Economics

Archive for Economics

Republicans Flirt With Technical Default

This surprises me. Some Republicans are openly talking about missing a few interest payments, if it would get the Democrats to agree to bigger spending cuts. Fortunately David Frum is there to wag his finger at the children. I don’t understand why the younger Republicans don’t start demanding widespread asset sales. I would think that […]

In Economics, Believing Is Seeing

On NPR today there was a market commentary by some guy from Wharton. Early on he said something like, “We’ve been in this recession for so long, it’s clear that the economy is not going to just fix itself.” Then he went on to call for more stimulus. And people make fun of Mises for […]

Our Continuing Slump

[UPDATE below.] What?! In this article I actually claim that the Austrians have held their own against the Keynesians when it comes to steering through the choppy waters of the housing boom and now bust. I imagine Daniel Kuehn and some of the other frequent commenters here will not agree. One thing that I didn’t […]

The End of QE2 and Interest Rates

Hmm another Krugman Kontradiction? Possibly, though if so, not as bad as some of the others I’ve documented. When (understandably) running a victory lap recently about his predictions on US interest rates compared to the deficit hawks, Krugman said that they came up with a bunch of ad hoc explanations after the fact, for why […]

Murphy Twin Spin on International Trade and Currencies

To get you warmed up, I tell people to stop worrying about the yuan in the Freeman. An excerpt: When Krugman and others complain about the Chinese keeping their currency “artificially weak,” what they really mean is that the Federal Reserve—under both Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke—has been out-inflating the rest of the world. Under […]

Is Krugman a Keynesian?

I had toyed with the idea of mentioning that the day after I mentioned here that Austrians theory could explain a stock market crash better than the Keynesians, the stock market fell more than 2 percent. But I think some of my critics wouldn’t have realized I was being humorous, so I rejected the idea… […]

Did the People Reject the Gold Standard?

When I was googling something on the classical gold standard, I came across Brad DeLong’s book (?) on the economic history of the 20th century. In his discussion of the gold standard before World War I, he writes: It is important to recognize that the gold standard was a historically-specific institution. The cornerstone of the […]

Pessimism

I think it’s safe to say that if the stock market crashes within the next 2 years or so, that both Austrians and Keynesians (as well as MMTers) are going to say, “We told you so.” Now I know very well the reasons I think that may happen. Look at the chart of the S&P […]