Economics

Archive for Economics

Quotable Quotes

“If money is redirected because of damage, it sure as hell results in less money somewhere else, regardless of the unemployment situation. [The Broken Window Fallacy] holds. (Even if the loner was hoarding the money as part of his cash balance, it means the loner now has a lower cash balance, which presumably would mean […]

Uh Oh, I’d Better Go to Bed Early on Thursday

Yikes! I knew this guy was no punk, but I didn’t realize he had this in him: I’m debating Bob Murphy on Friday at 6pm. This is a web debate and its pay-per-view. Which means, of course, that both Bob and I will be in the Octagon, battling to submission. This is the econ web […]

The Broken Window Fallacy

At Mises.org today I start from Bastiat and go through this whole thing. However, after the preliminaries I take on the “idle resources” argument too. After all, doesn’t Gene Callahan have a point, that (under the right circumstances) a hurricane might lead to more jobs and GDP in a certain area, than would otherwise have […]

A Puzzle About Demand Deposits

Whenever I graph M1 at FRED, it zig zags. I have just been taking that in stride, not really thinking about why it looks like that. For my recent “inflationary big one” article, I charted demand deposits, which exhibit the zig zag pattern. So I finally decided to think through why the graphs look like […]

A Question for the Quasi-Monetarists

Oh man, now I know how Krugman feels about those dastardly Austrians gaining more influence… That’s what I think every time National Review and now The Economist start running Sumnerian agit-prop. Joking aside, help me out here guys (especially Bill Woolsey if you’re tuned it). The Economist piece says: “For all its theoretical merits, a […]

Sauce for the Goose Should Be Eaten By the Gander

…or whatever that saying is. Paul Krugman two days ago, complaining about the hoaxster: “Apparently some people can’t find enough things to attack in what I actually say, so they’re busy creating fake quotes.” Krugman today, on Jackson Hole: John Maynard Keynes: But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the […]

Krugman’s Views on Supply Have More Holes Than Swiss Cheese

Where could I possibly be going with a title like that? Remember yesterday I was astounded that Paul Krugman wrote: “We do know that demand curves generally slope down; it’s a lot harder to give good examples of supply curves that slope up (as a textbook author, believe me, I’ve looked)…” So today I heard […]

Al Sharpton (and Others) Discuss the “Prophet” Ron Paul

I can’t believe this is happening. People on MSNBC are talking about Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, the gold standard, and Ron Paul as a prophet. If they bring up David Gordon, I’m going to pass out.