Author Archive

Potpourri

* John David Fernandez explains the joy that is Mises University. An excerpt: “There is no intellectual arrogance displayed by any of the professors. All of them have a great sense of humor, and always willing to chat or autograph a book. You can talk to them about anything, including the nitty-gritty details of anarchism […]

Read more

Krugman On Why Economists Missed the Crash

Tyler Cowen links to this 8-page Krugman essay–and be careful, you might have missed it if you merely check Krugman’s blog. (I.e. I didn’t see it linked from there; I think Tyler gets tweeted whenever somebody rips the free market.) Anyway, Krugman starts off great: [I]n a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that […]

Read more

New York Times Offers Two Views on Fiscal Policy

Some people accuse Fox News of presenting only one side, but I’m glad to see that the newspaper of record offers a wide range of views. For example, in a column from August 27, the contributor declared: So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade. According to many […]

Read more

Gold Rising From Its Slumber

Gold has just broken through $987 an ounce. I don’t suppose if it breaks $1000 before Labor Day, you guys would give me my “by summer” gold call, will you? Nah, didn’t think so. Anyway here’s another way the government does its best to keep you in your financial prison: [S]ince the IRS has determined […]

Read more

My Former Boss Interviews My Former Idol

(Guess which is which.) On May 22, 2006, Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn had a conversation with Milton Friedman. At the end of this clip, Friedman calls for abolishing the Federal Reserve. He also (as of 2006) thought it was foolish to predict 20 years of 2% inflation. Thanks to BlackSheep for the video.

Read more

A Great Metaphor for the Whole Obama Administration

Hey kids, check out this neat magic trick! (HT2EPJ) If you go to this page hosted by the Department of Education, the third bullet point says: Find information about community service organizations and share it with your child. You can begin by going to the Web site for the newly created Freedom Corps— www.usafreedomcorps.gov/—and looking […]

Read more

Glenn Beck on Van Jones

In case some of you can’t figure out why so many people like Glenn Beck, here’s probably the best sample you’ll ever get of his show. He goes through and parses remarks that “green jobs czar” Van Jones made back in February, and then at the end plays a clip of Obama saying we need […]

Read more

Scott Sumner: The Gulag Is Half Full

(We also would have accepted, “Actually, the Guantanamo is half full.”) Just to make sure we understand what it would mean to start from a crazy premise and then run with it using exquisite logical consistency, Scott Sumner leaves his well-developed monetary theories to write: Before answering this question, let’s first examine what has happened […]

Read more