Economics

Archive for Economics

Murphy, Former Disciple of Abba Lerner

I think I’ve got this debt stuff resolved, after spending about a week on an intellectual odyssey. This is truly one of the biggest shifts in my thinking on something that I thought I had down pat, in my life. First, let’s go to Nick Rowe’s taxonomy of the various positions one could hold on […]

Breaking News…Murphy Surges in the Geeconosphere

The evangelical blogger from Nashville is surprising everyone by surging in the discussions of government debt. I don’t have time to write it up right now–got my mind on my money and my money on my mind–but check out the comments in this Landsburg post to see me on the cusp of solving this. I […]

A Burdensome Dialog on Debt

I can’t work until the Iowa results are in. So, consider the following dialog: BOB: (writing checks) Man, this is painful. I have to write two $1,000 debt payments this month. Fortunately, only one is really a burden, since I owe the other one to myself. STEVE: What do you mean? BOB: Well, the one […]

Potpourri

I’m still buried with “day job” work, but at this point I have so many tabs on my Firefox browser that it’s slowing me down. So this post is an investment in my future productivity, see. * Glenn Greenwald once again delivers a very fair assessment of the political culture. It’s really impressive that GG […]

The Laureates Need to Give More After-Dinner Talks

Tony sends this astounding video. Thinking that maybe the person who cut it up was being unfair to recent economic Nobel (Memorial) laureates Christopher Sims and/or Thomas Sargent, I watched the second video, which isolates Sargent’s full reply. (I didn’t see a link for Sims’ full response.) Uh, it’s not pretty. Let me repeat: Every […]

European Bond Bask

Krugman is at it again, arguing that the (now visible) bond vigilantes who are attacking Europe aren’t doing so because of excessive government borrowing. Rather than this being about too much debt, it’s about governments not being able to borrow in their own currency. So I have two questions: (1) For people who think this […]

Pouring Eggnog on Landsburg’s Christmas Carol

[UPDATE below.] In my interactions with Scott Sumner, I picture myself as Luke Skywalker fending off Darth Vader. In contrast, when it comes to Steve Landsburg, I picture myself as Maverick to his Iceman: we’re on the same side, but I want to upstage him. (And yes I’m always the star in my daydreams. If […]

The Rumors of Irish Austerity Are Greatly Exaggerated

A certain Nobel laureate has been pounding the drums lately (e.g. here), pointing out that the awful euro economies prove just how bad fiscal austerity is. In particular, the case of Ireland shows that–as our Keynesian friends like to put it–“contractionary policy is contractionary.” Now in fairness, for all I know maybe lots of people […]