Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Two Promising Developments During the Obama Years?

I am pretty pessimistic now about the next 8 years. (Yes I think Obama will be re-elected. FDR had no problem with re-election, and the economy was awful. But he was an amazing orator and could blame it on the previous Republican buffoon. Same today.) However, I do want to point to two positive trends, […]

The Bailout Nobody Talks About…

…is of the ratings agencies. Seriously, if you had to pick a single group who were most directly responsible not in terms of moral culpability, but in terms of their huge intellectual mistakes being directly tied to the housing bubble…well it’s gotta be the ratings agencies. I couldn’t find how many total employees Moody’s, Fitch, […]

Blast From the Past: Murphy Interviewed on "I Object!"

Wow I stumbled across these (1, 2, 3) on YouTube. It was from an interview I gave a while ago, sometime in early 2008 I believe. Note that I follow Ilana Mercer on Part 1 about 10:20 into it. We talk about the financial crisis, mortgage market, etc.

DeLong Blows Up Cochrane

I’m sorry kids, but I have to call it like I see it. And in this blog post Brad DeLong blows up Chicago’s John Cochrane. If you’re a guest on a talk radio show, I think it’s fine to say (as Cochrane does) that the government can’t create jobs because every dollar it spends ultimately […]

Fed’s Long-Term Bond Purchases: I Learn From Krugman

This is one of the few times on this blog where I’m not being sarcastic. Krugman actually makes some really good points in this blog post (HT2 Brad DeLong). Anyway, Krugman’s post is worth reading if for nothing else than this: “I think quantitative easing (it’s really qualitative easing, but I give up on trying […]

Mises Is a Barrel of Laughs

Good times at the Austrian Scholar’s Conference. Tom Woods sent me this. He loves it, but I suspect it’s due to his narcissism. I love his talks too, because he usually has an anecdote involving my naughtiness. True story: After this talk, a guy came up to me and was waving his arms around saying, […]

2009 Consumer Price Inflation Off to a 4.3% Start

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! I don’t trust the BLS’s “seasonal adjustments,” but at face value they say CPI rose 0.3% in January and then 0.4% in February, for an annualized rate of almost 4.3% for the new year. I think next year we will laugh that people were still worried about deflation at […]

Potpourri

* I defend the gold standard. * Rose and White warn the Fed that it is committing the opposite mistake that (according to Friedman) the Fed committed during the 1930s. * Arnold Kling has a great post about financial regulation. * Not sure what I’m saying here. * James Fogal sends the YouTube below. I […]