Economics

Archive for Economics

Dean Baker Is Not Very Creative

I’m on the road all week, so blogging will be sparse. Yet I couldn’t let this one go. In this post, Dean Baker lectures Joe Scarborough for attacking the Obama stimulus package. Baker writes: The best evidence here is the assessment of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from March of 2009. The reason this analysis […]

Capitalism Needs Losses, Too

This was the second talk I gave to a group of about 100 high school students in Houston a little while ago. I opened the event with, “The Social Function of Profits,” then Peter Klein followed with, “Big Business: Friend or Foe,” and I wrapped up with this one. Since I’m talking to high school […]

Krugman: Government Spending Surged If It Helps My Case, Otherwise It’s a Dirty Right-Wing Myth

[UPDATE below.] I am really busy with work deadlines, so not much blogging for another two weeks or so. But in the meantime, I wanted to point something out, though I don’t have time to buttress my claims with links. Here is my observation: Paul Krugman will say that government spending has surged under Obama […]

Waldman Thinks Bernanke Will Go for (Flawed) Exit #1

Way back in March 2011, I had an article at Mises.org critiquing three “exit strategies” people had discussed for the Fed. The first was paying higher interest on excess reserves. Here was my analysis: The option that Bernanke himself frequently mentions is the Fed’s ability to offer higher interest rates on excess reserves. Currently, if […]

Potpourri

==> An interesting inventory at IER of “federal assets above and below ground.” I didn’t do this particular blog post, but I think it draws on some numbers I compiled in the past. This notion that if the feds don’t get to raise the debt ceiling, they have no choice but to cut PBS and […]

A Foreign Scholar Goes to the Barricades for Liberty

Hasting Chen has decided to translate my introductory textbook, Lessons for the Young Economist, into Chinese. He shared with me a memo he sent to his team, which I reproduce with permission: Although this project falls largely on my shoulder, as a piece of encouragement, though, I would like to disclose my thoughts of the […]

While I Was Bogged Down With Keynesians, Sumner Solidifies His Power Grab

Oh man, have you kids been checking in with Scott Sumner lately? ==> Famous monetary economist Frederic Mishkin has now been seduced by the Dark Side. ==> Sumner thinks the trillion dollar coin is bad for the Democrats politically, but if Obama “ignores my advice and mints the coin anyway, I’ll strongly support the move […]

Can Fiscal Austerity Work With Tight Money?

[Disclaimer: Bob Wenzel doesn’t like me using the term “fiscal austerity,” since he thinks the public associates it with jacking up taxes and cutting social programs in order to bail out bankers. He has a point, but it will just get too cumbersome in this post if I try to come up with some alternate […]