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How to Predict the Coming Bank Pay Regulation

========== How to Predict the Coming Bank Compensation RegulationsBy Robert P. Murphy In an article that convinced half my readers I was a genius, and half that I was completely insane, I argued that the way to predict the coming moves in currencies and other major financial events was to put yourself in the shoes […]

Stumped By Stavins

Dan Simmons alerted me to this WSJ article by Harvard’s Robert Stavins. Now I respect Stavins, because he blasted the absurd economic analysis that the California Air Resources Board put out on its statewide cap-and-trade plan. So even though he is a proponent of carbon legislation, I think he’s intellectually honest. However, in this recent […]

The Worst Sentence I Read Today

From the poor man’s Brad DeLong, Matt Yglesias, who writes: And in economic terms, there’s really very little difference between spending down a reserve of accumulated cash and in taking advantage of an opportunity to borrow at an extremely low interest rate. I think by “economic terms,” Yglesias means, “If you stop thinking about it […]

Brad DeLong Continues to Paint Hoover as Mr. Laissez-Faire

As Free Advice readers know, I have taken the Krugman/DeLong side in their debate with the Chicago School. In a nutshell, people like Cochrane and Fama are saying that in principle the government can’t boost nominal spending in the present, as if it’s a matter of accounting. That’s just wrong, especially if you allow for […]

Tom DiLorenzo Hosts Murphy

Details here. And if someone asks me, “Why do white people get paid more?” I’m going to say because they’re blue-eyed devils.

Rush to Hypocrisy

Today Rush Limbaugh was going nuts over President Obama’s “surrender to the UN” when the rest of the world “didn’t fire a shot.” He said something like, “You know who should really be worried, folks, are our traditional allies. The Brits [and I forget the other countries he listed–RPM]. The people who depend on this […]

Now Stagflation Is a "Contradiction"

Before, the pundits had merely been asserting that there was little threat of price inflation because of high unemployment. But now Matt Yglesias has upped the ante (HT2 Bob Roddis): Germany business and policymaking elites seem pretty uniformly convinced that the government has been preventing an unemployment explosion through unsustainable measures…and that in winter 2009-2010 […]

Deflation vs. Inflation

Gary North reports that one of the leading deflationists has defected to our side. (“Us” meaning North and me.) It reminded me that I meant to blog an email exchange I had recently (with permission of the correspondent). Craig had emailed me to say I was still missing the point in my critique of Mish. […]