Archive for Inflation

Mish vs. Murphy

So somebody sent me this article by Mike “Mish” Shedlock, where he takes me out to the woodshed. Here is the relevant portion: Flashback November 23, 2010: Austrian economist Robert Murphy predicts “high inflation” and and writes a post Has Mish Deflated the “Inflationistas”? My response which in retrospect has clearly carried the day was Failure to […]

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Krugman Throws 99% Under the Bus on Inflation?

Uh oh, I know some of you don’t like it when I say this, but I think we have another Krugman Kontradiction on our hands… In his recent op ed calling for a moderate increase in inflation, Krugman writes: [W]ould a rise in inflation to 3 percent or even 4 percent be a terrible thing? […]

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Market Monetarism Bask

Somebody help me out here: Scott Sumner is acting like Ben Bernanke is contradicting himself with current Fed policy, and yet the latest BLS report shows that over the last 12 months, the “core” price inflation rate was 2.2%. (The headline CPI rate year/year was 2.9%, while on the PPI we see that finished goods […]

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Reality Has a Well-Known Market Monetarist Bias

I am of course studying Scott Sumner’s every eye-twitch in this video. Kelly Evans catches him pretty well in the beginning, asking at one point if his policies would have prevented the housing boom. He admits that no, NGDP growth hadn’t been too high, but says that every time there is a crisis like this, […]

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Sumner Needs to Watch Some Film and Hit the Gym

I used to say that Scott Sumner would be a far more formidable debating opponent than Paul Krugman, but lately I’m not so sure. I think for our debate, I just may print out 5 of Scott’s posts and ask the judge if I can submit them as exhibits. For example, here’s Scott’s latest post […]

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Don’t You Dare Show Scott Sumner This Rothbard Excerpt

I’m working on tomorrow’s lecture from Chapter 11 of Man, Economy, and State, and came across this passage on page 849: It is thus clear that the exchange-value of money cannot be quantitatively separated from the exchange-value of goods. Since the general exchange-value, or PPM, of money cannot be quantitatively defined and isolated in any […]

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Scott Sumner Is Hot, But Breaks His Own Rule

John Carney is starting to appreciate my fascination with the Bard* from Bentley. Carney reproduces the results a poll apparently suggested by Sumner: I thought we weren’t using the i-word anymore? No wonder Scott’s policy won–I bet it would get more votes than limiting the unicorn population to 8% growth, too. * I’m saying Scott […]

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If We Give Up Our Cool, Then the Inflationists Will Have Already Won

UPDATE: Sorry, I forgot to include the money (ha ha) quote, to explain the purpose of Scott’s post. Scott Sumner thinks he can play me like a game of classic Donkey Kong: Some days I want to just shoot myself, like when I read the one millionth comment that easy money will hurt consumers by […]

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