Bob Murphy

Author Archive

The Costs of Carbon Legislation

This is the first of a two-part series on Krugman’s recent climate crusading in the NYT. An excerpt: [T]he real threat to humanity comes from governments growing ever more powerful in the name of fighting climate change. Paul Krugman’s recent attempts to justify these bold new measures ignore the IPCC itself, and even its “consensus” […]

EPJ Goes to Red Alert

Robert Wenzel over at EPJ has summoned everyone to battle stations. In a series of recent posts (1, 2, and 3) Wenzel links to some big guns (like Nassim Taleb) who are hunkering down for hyperinflation. If you’ve been following Wenzel, you know that he has a taste for starting fights, but he doesn’t like […]

Krugman vs. Murphy on Inflation: Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves

I’m not even going to bother linking to a post; any reader for more than a month knows that I am expecting significant price inflation in 2010, and I think we will see it kicking in later this year. (If people want to link to my specific predictions in the comments, feel free.) For a […]

The Power of Faith

Several years ago–when I was still an atheist–I wrote an article called “Believing Is Seeing.” My point was that even something as apparently “objective” as sensory perceptions can differ, based on the mindset of the person interpreting them. For example, in college I had a t-shirt business with my friend, and one of our first […]

Bruce Bartlett Rips Bush, then Turns Turret Towards Ron Paul

Peter Klein notifies us of this Bruce Bartlett column taking libertarians to task for their narrow focus on economic issues. (I note with irony that Bartlett’s two books listed in his bio are Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action and Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. I haven’t read either […]

Zeitgeist Addendum

Recently my cousin contacted me out of the blue (I hadn’t spoken with him in several years) and said that he had stumbled upon Austrian economics and was now voraciously consuming all kinds of material. We discussed the apathy of the average American–maybe I’ll start writing columns about AAA–and how frustrating/depressing/infuriating it was that so […]

President Obama: "Bob Murphy is a trusted advisor."

Well, he didn’t actually say that, but it must be what he’s thinking. My argument is bulletproof: (1) On May 27, EPJ wondered, “What can Geithner say to get China to continue to buy U.S. securities aggressively? Nothing.” (2) In the comments, I used my extensive training in game theory and Walt Disney to explain […]

Schadenfreude in Advertising

On the way from the Dallas-Forth Worth airport to the hotel, I saw a billboard saying: DID YOUR BANK TAKE A BAILOUT?We didn’t. I couldn’t make out the full name of the bank, because some trees blocked the bottom of the billboard. But I think it started with “Washington.” I was tempted to do a […]