Federal Reserve

Archive for Federal Reserve

An Example of Krugman Pooh-Poohing Current Bubble Concerns

In the comments of my recent post, in which I said Krugman was significantly retreating from his earlier stance about Fed policy causing bubbles, naturally some of Krugman’s defenders claimed I was inventing things, and that Krugman has been worried about bubbles all along. Here’s Krugman from May, 2013: So do we have a major […]

So, Are Summers and Krugman Now Confirming That The Austrians Have Been Right About Bubbles?

This week I’m going to talk in-depth about this with Tom Woods–and you really should be listening to all of his shows, they’re great–but let me give just a quick taste. For people who have been following the blogosphere wonk econ debate since 2008, I think you will agree that the following is an accurate […]

Gerald O’Driscoll: Fed Is the “Enabler” of Government Budget Deficits

From his recent CATO podcast.

Outsourcing My Krugman Kritiques

Believe it or not, I actually do not relay most of the Krugman critiques that people send my way. Very often they are of the form, “Krugman interprets X according to his Keynesian model, but that’s dumb, because really we should interpret it this other way…” I usually agree with such posts, but they won’t […]

Krugman: Whether Potential GDP Is Up, Down, or Sideways, It’s More Evidence That I’m Right

Krugman has made such a strategic error in his advocacy for monetary inflation that even his teammates had to rebuke him. But first some context: “Potential GDP” is a mainstream economics concept referring to the maximum sustainable level of (real) GDP. In the standard New Keynesian paradigm, if actual (real) GDP is above potential, you […]

O’Driscoll vs. Sumner

There is just too much good stuff to excerpt from Gerald O’Driscoll’s lead essay at Cato Unbound on central banks. OK fine, here’s just a taste: Does the literature make an intellectual case for ending the Fed? The 19th century economic journalist and Economist editor Walter Bagehot thought it would have been better if the […]

The Non-Falsifiable “Empirical” Frameworks of Paul Krugman and Scott Sumner

[UPDATE below.] The defenders of both gentlemen will no doubt frame the matters differently, but my following summaries of four total blogs posts–two from Krugman and two from Sumner–are perfectly accurate. KRUGMAN #1: In this post Krugman endorses (with a parenthetical caveat) Raj Chetty’s claim that empirical work shows that the extension of unemployment benefits […]

“The Biggest Scam in the History of Mankind”

This video is pretty neat; it’s racking up views very quickly. It’s very well done, but unfortunately there are a few things that I think they get wrong. Some of my objections: ==> The guy a few times says “I” when he should say “me.” ==> I understand where he’s coming from, but I don’t […]