Bob Murphy

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Another Aspect to the Mankiw Money Madness

Taylor Conant emailed me his post bringing up a quote from Rothbard regarding “hoarding.” It raises a good point that I had originally meant to discuss regarding Mankiw’s negative interest rate column, but I ran out of room in my Mises Daily. Anyway, the point is that people are increasing their demand for cash balances […]

GDP Down 6.1% in 1st Quarter

Here’s a depressing article…Some excerpts: The U.S. economy contracted at a surprisingly sharp 6.1 percent rate in the first quarter as exports and business inventories plummeted. The drop in gross domestic product…was much steeper than the 4.9 percent annual rate expected by economists and followed a 6.3 percent decline in the fourth quarter. GDP…has now […]

Answering Scott Sumner’s Questions About Austrians

Scott Sumner asks some great questions about the Austrian view of the financial crisis. I’ll do my best to balance brevity against comprehensiveness in my answers. 1. Why did NGDP collapse late last year? I’m not saying this is the whole story, and someone might plausibly say I’m confusing cause with effect, but I think […]

Think Twice News, on the Tea Parties

My old college / grad school buddy Jason Osborne is producing a series on the Tea Parties. Here is the first episode. Note: I’m not embedding it here, because if you go to YouTube and click the HD in the bottom right corner, you get a much nicer picture. I had recorded some audio comments […]

"Charles Krauthammer Day"

I have to admit, the leftists are more clever than their right-wing opponents. It’s too bad they don’t know how market economies work. This guy celebrates “Charles Krauthammer Day” (HT2 Brad DeLong) because back on April 22, 2003, Krauthammer said: DR. KRAUTHAMMER: Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had […]

Fed Misled By Libertarian Dogma

So argues Henry Kaufman in FT: The Federal Reserve has been hobbled by at least two major shortcomings that were primarily responsible for the current and several previous credit crises. Its failure to spot the importance of changing financial markets and its commitment to laisser faire economics were big mistakes and justify a fundamental overhaul […]

Mankiw Doesn’t Realize When He Has Been Beaten…

…and portrays me as an unrealistic ideologue. (In fairness, I implied Mankiw was crazy in my original Mises.org critique to which he was responding, so he handled it with class.) Mankiw first quotes me, saying that future inflation is not necessary to clear the market, because another solution would be for current prices to fall. […]

Another Northern Female Political Leader

Though this one is indisputably cool, as all partisans must agree. If you’re really important and work at a law firm or something, it’s probably not worth watching the whole thing, but be sure to listen to her discussion of the city’s financial situation. (Thanks to my wife Rachael for the link.)