Economics

Archive for Economics

Questions for Keynesians

1) When it comes to the “zero lower bound,” what’s the relevant maturity? Scott Sumner and Tyler Cowen are celebrating the end of the liquidity trap, but their argument makes no sense to me: Short-term Treasury yields are still basically zero, and long-term yields were never near zero. But then, if the Keynesian answer is […]

Federal Government Changes Own Recommended Discount Rate When It Comes to Climate Change

[UPDATE below.] As I explained when the May update came out, the Obama Administration’s “working group” on the “social cost of carbon” reports figures that vary crucially depending on the discount rate we choose. According to the updated document, the negative externality associated with one ton of carbon dioxide emissions in the year 2010 was: […]

Does Whole Life Insurance Inefficiently Mix Two Goals?

[NOTE: The following article originally ran in the June 2013 issue of the Lara-Murphy Report.–RPM] Does Whole Life Insurance Inefficiently Mix Two Goals? by Robert P. Murphy June 2013 In last month’s issue of the Lara-Murphy Report, I explained my own history with Nelson Nash’s Infinite Banking Concept (IBC). IBC allows you to “become your […]

Krugman Is Very Influential–Except When It Comes to Economic Policy

Way way way back on July 3, Krugman wrote a post with the sarcastic title “Nobody Pays Any Attention to What I Say.” Here’s the gist of it: Or that’s what people keep telling me. Actually, one of the odd but revealing things about modern conservatives is the way they alternate between paranoia about the […]

The Fed’s Equity

Given the recent rise in Treasury yields, I asked Caitlin Long (an Austrian at Morgan Stanley) if they had reevaluated the Fed’s equity. She said (and gave me permission to relay to you folks) that as of mid-June, just over half of the mark-to-market cushion remained. That means an additional 80bps shift in the yield […]

Rental Car Gas Options

What’s the story with these options? I took a photo at my recent trip to a car rental place: So if you read the fine print–or if you just use common sense and figure the car rental place isn’t going to sell you gas at below-market prices–then it looks like pre-paying for a “full tank […]