Economics

Archive for Economics

Target Acquired

This post is for the econo-geeks in the crowd. On Thursday my Mises Daily article will turn the tide on this Sumner–DeLong double-team on poor Arnold Kling (who threw in the towel much too prematurely). I am giving advance notice for people who want to read up on the exchanges, and also so Scott can […]

Bank Reserves: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

Ahh, I feel much better now. During the “office hours” for the Mises Academy “Anatomy of the Fed” class, I think I resolved something that had been bugging me for months. We all know the standard textbook story of fractional reserve money creation: The Fed buys assets and creates new reserves (“out of thin air”). […]

Potpourri

* You know how it wasn’t the Fed that caused the housing bubble, but those Chinese savers? Well Paul Krugman tells us it’s the same story with rising food prices–not the Fed’s fault, but those Chinese eaters. * Lew Rockwell has a really nice historical and psychological analysis of right-wing warhawks. (I.e. he offers plausible […]

Krugman Once Again Pines for the Bubbly

Unfazed by his 2006 (qualified) endorsement of Greenspan’s housing bubble, yesterday Krugman wrote: I’ve noticed many people overreacting to recent good economic news…I worry that policy makers will look at a few favorable economic indicators, decide that they no longer need to promote recovery, and take steps that send us sliding right back to the […]

Krugman In Support of the Hangover Theory?

I know, I know, I should stop trying to spot Krugman Kontradictions; the antinomies in his writing merely reflect my mortal mind’s attempt to absorb the infinite. Lately Krugman has been patting himself on the back for his skepticism about the viability of the euro. He finds it hilarious that two economists published a “duh, […]

Is Big Government a Myth?

My sources say no: Lately the supporters of big government have deployed an interesting twist to their arguments, claiming that it is a dirty right-wing lie that government has grown under the Obama administration. Unlike arguments over economic theory, surely this should be an objective exercise in looking up the facts. As we’ll see, yes […]

Surreal

I was picking my son up from the airport. Since he is a little guy, I had to get a pass and go through security, so that I could meet him at the gate as soon as he got off the plane. Because of the Northeast fiasco, I got to the airport really early in […]

“Have Events Vindicated Keynesian Models?”

This is a follow-up article to the one last week that concerned Jim Manzi’s debate with Karl Smith. In this new article, I walk through Paul Krugman’s citation of Mark Zandi’s forecasts. Krugman thought Zandi’s projections of the impact of the Obama stimulus–coupled with the ex-post record of actual GDP performance–was a great confirmation of […]