Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Congresswoman Bachmann Stumps Geithner and Bernanke

I had heard lots of people praising her, but until Robert Wenzel posted the below video on his site, I hadn’t actually watched Michele Bachmann asking Treasury Secretary Geithner and then Fed Chair Ben Bernanke a simple question: “Can you point to me where in the Constitution it gives you the authority to do these […]

Worried About Inflation? Just Let the Fed Float Its Own Debt

I tease him a lot, but Robert Wenzel is right when he gloats that he has been blogging about the real reason the Fed wants to issue debt. (I recall much more pedigreed economists being baffled by the Fed’s request.) So anyway, SF Fed Bank President Janet Yellen confirms Wenzel’s theory: The Fed wants to […]

The Threat of Hyper-Depression

I have another cute and cuddly piece at the Daily Reckoning today. Some excerpts: [T]he country is currently headed straight into a period of very rapid price hikes and a very bad recession. It would not surprise me at all if the national unemployment rate and the annualized rate of consumer price inflation both broke […]

The Government Is Not Going to Drastically Curb Carbon Emissions

I don’t think the U.S. government is actually going to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, I think it is going to raise trillions of dollars that it then doles back out to industry. So the identities of carbon emitters will certainly shift from the political out groups to the connected people, but I don’t […]

Man Survives Both A-Bombs

Tyler Cowen tips us off to this: Mr. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He returned to Nagasaki, his hometown, before the second attack, officials said. I can’t decide how I want to crack a joke about this. […]

EU President: US Spending Is the "Way to Hell"

That’s the actual headline of this CNBC story. I think if European leaders* are telling your government it’s spending too much, people should sit up and take notice. * And I realize Czechoslovakia has an interesting political landscape…

How Much Should Parents Propagandize Their Kids?

This is a tough one. On the one hand, I don’t want my son (our only child) thinking he has to lead a libertarian revolution, but on the other hand, I expect him to do great things with his life. But I think I would be just as pleased to see him become a (great) […]

An Oldie But Goodie

Because I have a new book coming that (I hope) will appeal to conservative fans of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, I reviewed my LvMI talk about my first book. I was worried that the speech–entitled (not by me) “How I Bamboozled Thousands of Conservatives Into Thinking Like Anarchists”–would turn these people off once I […]