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Is the Current Mess a Sign of "Market Failure"? Stealing from Myself

I realize this is lazy, but oh well. I just wrote a fairly comprehensive email to some colleagues, complaining about the ease with which people are throwing around the term “market failure” to describe our current mess. Besides the fact that (in my opinion) there were all sorts of government policies that caused/exacerbated the situation, […]

That’s Not My King

Warning to agnostic / atheist readers: This post will involve the J-word, but you’ll see why. I am not going out of my way to make you feel uncomfortable. Over at the Austrian Economists blog, Pete Leeson directs readers to a cool survey in the Freakonomics column, asking four experts (one of whom is Leeson) […]

"Credit Cards May Be Next Trouble Spot in Crisis"

So warns CNBC. Jeez, I could have told them that ever since my first semester in grad school! On a more serious note, I actually advise in this article that paying down your credit card debts might be the wrong play in the present environment. NOTE, I am NOT saying, “Go charge a bunch of […]

Lew Rockwell Has Short Interview With Bob Murphy

These LRC podcasts are pretty convenient; you don’t need to download anything. And note how much better a radio voice I have when I’m not calling in! (Of course, LR’s voice is better.)

Official Yr/Yr CPI Inflation: 4.9%

Well, the headlines are all telling us that there was no rise in prices from August to September. Maybe, but here I explain why I’m skeptical. What this CNBC story doesn’t say is that from September 07 to September 08, even the government’s official CPI (for all urban consumers) rose 4.9%.* So keep that in […]

Mish Solves the Credit Crunch

Commenting on the Paulson offer to big banks that couldn’t be refused, Mish says: If the goal is to get LIBOR down, then I propose the following: Bank of America lends money to Citigroup who lends money to Wells Fargo who lends money to JPMorgan who lends money to Bank of America. We can have […]

New PPI Numbers: More BS from the BLS?

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) came out with a report saying that gasoline prices had declined 4.6% from March to April. Now this seemed insane, since, well, gasoline prices had been breaking record highs (and continued to do so into the summer). At first I suspected an outright lie, but then […]

"The Government Is Contributing to the Panic"

This is a great WSJ piece from a few days ago. The author, Yale law professor Jonathan Macey, stresses a point that I haven’t seen elsewhere, namely that the SEC makes firms vulnerable to short-sellers: For years the SEC has hampered companies’ ability to protect themselves from manipulation by short-sellers. The most effective way for […]