Economics

Archive for Economics

Follow-Up on Ron Paul’s Proposal to Cancel the Fed’s Treasury Holdings

Lew Rockwell wrote a response to my Mises Daily article on Ron Paul’s proposal. I’ll address some of his criticisms one at a time, though not in the order Rockwell listed them: 4. The discussion in the next-to-the last section claiming that Baker’s proposal to raise reserve requirements is tantamount to “stealing money from the […]

Taking on the Confidence Fairy

In today’s article at Mises, I am so bold as to challenge Krugman’s analysis even from the point of view of Keynesian international trade. (That’s like Krugman telling me how bald guys should dress.) That part of the story is a bit complex, so I won’t reproduce it here. But on another note, I think […]

Mises Was a Keynesian Too, Apparently

I am eager to see how the anti-Keynesians explain this one away–but they are a clever bunch, and I know they will come up with an argument. Let’s set the scene: In this post, I pointed out that because they didn’t want to give Keynes an inch, some modern Austrians were forced to deny that […]

Morality By Popularity Contest

I don’t mind the smugness of this Daily Beast piece (HT2 LRC); that’s to be expected. After all, it does sound like a crackpot idea to default on the federal debt, if you haven’t thought about the issue too much. So I don’t mind the average pundit’s incredulity that people could be openly advocating default. […]

Murphy-Kuehn Tag-Team on Wenzel

I am apparently a double agent, because after my alliance with Brad DeLong, I now join forces with Daniel Kuehn to pin down Bob Wenzel in a merciless crossfire. After I quoted what seemed to me to be an obvious argument in favor of Keynes’ view of interest, Bob Wenzel responded as a bull to […]

Savings versus Investment

This is actually a very subtle issue, because at first blush you’d think the Austrians (adherents to Say’s Law-type reasoning in general) would say that savings always equals investment, whereas those wacky Keynesians would think the two could be different. Yet actually, it is Keynes who insists in the GT that savings necessarily equals investment, […]

Talk on Economics to The Delphian School

On November 12, 2010 I gave a talk to The Delphian School, a boarding school in Oregon which was an extraordinary thing to behold. I couldn’t believe how mature the students were, and non-traditional the schooling environment was. This is a fairly unique talk, so you might have this play in the background since I […]

Ron Paul’s Idea to Repudiate the Fed’s Debt Holdings

It’s nowhere near the demand for me to comment on Bitcoin–that article is still forthcoming; it has turned into my Apocalypse Now–but a lot of people were asking what I thought about Ron Paul’s proposal for the Treasury to cancel the debt held by the Fed. So here ya go. An excerpt that I want […]