Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Mish Solves the Credit Crunch

Commenting on the Paulson offer to big banks that couldn’t be refused, Mish says: If the goal is to get LIBOR down, then I propose the following: Bank of America lends money to Citigroup who lends money to Wells Fargo who lends money to JPMorgan who lends money to Bank of America. We can have […]

New PPI Numbers: More BS from the BLS?

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) came out with a report saying that gasoline prices had declined 4.6% from March to April. Now this seemed insane, since, well, gasoline prices had been breaking record highs (and continued to do so into the summer). At first I suspected an outright lie, but then […]

"The Government Is Contributing to the Panic"

This is a great WSJ piece from a few days ago. The author, Yale law professor Jonathan Macey, stresses a point that I haven’t seen elsewhere, namely that the SEC makes firms vulnerable to short-sellers: For years the SEC has hampered companies’ ability to protect themselves from manipulation by short-sellers. The most effective way for […]

Economic and Climate Models

I compare and contrast here. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that some commenters here will wonder what business I have writing on this topic.

Some Specificity on the Involuntary Billions Going Into Healthy Banks

Robert Wenzel explains: Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were told they would each get $25 billion; Bank of America and Wells Fargo, $20 billion each (plus an additional $5 billion for their recent acquisitions); Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, $10 billion each, with Bank of New York Mellon and State Street each receiving $2 to 3 […]

"Biggest One-Day Surge in the Stock Market Since 1933"

So reads the headline at CNBC, after an 11% day. And we all know that 1933 was the light at the end of the tunnel.

Kashkari: Treasury Plan Will Inject Capital Into Healthy Banks

The storyline is changing so fast, that even expert conspiracy theorists like Robert Wenzel and me are having trouble keeping up with it. Now, ex-Goldman honcho Neel Kashkari (tapped by Paulson to distribute the $700 billion booty) explains that the Treasury plan to recapitalize banks will focus on healthy institutions. Everyone got that? Remember, the […]

Irving Fisher on Fox News Tells Everyone Not to Panic

This is almost too good to be true, like how you could listen to Bill Hicks rip Bush’s invasion of Iraq even though Hicks was long dead.* (HT2 Tim Swanson.) * Hicks’ comedy routine was based on the first Gulf War, but all the people were the same so it carried over almost seamlessly. The […]