Economics

Archive for Economics

Selling Fort Knox: A Distinction Without a Difference?

Robert Wenzel doesn’t agree with Ron Paul and others (like me) that the US government should sell off its gold in order to close the deficit. Wenzel writes: Bottom line, it was a series of steps taken by the United States government to obliterate the connection between those holding dollars and their legitimate claim on […]

Question for David Beckworth

David Beckworth is the poor man’s Scott Sumner, now that the Great Insane One has retired. (Scott himself knows that I say that with respect.) David actually knows quite a bit of Misesian theory (he studied under George Selgin), and so in that respect his defense of Bernanke makes him the Count Dooku of Austrian […]

Is Insider Trading Really a Crime?

My sources say no: [S]uppose a Wall Street trader is at the bar and overhears an executive on his cell phone discussing some good news for the Acme Corporation. The trader then rushes to buy 1,000 shares of the stock, which is currently selling for $10. When the news becomes public, the stock jumps to […]

A Satisfied Customer

I recently got this email from Ryan, reproduced below with permission. I like reading his email a lot more than the comments from David S. on this blog. Good afternoon Dr. Murphy, I am currently reading your book (as we speak in fact) Lessons for the Young Economist and am currently on page 42. Ever […]

Potpourri

* Silas Barta smells a rat in the official inflation numbers. * Ha ha, those Austrian economists teach at small schools and have funny names for their dogs. QED. * I have written in several places that the Fed is responsible (at least in part) for rising commodity prices and oil in particular. Jerry Taylor […]

AP Lerner Explains Alleged Crowding Out Chart

Well, if it had turned out the other way, I certainly would have blogged it, so I feel compelled to report that frequent commenter and MMT defender “AP Lerner” poked a big hole in the comments of my previous post. Recall that I had posted a chart showing that Gross Private Domestic Investment tracked the […]

Final Thoughts on MMT

[UPDATE below.] I kept telling myself that I didn’t have a problem, that I could stop reading the comments in this post whenever I wanted. Well I think I need to go cold turkey. So let me make three main concluding points: POINT #1: The accounting identities don’t prove the things that the MMTers think […]

My Critique of MMT

…is up at Mises.org. An excerpt: According to many proponents of MMT, “deficits don’t matter” when a sovereign government can issue its own fiat currency, and all the hand wringing over the government’s solvency is absurd. In fact, the MMTers claim that given the reality of a US trade deficit, a sharp drop in the […]