Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Invasion of the Purchasing Power Snatchers

Scott Sumner is a tragic hero. Check out his awesome FAQ (which he confusingly calls “FAQs”); so much brilliance and yet it goes awry because of his obsession with NGDP (nominal gross domestic product) growth. Let me give you a good example. In a recent (and characteristically awesome) post, Scott goes through and documents just […]

The Policeman Is Not Your Friend, Part 187

The below picture is from Monday’s WSJ article about unions and Wal-Mart: So, should we be concerned that the jacked officer’s uniform appears to have “SMASH” under the badge?!

Final Fulminations From FreedomFest

I flew back from FreedomFest Sunday, but believe it or not I actually have to work to earn money, and so I haven’t had time to blog about the festivities till now. Some remarks: * Tom Woods and Gene Epstein absolutely destroyed John Fund and Warren Coats regarding their Friday debate, “Fed Up With the […]

Waxman-Markey Causes Civil War on the Left

The head of NASA’s Goddard program Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, was one of the first climate scientists to raise the alarm over global warming. He has recently written [.pdf] that unless we reduce atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to 350 ppm (they’re currently at 387 ppm), we may be handing our descendants a climate […]

Mish Should Ditch His Deflation Fears

So I argue in today’s Mises Daily: Whatever happens to the absolute levels of various prices, certainly the relative prices of hard commodities and staples will rise, compared to the prices of mortgage-backed securities and commercial paper issued by a coal-based utility company. Even if the “debt deflation” scenario is generally right, the absolute effect […]

Two Audio Suggestions

* Here is my talk [.mp3] to Christ Presbyterian Church (in New Braunfels, TX). The topic was the Great Depression, then and now. I think this was the biggest crowd I have given a talk to, except for my high school graduation. There were more than 250 people at this thing, I believe. Also, hands […]

Pussyfooting Around Evil

In a recent post on John Calvin, Tyler Cowen wrote something that caught my eye: “Here is one reason why there is “evil” in the world…” If you go read it in context, Tyler isn’t (I don’t believe) putting “evil” in quotation marks to mean “evil as Calvin defines the term.” No, I think Tyler […]

Krugman: "Bob Murphy’s Novel Thesis Is Right!"

OK that’s not quite what he said, but look: In this post Krugman argues that, heh heh, if you naively look at the data, heh heh, it seems that the Fed cutting interest rates actually hurts the economy. And so the Chicago School monetarists are being hypocritical when they condemn fiscal stimulus, because their own […]