Archive for Inflation
The Slugfest Continues: My Article on the FRB Debate With Selgin
My one regret in the Soho Forum debate with George Selgin–besides the fact that he won according to Oxford rules–is that we didn’t have time to spell out our respective positions a bit more clearly. For example, a lot of people on social media assumed I thought (a) fractional reserve banking was fraudulent and (b) […]
Read moreThe American Public Only Thinks It Likes Motherhood and Apple Pie
After all, in a big enough apple pie, you would drown. Scott Sumner has a curious post at EconLog, titled, “The public only thinks it likes low inflation.” He says that such a view is reasoning from a price change, and that low inflation is actually really undesirable–even from the public’s own viewpoint–when it’s caused […]
Read moreLara-Murphy Show: How Governments Use Inflation as a Hidden Tax, Part 1
This will probably seem like Romper Room stuff to many of you, but for whatever reason Carlos’ idea to use Caesar as the launching-off point struck me as very powerful to connect with the average person. I first saw Carlos give a public talk on fractional reserve banking and open market operations, but he started […]
Read moreCPI in 2015 Highest on Record: Inflation Deniers Beware
David Kreutzer, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, is one of my favorite guys in the climate change debate. (I invited him to the IER conference on carbon tax that I organized.) Today he sent me his recent article in the Daily Signal reacting to the NOAA report that 2015 was the second-hottest US year […]
Read moreMy Inflation Bet: The Gift That Keeps on Taking
Don’t worry kids, I didn’t make another bet. Rather, this was the original wager that David R. Henderson then tweaked (including making the time horizon shorter). I am mailing the check to Bryan this month. If you want to hear my thoughts on what went wrong, here is my indignant reaction to Krugman and DeLong, […]
Read moreKrugman: I’m Only Keynesian to Botch 1980s Inflation Call
This one was too easy. He made the same faux pas in 2012. Krugman says it’s a myth that Keynesians were surprised by the 1980s disinflation, when there is an infamous 1982 Council of Economic Advisors memo in which he did just that.
Read more“Reason” Symposium on Predictions of Price Inflation
I was one of the contributors to this. Whenever you do something like this, by the time the editing process is done, the tone of the finished piece has strayed a little bit from the original draft. So let me reiterate here, I am way more introspective about what happened than Peter Schiff seems to […]
Read moreWhy Money Doesn’t Measure Value
Marc Miles (an economist I’ve cited in some of my more mainstream policy work) was also flummoxed by the mischievous David Gordon, so I thought I needed to be the diplomat. The best part of the post: [S]uppose the government follows Forbes and Ames’ advice, and pegs the dollar-price of an ounce of gold. Then […]
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