Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

Yglesias Psychoanalyzes Gold Bugs: Back at Ya, Matty

Matt Yglesias pokes fun at a Cato conference on the Fed (HT2 Scott Sumner). Here’s Yglesias: [T]he affinity between free market economic thinking and hard money is an interesting and important phenomenon….I do think there’s a deep logic to it. Once you concede the fact that prosperity over both the long- and short-term depends in […]

Why Misesians Need to Tread Cautiously When Disparaging Bitcoin

In my EconLib article on Bitcoin, I wrote: Some critics rely on the work of Ludwig von Mises and his “regression theorem” to argue that the world will never embrace Bitcoin as a true money. According to this argument, Mises demonstrated that all money—even today’s fiat money—must have been, at some point in the past, linked […]

My EconLib Article on Bitcoin

At EconLib I have an article on Bitcoin. The first half is based on the article I already posted here with Silas Barta, but the second half has new stuff, sure to enrage half of you: Economically, the chief attraction of Bitcoin is its mathematically guaranteed scarcity. Even a pure commodity like gold could eventually […]

Krugman Gloating on Gold

This really makes no sense. As everybody knows, gold just had the biggest one-day drop in three decades. Here’s Krugman’s reaction: So, the slide in gold has turned into a rout. As Joe Weisenthal says, this should be seen as really good news, because it offers strong evidence that the goldbug/inflationista view of the world […]

Stockman-Bashing Is Seriously Getting Out of Hand

This is really amazing. I had coffee with a young finance guy (just graduating) today and I remarked, “I can’t believe the treatment David Stockman is getting, the proportion of ridicule to actual examination of his arguments. The only analogous thing I can remember is how people treated Ron Paul.” Seriously, this is insane. Look […]

A Different Explanation of the “Productivity” and Wage Divergence

I have not read a single word from the EPI paper claiming that if the minimum wage had followed “productivity growth” it would now be $22/hour, so everything I am writing in this blog post is predicated on Daniel Kuehn’s interpretation being sound. Having said that, consider the following fable: In 1968, a nation of […]

It Sounds So Much Prettier When He Says It

Learning From Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman

[UPDATE below.] Rather than have a long series of posts discussing the fallout from my (price) inflation bet with David R. Henderson, I decided to do one comprehensive reply to Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman. I had toyed with not even responding, but two things ruled that out: (1) This isn’t a case of two […]