Bob Murphy

Author Archive

A Better Showing

Before I was caught doing Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant,” and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, I am not even going to link to it. But in the below it sounds much better. Even here, though, I swear the iPhone (or whatever) is not doing it justice. I had people who weren’t even […]

Commodity Traders Understand Economics 101

Gold jumped up about $50/oz. because of the Fed’s announcement to buy $300 billion in long-term U.S. government debt. I’m glad to see the gold traders get it. We are dangerously close to the situation where the Fed creates money out of thin air and then “loans” it directly to the Treasury to finance the […]

Great Depression II

OK I am comfortable now predicting that this will be the Great Depression II. I am not claiming that the standard stats will rival those of the 1930s. But folks, this is insane. This is not, “Oh we gotta just wait for the market to find its bottom. And yeah, there might be a few […]

Tom Pyle vs. Carbon Tax

Tom Pyle, president of IER (and note: my boss there), has a good op ed on NRO today. I liked it because he acknowledged the pros of a carbon tax (versus cap-and-trade), but still says: Economists rarely agree on the past, and never on the future. But in the present debate over carbon taxes, a […]

Ron Paul vs. Borat

Well not really, but it sounds the same (HT2LRC). What’s funny is that if this had come out during the primaries, I think a lot more Republicans would’ve voted for Paul. I’m not saying that with pride, but I think a lot of older Republicans would say, “Heh this guy is old school” to hear […]

Chuck Grassley Apparently Doesn’t Take Columbine Seriously

I don’t know all that much about him, so maybe usually he’s a really cool guy. But I find it very disturbing that Senator Chuck Grassley would hop on the anti-Wall Street bandwagon by recommending that AIG execs either resign or commit suicide. Yeah yeah, I know, he’s “just kidding.” But he doesn’t say he’s […]

I’m Huge

Incidentally, the grunting is mostly for show. My manager told me I would get more sponsors that way.

Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?, Part 17

I think I’ve hit another aspect of it. (Note that I’m not sure if any of the mysteries of God can ever be fully explained while you still have a human body. Rather, I think what happens is that they gradually make more and more sense to you if you continue meditating on them. But […]