Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Freedom Train Status From Afghanistan

Here’s something that surprised me: Millions of Afghan women will be denied their chance to vote in landmark presidential elections this week because there are not enough female officials to staff the single- sex polling stations. Despite more than £147million being spent on election aid, the shortage is threatening to undermine the legitimacy of the […]

Red Hot Chili Peppers Cover the Beach Boys

I always like it when young punks pay their respects to the old masters. (And no I’m not referring to Austrian economics.) I don’t remember the show, but the band EMF (“You’re Unbelievable”) did a Tom Jones song, and vice versa, with him present. And they were in awe of Tom Jones doing one of […]

Fed Continues With Leeches, Can’t Understand Why Patient Is Moribund

CNBC tells us: The Federal Reserve said Monday it will extend its Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility another six months though it said conditions were improving in some areas. In a joint announcement with the Treasury Department, the central bank said the TALF, as the program is known, now will run until June 2010, from […]

The US Economy Is Rotting From Within

Whether by accident or design, the federal government and Federal Reserve have joined forces to systematically paralyze the US financial sector. We now have have a czar saying he can take back money that executives have already been paid: Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s pay czar, said on Sunday he has broad and “binding” authority […]

More Thoughts on Economists Making Excuses

I’ve been really disappointed in economists taking the Robert Lucas / Bill Easterly approach in answering the Queen of England’s perfectly good question, “Why didn’t you economists see the financial crisis coming?” To refresh your memory, here is what Easterly (a big-name economist at NYU who has done some cool work on development) said: First, […]

Potpourri

* Mario Rizzo on the issue of whether economists should have predicted (forecast) the financial collapse. * The Economist on the experience of John Law and fiat money. (HT2TAE) * Paul Green offers practical tips for Internet privacy. I have been urging techie/security guys I know, to write up such an article. What do people […]

A Pacifist No Longer

A lot of people are emailing me about the controversy. What can I say? I run into some old timers telling me how great socialized medicine is, and I just lose it.

Bill Maher: Americans Are Dumb (When They Oppose Bigger Government)

Alex Tabarrok links to this Bill Maher rant: Or take the health care debate we’re presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and “listen to their constituents.” An urge they should resist because their constituents don’t know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood […]