My Exhaustive (Exhausting?) Review of Stephanie Kelton’s New MMT Book
Jeff Deist urged me to review this, and I’m glad he did. An excerpt:
I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that Stephanie Kelton—economics professor at Stony Brook and advisor to the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign—has written a book on modern monetary theory (MMT) that is very readable and will strike many readers as persuasive and clever. The bad news is that Stephanie Kelton has written a book on MMT that is very readable and will strike many readers as persuasive and clever.
BMS ep 124: How to Defund the Police, and Eyewitness Account of CHAZ
This is one of the rare times when my areas of expertise are actually in popular demand. (The other time was when capital theory briefly became cool when Piketty’s book came out.)
I first spend an hour or so laying out the theory of how to think about “defund the police.” Then I interview Whitney Davis, a Rothbardian who happens to live down the street from CHAZ. Here’s the audio, and below is the video.
Potpourri
==> I know some libertarians still think masks are a sham, but FYI here is Fauci admitting the US government deliberately misled Americans early on, in order to reserve masks for health care workers. (Many of us were cynically speculating that this is what happened, but here he admits it.)
==> Speaking of masks, here is Nassim Taleb on why a lot of commentary is missing the point. E.g.: Even if masks only reduce the probability of transmission by x%, if two people are wearing them, then there is a compound effect.
==> The latest installment in my series on Money Mechanics for Mises. This one is on the Keynesian revolution.
==> My q&a with Ryan McMaken at Mises.org on the Fed.
==> A great Matt Taibbi article on how the media is destroying itself by canceling people who even modestly question some of the extreme justifications for violence in the name of BLM. Look at some of the examples.
==> A great Glenn Greenwald article on how public health officials totally reversed themselves about mass gatherings and coronavirus, once the protests began. Some of these quotes are shocking.
==> I actually know this guy whom Ben Swann interviews about the Infinite Banking Concept. For those interested enough to watch it, please give me your honest feedback.
Murphy Twin Spin
==> The final episode of Contra Krugman. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.
==> In the latest Bob Murphy Show, I discuss flaws with economists trying to justify the coronavirus lockdowns on cost/benefit grounds.
Potpourri
==> Contra Krugman ep. 224 contains a major announcement, which some of you may not have heard yet…
==> Rob Bradley on “pandemic oil policy.”
==> As if things couldn’t get any worse: Americans are saving too much.
==> My high school classmate went on to become a medical doctor, and here is his screencast laying out some of the issues in home-testing for Covid-19. Bottom line: He thinks they are still too unreliable, though in a follow-up he says they are improving.
Bob Murphy Show ep. 122: Alex Salter on the Empty Slogan “State Capacity,” and the Infamous Somalia Challenge
Audio here, video below:
Potpourri
==> Holy crap, look at the turn this interview with Richard Epstein ends up taking.
==> CDC makes really dumb mistake (?) by mixing results of different types of corona tests.
==> Contrary to most online libertarians, I have been beating the pro-mask (for vulnerable people and any non-coerced businesses) drum for a while, so let me acknowledge that my go-to mainstream medical organization, CIDRAP, is now getting iffy about it. I still suspect a lot of this is driven by, “Save the masks for health care workers,” but I can’t deny that CIDRAP published something against mask policies.
==> To give you an example of some of the misleading anti-mask stuff: Check out this scientific article. They come out against masks, and yet their own results show that even the surgical mask reduced how much virus ended up in the petri dish. The people pushing masks aren’t saying, “Even a cloth mask will protect you for sure,” rather they are saying, “It reduces the amount of virus an infected person can pump out, so widespread masking in crowded areas will reduce the transmission rate.” This study’s results totally support that, even though the authors give conclusions that bolster those saying, “Science doesn’t support masks.”
BMS ep 121: Michael Boldin on Hanging Out With 2 Live Crew and Sticking It to the NSA
Audio here, video below:
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