Bob Murphy

Author Archive

"OK If We Can’t Borrow $700 Billion, We’ll Just Print $630 Billion!"

Or so our financial wizards seem to be saying. Here’s a Bloomberg article title we haven’t seen before: “Fed Pumps Further $630 Billion into Financial System.” (HT2EPJ)

House Rejects Bailout Plan!!

This is great stuff. First the Democrats let the offshore ban expire, and now they don’t ram through the Paulson Plan. Will wonders never cease? I still think some version of this is going to happen, but I admit that I thought it was a done deal after the Sunday announcements.

Remarks from a Wall Street Big Gun

My buddy on Wall Street wrote to me in an email saying: I have been catching myself thinking the last few weeks…”I will never invest in a financial institution.” Why? It seems that if they are insolvent the government just seizes them. If other kinds of companies go bankrupt there are still contracts, property rights […]

Inside Fed Baseball, from Bill Barnett

I am on a discussion list of Austrian economists, and Bill Barnett (economics professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, when it’s not underwater) posted the following, which I reprint with his permission: The Fed’s consolidated balance sheet…and its data on reserves and the monetary base…reveal several interesting points, not limited to the following: The […]

"Mad Money" Senior Writer Wants Credit for Bailout

Aww, no fair! Paulson’s getting all the credit for the Great Bank Robbery of 2008! So says one of Jim Cramer’s henchmen. (Note: I no longer read or listen to Cramer AT ALL, but this is a loophole since I’m not quoting him directly.) Anyway listen to this guy: I know we’ve spent every night […]

Monday Monday…Can We Trust This Day?

I am very anxious to see what happens to the stock market and gold/silver prices today, now that the Great Bank Robbery of 2008 has gone through. Let’s suppose the market tanks more than 3% this week, and another big institution goes under. Would the government say, “Hmm, I guess our bailout didn’t work after […]

Snapshot of Free Advice Reader Profile

Wow it’s already been more than a month since the Little Blog That Could opened up shop. I’m proud to say that in this brief time, we’ve overseen the biggest theft in world history. But snap out of it, guys, we still have the whole second half! Anyway, I was browsing the stats from my […]

Economist Robert Murphy Endorses the Bailout (!!)

From this Boston Herald column: Not even economists and financial experts could agree on the plan’s wisdom and probability of success, if the $700 billion package is approved. Some say the bailout could easily cost more than $1 trillion. Peter Cohan, a venture capitalist and president of Peter Cohan & Associates in Marlboro, said Paulson’s […]