Federal Reserve

Archive for Federal Reserve

It’s On: Murphy-Sumner Debate Begins in January 2013

Holy cow, I totally forgot to announce the news: I proposed to Scott Sumner that instead of a live video debate, instead we have a 3-part exchange. Each month, I will write a 2000 – 2500 word blog post challenging his views on NGDP targeting, to which he will respond with whatever length he desires. […]

Krugman on the 1920s: A One-Act Play

TOM WOODS & BOB MURPHY: The Keynesians are all wet when they distill their “lessons from the Great Depression” and recommend bigger deficits and looser money for today’s crisis. After World War I, the U.S. government had run up a massive debt, and yr/yr consumer price inflation was higher than 20%. In this grim situation, […]

I Am Taking Over YouTube

I’m trying to clear out my browser tabs. Here are some backlogged YouTube appearances: ==> My interview with Redmond W. of Mises Canada, right after the QE3 announcement. ==> “Messengers for Liberty” episode 2 and episode 3. (I don’t turn to the Dark Side in Episode III, sorry to spoil it.) ==> My interview with […]

Sumner Courageously Admits He Can’t Explain Housing Bubble

I know a lot of you wonder why I am always so quick to volunteer the fact that I made erroneous warnings about official price measures thus far, but the reason is that I can’t stand analysts who make all kinds of predictions, and then only pat themselves on the back for the ones they […]

Sumner on Predicting the Great Recession

Today Scott Sumner writes: There’s a reason most economic forecasters were not predicting a recession as of June 2008; net worth models are useless. The huge decline in house prices between 2006 would not be expected to cause a major recession, and indeed would not have caused one had NGDP not declined. OK so there […]

An Interesting Measure of Prices

I am trying to get some historical statistics to deal with the claims that the Great Depression saw unprecedented action by central banks. Along the way, Daniel Kuehn pointed me to this intriguing chart of the NBER’s “Index of the General Price Level for the United States”: The constituents of the graph (and their weights) […]

Does Anyone Deny That There Were Unprecedented Credit Stimulus Policies During Hoover Administration?

Here’s something I want to pin down. In my book on the Great Depression, I quote Lionel Robbins saying (I think in 1934) that central banks around the world had tried unprecedented measures to stimulate a recovery through cheap credit, and that this was a complete reversal of traditional central bank doctrine. Then Daniel Kuehn […]

More Evidence That Scott Sumner Is Out of Touch

Look kids, I’m as sick of the Sumner-bashing as you are. But it is apparently my duty, since nobody else is catching this stuff. If not me, who? First of all, remember back when Garett Jones was talking about sticky prices and how he thought debt was a really good candidate for this? Then Sumner […]