Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Thoughts on Ostrom’s Nobel Prize

Steve Horwitz looks at the reactions to Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel posted by job-seeking economics PhDs at this site, and says: Warning: sexist, foul-mouthed, arrogant, ignorant little boys at their worst. Thank God for GMU. I weep for the future of the rest of my discipline. This prompts several reflections: (1) Steve has apparently not gone […]

Is Krugman Chiseling Out His Escape Chute?

In late August I was glad that Krugman had definitively said we were in a recovery. That way, if I turn out to be right and we are currently in the analog of 1931, then Krugman will be demonstrably wrong. (In much of his posts he has wiggle room, so even if things turn out […]

More Free Advice

Yes I have a bunch of work to do, which is why I’m reading mass emails that my friends send me. Notwithstanding the below video, my advice to you is this: When a lioness is going to feed her newborn cubs, get the frick outta there.

Potpourri

I’m still way behind on my “real work” so blogging will be sparse this week… But here are some links: * Gold keeps chugging. * Speaking of gold prices, Robert Wenzel reproduces a great speech by GATA’s Chris Powell. Powell’s tone is great; he acknowledges that people think GATA is a bunch of black-helicopter kooks, […]

Glenn Greenwald Defends Republicans

GG is awesome. After Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and of course conservative pundits rolled their eyes, some Democratic honchos actually accused the critics of “siding with the Taliban” etc. (Naturally enough, the Taliban and others who are being targeted with Darth death drones don’t want to give Barack a high-five on his pacifism.) […]

Hope We Can Believe In?

The first sentence of a CNBC article: “Bank failures are going to continue at a fairly strong rate but taxpayers hopefully won’t be asked to foot the bill, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair told CNBC.”

Free Advice

Sometimes on this blog I literally give you free advice. Today’s bit of wisdom: Just because you turn off the switch for your garbage disposal, doesn’t mean the blades stop turning. I didn’t draw blood or anything, but I wish I’d paid more attention to the rotational inertia lecture in my high school physics class.

Scary CBO Chart

You know those CBO projections getting bounced around, saying the debt as a share of GDP is supposed to double in the next ten years? Well, things don’t exactly turn around after that. (That’s one of the reasons that Krugman’s “Why worry?” posts on the deficit projections are misleading. He does show that it wasn’t […]