Bob Murphy

Author Archive

A Complaint for Comedy Central

Have any of you other bloggers noticed that when you try to copy the default code to embed a Daily Show clip, there are always errors and you need to just start throwing in forward slashes until the syntax referee lets it through?

Jon Stewart Has Palin’s Back

This started out slow but had me laughing out loud by the end, so I thought I’d share. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Crazy Like a Contributor www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Fed as the World’s Biggest Carry Trader?

I am not immersed in the data to say whether this is a good description, but it might be. After quoting James Hamilton, Arnold Kling writes: The Fed is now the world’s biggest carry trader. In Hamilton’s view, the Fed’s huge injection of bank reserves, on which it pays interest, amounts to borrowing from those […]

My Objection to GMU Treatment of Growth Rates, Sans Sports Analogy

In a recent post I may have been too clever by half, or even by three-fourths. I thought I had discovered a glaring contradiction in the arguments of some GMU bloggers in their disputes with Keynesians lately. But instead of stating my view plainly, I invented a basketball game between Team GMU and Team JMK […]

DeLong on Interest Rates and the Housing Bubble

In a WSJ survey of economists on the housing bubble and Greenspan’s possible role, Brad DeLong wrote: BRAD DELONG, BERKELEY PROFESSOR: “If you believe that the Fed kept the fed funds rate 2% below its proper Taylor-rule value for 3 years, that has a 6% impact on the price of a long-duration asset like housing. […]

The Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance

Everyone is familiar with the “I Have a Dream” speech, but I just heard Martin Luther King’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s really good, except that he inconsistently thinks tapping on the federal government is a peaceful solution to political and moral problems. I thought maybe this was simply an intellectual error […]

Quite a Chapter: Mark 8

Last night our power went out. Since I couldn’t read my Bible where the bookmark was, I picked a chapter randomly and read it on my Blackberry. I picked Mark 8, hoping it had some good stuff, and wow it was chock full of interesting things. It starts out with a famous miracle: 1 In […]

Mankiw Gives Himself an Out on Inflation

Phil Maymin emails me Mankiw’s op ed and wants commentary. Some excerpts: IS galloping inflation around the corner? Without doubt, the United States is exhibiting some of the classic precursors to out-of-control inflation. But a deeper look suggests that the story is not so simple. Let’s start with first principles. One basic lesson of economics […]