again

I am now starting to suspect that when I’ve been spending too much time blogging, a failsafe kicks in and locks everything up. Sort of a cooling off period, like when the stock market crashes and the exchange shuts down for an hour. Anyway, I think you should be able to comment now.

Should Central Banks Worry About Asset Bubbles?

A long long time ago, from an ISP far far away, the indefatigable von Pepe was beating me over the head about my reckless CPI “calls,” telling me that loose monetary policy would show up all over the place. He sent me all kinds of academic papers. Well I finally took the time to write […]

People Draw Different Lessons From History

Paul Krugman talking about the Europeans’ amazing reluctance to print as much money as he thinks they should: The point here is that we have a couple of centuries’ experience with central banking, and that experience clearly shows that the lender of last resort function is crucial. The Federal Reserve basically was created after America […]

When the Facts Change, I Silently Curse–What Do You Do, Sir?

Dangit, I realized there is yet another complication to the income vs. consumption tax saga. I don’t know about you guys, but this debate is like the first season of 24. In the beginning I thought it was incredibly interesting, I was hooked, I couldn’t get enough. But after 20 hours of it, there were […]