Matt Yglesias

Archive for Matt Yglesias

Murphy vs. Yglesias On Chinese Bond Purchases

In this Daily Caller article I dispute Matt Yglesias’ recent argument that the Chinese government exercises no leverage over the American government because it buys so much of its debt. An excerpt: The only way to completely offset both [rising U.S. Treasury yields] and [rising U.S. consumer prices], is if foreign investors are willing to […]

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 […]

Yglesias vs. Mises on War Inflation Finance

In this intriguing post (since he mostly heaped praise on Ferguson in spite of the latter’s attack on him) Matt Yglesias writes: [T]he moral of [Ferguson’s book discussion of World War I] here is that when it comes to major sovereign states, strict considerations of public finance and the government deficit are not so important. […]

Is It Better to Malinvest During a Recession?

Evan Soltas (HT2 Scott Sumner) writes a more balanced view (compared to Matt Yglesias, who called Summers a communist) on Larry Summers allegedly problematic concern over low interest rates leading to malinvestments. To refresh your memory, here is what Summers said back in 2012, that is now causing a lot of people to flip out […]

Applying Krugmanian Lessons to the 1990s

Poor Alex Tabarrok. He makes a simple blog post, pointing out the hilarious heads-we-win-tails-you-lose stance of Krugman et al., and the targets of his critique focus on something completely incidental. I will probably muddy the waters myself by focusing on the “incidental” part of his post, but so be it. First, though, let’s review: 1) […]

Disposing of the Classical Liberal Tradition in Minutes

Steve Landsburg rightfully went supernova on Robert Frank for his (Frank’s) NYT op ed defending Mayor Bloomberg. Frank actually wrote: But while almost everyone celebrates freedom in the abstract, defending one cherished freedom often requires sacrificing another. Whatever the flaws in Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal, it sprang from an entirely commendable concern: a desire to protect […]