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DeLong Blows Up Cochrane

I’m sorry kids, but I have to call it like I see it. And in this blog post Brad DeLong blows up Chicago’s John Cochrane. If you’re a guest on a talk radio show, I think it’s fine to say (as Cochrane does) that the government can’t create jobs because every dollar it spends ultimately […]

Fed’s Long-Term Bond Purchases: I Learn From Krugman

This is one of the few times on this blog where I’m not being sarcastic. Krugman actually makes some really good points in this blog post (HT2 Brad DeLong). Anyway, Krugman’s post is worth reading if for nothing else than this: “I think quantitative easing (it’s really qualitative easing, but I give up on trying […]

Mises Is a Barrel of Laughs

Good times at the Austrian Scholar’s Conference. Tom Woods sent me this. He loves it, but I suspect it’s due to his narcissism. I love his talks too, because he usually has an anecdote involving my naughtiness. True story: After this talk, a guy came up to me and was waving his arms around saying, […]

2009 Consumer Price Inflation Off to a 4.3% Start

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! I don’t trust the BLS’s “seasonal adjustments,” but at face value they say CPI rose 0.3% in January and then 0.4% in February, for an annualized rate of almost 4.3% for the new year. I think next year we will laugh that people were still worried about deflation at […]

Potpourri

* I defend the gold standard. * Rose and White warn the Fed that it is committing the opposite mistake that (according to Friedman) the Fed committed during the 1930s. * Arnold Kling has a great post about financial regulation. * Not sure what I’m saying here. * James Fogal sends the YouTube below. I […]

A Better Showing

Before I was caught doing Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant,” and it wasn’t pretty. In fact, I am not even going to link to it. But in the below it sounds much better. Even here, though, I swear the iPhone (or whatever) is not doing it justice. I had people who weren’t even […]

Commodity Traders Understand Economics 101

Gold jumped up about $50/oz. because of the Fed’s announcement to buy $300 billion in long-term U.S. government debt. I’m glad to see the gold traders get it. We are dangerously close to the situation where the Fed creates money out of thin air and then “loans” it directly to the Treasury to finance the […]

Great Depression II

OK I am comfortable now predicting that this will be the Great Depression II. I am not claiming that the standard stats will rival those of the 1930s. But folks, this is insane. This is not, “Oh we gotta just wait for the market to find its bottom. And yeah, there might be a few […]