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Cost of Cap and Trade

At Townhall today I have a slightly more user-friendly version of the controversy over the $3,100 “phoney GOP statistic.” (Note that some of our friends on the other side of the issue are engaging in scholarly debate over the matter. I tried to post AEA’s clarifying article about why we continue to push that $3,100 […]

I’m So Glad I Don’t Have a TV

Whenever I travel, I am reminded of how awful TV is. Like a bag of circus peanuts, TV would be great if you had the willpower to just sample it. But no, I eat the circus peanuts until I want to jump off a bridge, and I flip through TV stations in a hotel room […]

Man versus Beast

I am a pacifist when it comes to interpersonal relations, but not when there is a showdown between humans and the lower creatures. We have these ginormous carpenter bees that find our wooden house delectable. So last Sunday I took a tennis racket and slew 15 of them (as well as a wasp that chose […]

Will Wilkinson Inhaled

WW comes out of the closet at Cato. I know I know, this raises an obvious question for me as another prominent blogger who can sway public opinion: For the record, I have never smoked pot with Will Wilkinson.

Potpourri

* During the debate over cap and trade, there was a lot of gnashing of teeth–including a “worst person in the world” designation from our national moralist–about the Republicans’ use of an MIT study to say the average American household would pay $3100 per year, once the program really kicked in. The MIT professor said […]

Another Aspect to the Mankiw Money Madness

Taylor Conant emailed me his post bringing up a quote from Rothbard regarding “hoarding.” It raises a good point that I had originally meant to discuss regarding Mankiw’s negative interest rate column, but I ran out of room in my Mises Daily. Anyway, the point is that people are increasing their demand for cash balances […]

GDP Down 6.1% in 1st Quarter

Here’s a depressing article…Some excerpts: The U.S. economy contracted at a surprisingly sharp 6.1 percent rate in the first quarter as exports and business inventories plummeted. The drop in gross domestic product…was much steeper than the 4.9 percent annual rate expected by economists and followed a 6.3 percent decline in the fourth quarter. GDP…has now […]

Answering Scott Sumner’s Questions About Austrians

Scott Sumner asks some great questions about the Austrian view of the financial crisis. I’ll do my best to balance brevity against comprehensiveness in my answers. 1. Why did NGDP collapse late last year? I’m not saying this is the whole story, and someone might plausibly say I’m confusing cause with effect, but I think […]