Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Vernon Smith Calls Bailout Scheme "Ridiculous"

Here at Free Advice, we have been rather skeptical of the Paulson Plan, to say the least. In addition to its naked theft of $700 billion (at least) from taxpayers, the plan makes no sense economically. I.e. we are paying hundreds of billions for the government to kick the economy while it’s down. To add […]

Paulson Should Take a Mulligan

Pepe alerted me to Casey Mulligan’s blog. Some awesome stuff here, especially on the bogus crisis (outside of financial sector). If you’re a bailout junkie, I encourage you to just go to his blog and start scrolling. But for now, let’s focus on a recent post where he explains how incredibly stupid the new plan […]

During Times of Crisis, People Turn to the Austrians

Jonathan M. brought the below chart to my attention. Apparently people are dissatisfied with the neo-Keynesian and supply-side explanations of what the heck is happening–probably because none of these folks saw it coming. The title didn’t come through in the picture link, but it is Google’s report on how many people are searching for “austrian […]

Credit Crunch Bogus? Yea and Nay

For the first time today, I actually thought that maybe this “credit crunch” isn’t a pure invention* of Paulson and a few (other) investment bankers. Here’s a news story saying that grain is piling up in Canadian ports, because exporters don’t trust the banks backing up their foreign buyers. On the other hand, “English Bob” […]

"Radical Measures May Be in the Wings"

So says a CNBC headline, as the market is down more than 2% on the day. Oh, it is accompanied by the below picture. If I were adept at PhotoShop, I would put in some horns and the Ring of Power. UPDATE: Ben Osborne offers the following in the comments:

Me Myself and Murphy

A Friday twin spin for you… Here’s Art Carden and me talking about the SEC ban on short-selling, and here’s my college radio interview when I went to Penn State a few weeks ago. What is interesting is this radio host grills me for about 10 minutes on whether speculators are driving up oil prices. […]

Markets Get Crushed Again

Well, for what it’s worth, people in the stock market are at least starting to wake up to the fact that a printing press isn’t nearly as useful as those replicators in Star Trek (the episodes with Patrick Stewart, not the earlier ones with William Shatner). The S&P 500 lost 7.62% TODAY, and is down […]

A Very Scary NYT Article On Involuntary Acquisition of Equity (aka Stealing)

I have read some scary NYT articles, but I think I just found the winner (HT2EPJ). Just try to remember what it was like back in, oh, say, August 2007. Try to remember what types of things the government of the USA could and could not do. Now check out these excerpts: WASHINGTON — Having […]