Bob Murphy

Author Archive

"I sell insurance, what do you do, Benoit?" "Oh I discovered fractals."

Von Pepe sent me this fascinating video that I just had to stop. (I can’t spend an hour at the office watching it right now, and if I go for 10 minutes I won’t have the willpower to turn it off.) In fact, it looks like this MIT video series has a bunch of really […]

Wenzel: Market Prices Reflect Information Except About Money Supply

Every now and again it’s fun to disrupt the blogospherical equilibrium by picking a fight with your allies. Hence today I will point out my serious reservations with Robert Wenzel’s analysis of stock prices and his preferred monetary aggregate, non-seasonally adjusted M2. Back on June 12 Wenzel announced (CAPS in original): MAJOR ALERT: Another Major […]

Does the New Health Bill Make It Illegal for Private Insurers to Add New Clients?

One of the most shocking talking points floating around right-wing talk radio goes something like this: “Obama keeps saying that if you like your insurance, you can keep it, and that his plan won’t interfere with existing plans. But that’s a lie! Just look at page 16 of the health care bill online. You can […]

Rizzo on Keynes vs. Hayek

Mario Rizzo has another good post: While I am not a Keynesian, I would agree that the economics of Keynes (and Keynesian economics!) is more relevant to the present crisis than the graduate macroeconomics taught in most high-level departments today. I’d also suggest that the business cycle analysis of F.A. Hayek is also more relevant […]

Yglesias: "It Depends What Your Definition of ‘Justify’ Is"

I am getting a little impatient with all of these self-defined “progressives” who won’t admit their mistakes. (Obviously there are analogs of this habit in every movement; the progressives don’t have a monopoly here.) We all got a chuckle over Paul Krugman ridiculing the very IDEA that he could have called for a housing bubble, […]

Austrian Economics in Iraq, Part II

In a previous guest post, Edward Gonzales explained his experiences with government spending on an Iraqi community. In the present essay, Gonzales caters to our requests for more talk of blowing stuff up. –RPM ===============================Fighting an Insurgencyby Edward Gonzales While serving in Iraq I came to the conclusion that a thriving economy did more to […]

Evony’s Double Dip Marketing Strategy

Folks, I do not have anything to do with the content of the Google Ads. I certainly don’t sign up for the “Play now, my lord!” ads that seem to feature women with increasingly large busts as the weeks pass. It’s true, there’s a way I can go into Google Ads and tinker with it, […]

Two Ironic CNBC Headlines

In case you’re wondering, the only reason I torture myself by going to CNBC.com 5x a day is that I check the price of gold, and I continue to wait for the dollar to crash. But then when I’m there, I can’t help but look at the headlines. For example, right now I read that […]