Economics

Archive for Economics

More Sumner Spawn

Matt Yglesias is refining his new idea, after reviewing the list of demands from the Wall Street protestors: My view is that the best demand of all, somewhat in the spirit of item number 1 but more radical, is “free money for the rest of us.” There are a lot of different specific ways this […]

Nick Rowe, Kung Fu Master

I’m not sure what to make of this guy Nick Rowe. I picture him as a veteran Kung Fu master, who declined to help when I told him my clan was going to battle the evil Keynesian duke. But then when some of the women and children in our town got ambushed, Master Rowe appeared […]

Paul Krugman, Pet of Big Government

That’s my latest post at the IER blog, in response to Krugman’s shrugging off of the Solyndra scandal. An excerpt: To repeat, the Solyndra scandal is not simply a matter of the federal government wasting money on bad business ideas—the government does that all the time. Rather, Solyndra is “special” because the government managed to […]

Murphy Does Bratislava

I don’t know how to embed the videos here on the blog, but if you go to this link you can see my presentation (to a crowd of about 300) from Monday night in Bratislava, Slovakia and then the Q&A afterward. I’m being particularly demonstrative with the opening jokes to make sure everyone was with […]

Murphy Twin Spin

On Monday I shared my thoughts on grocery stores, and yesterday I discussed Operation Twist. Some excerpts from the latter: Just the fact that it’s an “operation” is disturbing. Ever since the crisis began, officials have deployed the military metaphor since their only solution to social problems is to start blowing things up. We have […]

Calling Noah Smith’s Bluff on Demand- Versus Supply-Side Recessions

I still intend to give a more thorough response to Karl Smith and Daniel Kuehn in light of their reactions to my “gnome” article. One of their main themes is to be shocked, shocked that we Austrians keep accusing the Keynesians of thinking in aggregate terms. Why, Karl’s middle name is “microdata,” and Daniel argues […]

Leveraging the EFSF Bailout Fund would Leave European Taxpayers More Vulnerable

This is such an obvious point, but I still haven’t seen anybody spell it out. So the context is the stabilization fund that the European powers are setting up to bail out the PIIGS: As Europe continues to battle its debt crisis, Timothy Geithner has a suggestion. The Treasury secretary today called on euro zone […]

Is Spending Money a Market Failure?

Steve Landsburg is trying to think through the implications of assuming sticky prices. But it’s the first part of his post that strikes me as fishy: [L]et me start with something I do understand — a world with flexible prices and (for simplicity) no inflation. (What follows is standard textbook material, which we all learned […]