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Unemployment: "What goes up, must come down / spinning wheel, got to go ’round"

Apparently Blood, Sweat and Tears work for CNBC: Unemployment Jumps to 9.7%, But Pace of Layoffs Slows The pace of U.S. job losses hit a one-year low last month but the unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year high of 9.7 percent, the government said Friday in a report showing a slowly improving labor market. Suppose […]

Apologies to My Two Favorite Economic Bloggers

In an extraordinarily rare occurrence, this week I have criticized both Paul Krugman and Tyler Cowen in separate blog posts. But last night I realized I was a bit too harsh. (I am not being sarcastic here, again another extraordinarily rare occurrence.) This 8-page Krugman essay is actually really good, in terms of history of […]

An Interesting Theory of Higher Education Costs

When I got back in my car after leaving the gym–what, you thought this figure was natural?–I turned on the radio to discover a familiar voice on NPR’s “Marketplace.” The commentator gave a theory of the high price of college tuition. Out of the 310 words in the commentary, the word “government” appears 0 times. […]

A Pleasant Thought

At my request, MercedesRules (who is a serious gold bug) has been sending me some of the commentary from today. A few of the really paranoid guys are predicting that gold will break $1000 tomorrow in conjunction with an awful jobs report. Regardless, they are sure the end of life as we know it is […]

Faint Praise From Goldline

I’ve been meaning to complain about this for awhile, but with gold flirting with $1000 now’s a good time: Who were the ad wizards that came up with Goldline’s catch phrase, “And it’s never been worth zero!” ? Couldn’t Purina say the same thing about cat food? Should I go long on cases of Fancy […]

Potpourri

* John David Fernandez explains the joy that is Mises University. An excerpt: “There is no intellectual arrogance displayed by any of the professors. All of them have a great sense of humor, and always willing to chat or autograph a book. You can talk to them about anything, including the nitty-gritty details of anarchism […]

Krugman On Why Economists Missed the Crash

Tyler Cowen links to this 8-page Krugman essay–and be careful, you might have missed it if you merely check Krugman’s blog. (I.e. I didn’t see it linked from there; I think Tyler gets tweeted whenever somebody rips the free market.) Anyway, Krugman starts off great: [I]n a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that […]

New York Times Offers Two Views on Fiscal Policy

Some people accuse Fox News of presenting only one side, but I’m glad to see that the newspaper of record offers a wide range of views. For example, in a column from August 27, the contributor declared: So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade. According to many […]