Bob Murphy

Author Archive

O’Driscoll Economizes on My Words

For a while, I think Mario Rizzo and I were the two contributors to the geeconosphere who most succinctly pointed out the micro-coordination problems that macro stimulus would distort. But in a short post, I think Jerry O’Driscoll crystallizes it even more tightly: Consider the current economic situation. A financial crisis has been brought on […]

The Difference Between the Market and the Government

When businesspeople try to benefit from technological advances, they end up designing robots that feed humans Ramen (HT2MR). When government officials realize the new opportunities, they fund the development of robots that feed on human corpses (HT2LRC).* Any questions? * Aww shucks, the wusses at Fox News have officially repudiated the original story. Now apparently […]

Potpourri

* Another favorable review (of my first Politically Incorrect Guide) at FrontPageMag. * My radio interview with Michael McKay, from the Mises Institute. * Betsy Hansen was a summer fellow at the Mises Institute this year. Last week (during the conference) we started talking about mark-to-market and it soon became apparent that she had done […]

We’ll Get Through This Depression, Too

Lately I’ve realized how much it bums people out when I calmly explain to them that Bush, Ben, and ‘Bama are doing a great job…if their goal is to re-create the Great Depression. So in the present post, let me explain why I’m not devastated. First, I have my religious faith. I won’t delve into […]

Potpourri

* I take on my buddy Brad DeLong at Mises.org. DeLong had tried to use Wicksell to defend Greenspan, and I cracked that Knut. (OK that was awful, sorry.) * Jeffrey Rogers Hummel says that the U.S. government will default on its debt. * David Friedman has a very interesting post on responding to climate […]

The Power Brokers Want a Government Monopoly on Health Care

Check out this interesting succession of clips (HT2EPJ): I’m not sure if he uses it in the above video, but anyway now whenever Obama says, “Let me be clear,” I interpret that as meaning, “The following is false.”

Economists vs. Ron Paul

Here is an article (HT2 Tyler Cowen) about six economists who oppose Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed. (Interesting tidbit: The last economist, Mike Feroli, was in my class at NYU. In fact we were the only two Americans, and used to joke that there would be ethnic cleansing after the preliminary exams. Ah […]

Arnold Kling Thinks Like Me

On those life expectancy puzzles: Does anyone know how, if at all, unnatural deaths affect these data? Consider four possibilities–young in the U.S., young in the Netherlands, old in the U.S., old in the Netherlands. I would bet that of these four groups, the rate of unnatural death (murder, car accidents, and so on) is […]