Economics

Archive for Economics

A Bunch of Drunks Must Have Edited Wikipedia

I am still trying to contain my disbelief that Paul Krugman has doubled down on his claim that Casey Mulligan must have gotten his views about New Keynesianism at a bar. Specifically, Noah Smith pointed out (and I paraphrase), “Gosh, well, I hate to disagree with the mighty Krugman here, but you know there are […]

Paul Krugman, Inflation Denier

In a recent blog post, Krugman provides some graphs of the things “we’re supposed to be worried about,” which he means sarcastically. Namely, bond market confidence and (price) inflation. Here are the charts: Then Krugman concludes: A naive observer might note that interest rates are low by historical standards, making you wonder why we’re obsessing […]

Auction Off the State

In this article I explain the logistics of the debt ceiling and how Geithner is going to buy himself a couple of more months. I then say: In all the hoopla over the debt ceiling, I haven’t heard many people raise the point that the government has a huge collection of assets that could be […]

Krugman Upset That Opponents Don’t Read Him Carefully

The older I get–from my wistful observation you would think I was in my 70s, wouldn’t you?–the more I agree that people criticize in others that which they (deep down) despise in themselves. For example, take Krugman today talking about Casey Mulligan: I’ve been asked for reactions to Casey Mulligan’s piece about the failure of […]

Murphy Twin Spin

On Monday I kept it real by discussing slushy drinks at Mises.org. Then today I ripped Paul Ryan’s budget plan in the WSJ MarketWatch blog. Left-leaners take note: I criticize Republicans too: Even using the Ryan plan’s own numbers, it doesn’t expect to actually balance the federal budget until 2038. In other words, even if […]

This Nick Rowe Is an All-Right Guy

I don’t know too much about him, but anybody who flatly tells Brad DeLong he made a mistake in discussing Walras’ Law in a comment involving the good “unobtainium”–and where the comment lives to tell about it–is a force in the geeconosphere.

Pour Another One, Barkeep

Arnold Kling vents: …I blame Stan Fischer (nice gentleman that he is), and Thomas Sargent (outstanding theorist that he is). And Olivier Blanchard (he’s not really responsible, but he is emblematic, and, well, I just feel like blaming him). They created a monoculture, they had cleverness but lacked wisdom, and in my opinion, the profession […]

Eat My Shorts, Landsburg

Steve Landsburg has started a new series called “D’oh,” in homage to Homer Simpson. Steve explains: When something is wrong on the Internet, bloggers love to pounce. But since no blogger is infallible, most of us can find ample fodder in our own past writing, if we go back and reread it with a sufficiently […]