Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Bernie Jones Interviews Murphy About Bailout

Details and audio link available here. This is actually a pretty neat interview, because he is not a right-wing fundamentalist like a lot of the hosts who interview me, and so I get to break it down for a “normal” person. Another benefit is this guy’s voice is awesome; I wonder if his brother is […]

Fed Uses New Power to Engineer a "Stealth Cut" in Interest Rates

Amongst its weaponry, the government just got fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to low interest rates–namely, the ability to pay interest on reserves kept at the Fed. I have been puzzling over this ever since it was announced. It seems innocuous enough; at worst, I thought it just gave the Fed […]

The United Socialist States of America

Dear readers, I grant you that my title is partly motivated by the urge for ratings (not that I want you to click on the nearby ads–of course not). But I really think that when future Rothbardians are throwing back drinks and speculate as to precisely when the United States crossed the line, and became […]

Great WSJ Article on Effects of Short-Sale Ban

Back on September 29, Arturo Bris had a great piece in the Wall Street Journal on the counterproductive effects of the SEC’s ban on short-selling financial stocks. As readers of this blog know full well, I have been pounding on the fact that the ban will actually make prices more volatile (here’s an example from […]

A Man, a Plan, and a Short-Selling Ban

Yes, I invented the title but no, it is not a palindrome. As usual, I wrote on a topic for different outlets, stressing different themes depending on the audience. EconLib is for super econ geeks, so I get fairly technical (at least by Internet standards) in this piece on the recent financial coup. For example: […]

"October 1, 2008: The Coup in America Took Place"

So argues Naomi Wolf (not to be confused with Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine). Now folks, Robert Wenzel sent me this 27 minute YouTube, and I wrote back, “What part should I listen to? I don’t have time for this whole thing.” And he just said, “The whole thing, man.” He was right. […]

Despite "Rescue," Markets Continue to Get Pummelled

I really don’t take pleasure in pointing this out, not the least reason being that I have a (very modest) retirement account in global equities. But we were told we needed to fork over $700 billion to reduce volatility and shore up confidence in the financial system. Well, as of this writing, the Dow is […]

Lifting the Offshore Ban [Apparently] Gave Immediate Price Relief

Here’s a link to a fairly impressive demonstration that might surprise those who thought the offshore ban had nothing to do with current prices. The money chart: NOTE: In the interests of complete academic honesty, I should note that after I wrote the above article, someone asked me if the price for natural gas looked […]