Bob Murphy

Author Archive

The Hope of Victory

Inspired by true events, I wrote up this article for LRC. Lots of love/hate mail on this one so far. An excerpt: [T]his clever answer doesn’t really solve the problem of evil. Is it really true that a secular humanist, armed with all the knowledge of economics, could convince a David Rockefeller or a Henry […]

Potpourri

* Is gold going to crash? EPJ says that Goldman was short gold mining stocks when outsiders last peeked. So do they know something we don’t, or were they just helping the Plunge Protection Team to slow down gold’s meteoric ascent? (And don’t meteors crash into the ground? Shouldn’t we call it gold’s carbon dioxidic […]

Is the Christian God a Tyrant?

In last week’s post someone remarked: Ultimately, I am anti-totalitarian. For various reasons, I view both the Judeo-Christian God and the State as ultimately striving for totalitarianism. Therefore, I am both anti-theist and anti-statist. And I feel that those who are one and not the other to be fundamentally saying, “there is no good case […]

Economists Say the Darndest Things

I am reviewing this Institute for Policy Integrity survey [.pdf] of economists on climate change because we at IER are preparing a response. (They are all over the media saying, “Economists and scientists both have consensus: the government needs to act now.”) One of the survey questions asked the economists their estimate of the “social […]

Paul Krugman Solves My Family’s Financial Crunch

I explain here. An excerpt: …I am very surprised to confess that Krugman has convinced me of the virtues of currency debasement. As I was reading his blog post on the tragic fate of Ecuador, I applied Krugman’s lessons to my personal life, and suddenly everything became clear. In a flash, all of my household’s […]

George W. Bush Warns Ivanka Trump of the Dangers of Nepotism

OK I made that up to make sure you were paying attention. The real story is almost as good (HT2 Tony Garcia): Bush warns of threats to freedom, economic growth Former President George W. Bush, outlining plans for a new public policy institute, on Thursday said America must fight the temptation to allow the federal […]

How the Fed’s Original Rules Were Relaxed to Allow It to Pay for World War I

This is a really good article by John Paul Koning. At first I thought it was just going to be a standard “the government uses inflation to pay for wars because the public wouldn’t stand for the taxes and borrowing.” But it’s really specific. Koning goes over the safety mechanisms that were originally in place […]

Right-Wingers: "Gov’t Can’t Run the DMV or Health Care, But It Will Keep Us Safe From Terrorists"

Much to my chagrin, I can remember when I was in junior high (or thereabouts) and had a heated argument with my aunt about drug legalization. She was trying to bring up compassion for the drug users etc., and I said, “What about compassion for the crack babies?!” (I was very good with indignant non […]