“How Bernanke Is Using the Printing Press to Win Friends and Influence People”
That’s the title of my talk at this Saturday’s Mises Circle in Phoenix. (I think they still have room if you are in the area.) CNBC has a very timely story today on this topic:
After two years of secrecy, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is disclosing key details about billions of dollars of risky investments it bought while rescuing insurance giant American International Group and supporting the sale of failed investment bank Bear Stearns.
Yikes that doesn’t sound very promising, does it? This is my favorite part of the article:
The Fed has said its secrecy was necessary to help rebuild confidence in the financial sector and stabilize the banking system.
Critics argue for more transparency given that the bailouts could have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
Identifying the assets “would compromise the New York Fed’s ability to maximize value for the taxpayer in the long-run,” New York Fed President William Dudley wrote this month.
It must be tough working for the Fed (or government). You clock in 8 hours a day, sometimes more, doing nothing but try to help the average American. And what do you get in return? Nothing but suspicion.
I mean, if you can’t trust Timothy Geithner to exercise discretion when engaging in multi-billion dollar backdoor bailouts, then where would we be?
Have You Signed Up Yet for My Online Business Cycle Class?
Over at Mises Daily we have another infomercial for the online class on Austrian business cycle that I’m teaching. It starts a week from today, i.e. Monday, April 12. Check out this cool screen shot:
At first I was wondering how the software etc. would work–keep in mind I had my Blackberry for at least 6 months before I set up my email on it!
But working with Grayson Lilburne, I am confident that this will be a great experience. As you can see, the interactivity is exactly what sci fi writers would have imagined a decade ago. Also, if you register you don’t need to download anything on your end to see the lectures, take the quizzes, etc.
Let me give you one last inducement to click the link and read more: You’ll get to see the collage they put together for the course, which I have informally titled, “King Kong Mises.”
He Is Risen!
Today is Easter. A simple declaration: I don’t think it’s a metaphor, or a really nice story with a happy ending. I truly believe that there was a man called Jesus from the town of Nazareth, who gave amazing sermons and showed an unbelievable knowledge of Jewish law despite his humble origins. He predicted his death and resurrection, and then when the Romans nailed him to a tree, Jesus died and rose from the dead.
I truly believe that is the most plausible explanation for the evidence we now have. For example, I don’t think it makes sense that his disciples would have hidden his body and then be willing to be persecuted and (in some cases) killed for spreading what they knew to be lies. And I don’t think Jesus could have gotten nearly as popular as he was, if he actually didn’t heal people in droves.
It doesn’t make sense to me that a guy who could speak such profound truths about human nature–such that they blow me away even now, two thousand years after he uttered them–was either lying about being the Messiah, or that his followers–who had witnessed such grace, wisdom, and majesty firsthand–then took it upon themselves to doctor up what he had said, with blasphemous lies.
There are people who “come back from the dead” all the time. You can watch documentaries on the History channel about it. A kid falls into a frozen lake, someone goes into cardiac arrest and gets brought back in the emergency room, etc. This is all perfectly “scientific” because a guy in a white coat with “MD” after his name tells us he saw it with his own eyes.
And yet when a bunch of fishermen are willing to be put to death for saying they saw the crucified Jesus walking around with their own eyes, our modern culture teaches us to reflexively respond, “That’s against the laws of physics. People don’t come back from the dead.”
Jesus is risen!
This is the only video I know to capture the proper spirit:
Must…Defend…Krugman…
…though it pains me. But c’mon guys, we don’t need to put words into Krugman’s mouth like this:
Krugman was NOT admitting there would be death panels. We can say he’s a naive fool for thinking we’ll limit the “advisory panels” (that can make binding decisions) to truly eradicating only ineffective treatments–and let’s leave aside the philosophical issue of what qualifies as an effective treatment–but he didn’t say there would be death panels.
All Krugman was saying was that it was inconsistent for Republicans to claim there would be death panels AND that ObamaCare would lead to escalating costs. In other words, if the Republicans are right and old people go sleepy time once they get too expensive, then shouldn’t ObamaCare limit medical expenses?
Note that I’m not even saying Krugman’s argument is valid, even insofar as it goes: I actually think we will see both escalating costs AND arbitrary government meddling to limit treatments as a way to contain the exploding deficits. But no matter what, you can’t say, “That lying Krugman now admits there will be death panels, after denying them so vigorously during the debate.”
Last point: If you think it’s fine to say that of Krugman, because it’s “basically” what he’s saying, or “close enough and in the end it’s what will happen so he should know better,” then congratulations because now you know how Paul Krugman views conservatives (and Austrian economists).
Glenn Greenwald on Democratic Hypocrisy Re: Military Tribunals
GG is really the gold standard when it comes to nonpartisan condemnation of lawlessness by government officials. The reason I like him so much, is that I disagree strongly with his views on economic matters, so I’m sure I don’t just admire him because we agree on things. In a post commenting on Robert Gibbs’ statement that the Obama White House was happy with either civilian trials or military tribunals for terrorism detainees, Greenwald says:
The fact that Robert Gibbs went on MSNBC today and explicitly defended military commissions as just underscores the real point here: the continuation and affirmative embrace of the Bush/Cheney civil liberties template by the Obama administration has converted that approach from what it once was (controversial right-wing radicalism) into what it now is (uncontroversial bipartisan consensus). That’s why Robert Gibbs goes on television and defends the denial of civilian trials, which were once deemed by Democrats to be a Grave Assault on the Constitution. That conversion of what were once Bush/Cheney Assaults on the Constitution into bipartisan consensus is, by far, the most significant and long-lasting impact Obama has had in this area.
Bob “Malcolm X” Murphy
I just sent in my Census form–a day late. And I just filled out the number of people, and checked the box indicating that there were no other people living here on April 1.
But I didn’t fill out our names or ethnicities. That’s how I roll.
Fight the power!
A One-Time Hassle on the Comments
It must be because I’m so darn popular now, but we’ve been getting hit with spam. And you can’t even see it all, because a ton of it fills up the older posts.
Rather than moderate everything and stifle debate, my compromise is that–if I set it up properly–you have to now get your comment approved once by me, and then you are on the Safe list.
McArdle Plays Ezra Klein’s Game on Health Legislation–and Probably Wins
In the past I was rather harsh with Megan McArdle, I think for two reasons:
(1) People brought her to my attention when she would discuss Austrian business cycle theory, which is a very sensitive subject with me, and
(2) The only other time I heard about McArdle’s posts, was from a gushing Tyler Cowen link, which made me jealous. (This was before I decided to take my marbles out of MarginalRevolution and go back to my Austro-libertarian Fortress of Solitude.)
But I’ve been reading her blog occasionally over the last few months, and on some subjects she is really good. She can hit on an angle that her buddies Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, etc. have overlooked, and then she will keep digging up research / data to back them into a corner.
Take for example the health insurance legislation. (BTW, I am not comfortable with any term for this thing. I don’t want to call it “health care reform,” because that’s inaccurate on at least 2 counts. So for now, it’s the awkward “health insurance legislation.”) Here’s McArdle:
Ezra Klein says that he has made testable predictions about the future of health care: to wit, that in twenty years we will have peer reviewed research showing that health care reform has saved tens of thousands of lives. I didn’t mean to single out Ezra in particular; he is but one of many enthusiastic pundit advocates for this bill from whom I would like to see some criteria for judging success or failure. But I’m glad he’s stepping up with some numbers.
…
Given the magnitude of the claims about the uninsured, however, I don’t think we need to wait for 2030, or peer review. If you believe that 45,000 people in this country die from lack of insurance every year–a figure that Ezra, among many, many other commentators, has treated seriously–then conservatively, by 2030, we should have something like 30,000 fewer lives lost every year in the 18-64 age group.
…
That’s a 5% drop in mortality–a huge drop against the background rates. Even if you only think that the correct number of the uninsured is 20,000 a year, you should believe that there will be a drop that is, so to speak, visible to the naked eye.
If you think that the number will be much, much smaller than that–so small that only tens of thousands of lives will be saved in fifteen years–then it seems to me that you’re saying that those estimates were radically off, by a factor of five or more. Given just how prominent those numbers were in the debate, that’s kind of a problem. It’s an even bigger problem because a few thousand deaths a year will not really be distinguishable from statistical noise.
But the biggest problem is how much we’d then be spending per year to get this added benefit. I think it’s entirely plausible that we’ll be saving 3,000 people a year. But 3,000 people a year, at a cost of $200 billion, is almost $70 million per life saved. [Bold added.–RPM]
Good stuff. BTW she has been making this particular point for some time now. So I’m thinking our progressive friends haven’t answered it.
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