Bob Murphy

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Reflections On Mackinac Island

I participated on an energy panel at the Republican Leadership Conference at Mackinac Island on Friday. (I was there in my capacity as an economist with IER. I’m pretty sure they would have me talk at the UAW convention if we were welcome, which we’re not.) Some highlights: * I met Jay Riemersma who is […]

Ron Paul Shock Troops Storm Congress

But we’re intellectual geeks so no tear gas was involved. I’m in a hotel right now in Mackinac Island, so I haven’t had time to watch this stuff. But here’s Tom Woods wielding a fiery sword of truth, and below is the only video I’ve found so far. When I get back to the room […]

Bush’s Third Term

We need to update that old joke: “People warned me that if I voted for McCain, we’d get another four years of Bush policies. They were right!” Glenn Greenwald explains: [W]hen it comes to uprooting (“changing”) the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and civil liberties…the Obama administration has proven rather conclusively that tiny and cosmetic adjustments […]

How to Predict the Coming Bank Pay Regulation

========== How to Predict the Coming Bank Compensation RegulationsBy Robert P. Murphy In an article that convinced half my readers I was a genius, and half that I was completely insane, I argued that the way to predict the coming moves in currencies and other major financial events was to put yourself in the shoes […]

Stumped By Stavins

Dan Simmons alerted me to this WSJ article by Harvard’s Robert Stavins. Now I respect Stavins, because he blasted the absurd economic analysis that the California Air Resources Board put out on its statewide cap-and-trade plan. So even though he is a proponent of carbon legislation, I think he’s intellectually honest. However, in this recent […]

The Worst Sentence I Read Today

From the poor man’s Brad DeLong, Matt Yglesias, who writes: And in economic terms, there’s really very little difference between spending down a reserve of accumulated cash and in taking advantage of an opportunity to borrow at an extremely low interest rate. I think by “economic terms,” Yglesias means, “If you stop thinking about it […]

Brad DeLong Continues to Paint Hoover as Mr. Laissez-Faire

As Free Advice readers know, I have taken the Krugman/DeLong side in their debate with the Chicago School. In a nutshell, people like Cochrane and Fama are saying that in principle the government can’t boost nominal spending in the present, as if it’s a matter of accounting. That’s just wrong, especially if you allow for […]