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Zbigniew Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahadeen

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was a conspiracy theory involving high-ranking US government officials, so it can’t possibly be right… But anyway check out this amazing 1998 interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski that Brad DeLong dug up: Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76* Q: The […]

Can I Pass the Keynesian Turing Test?

Robert Barro has a pretty interesting WSJ op ed today, in which he uses his historical analysis of government spending and tax multipliers to evaluate the Obama Administration’s stimulus package of 2009. In a nutshell, Barro first estimates a spending multiplier of 0.4 (in the first year) and a tax multiplier of -1.1. So if […]

Taylor Conant Asks: Do We Live in a Movie?

Here’s the rest of his email: A bad one? Just saw this ad: So, here’s the script– a government take-over of a major auto manufacturer, who happens to be dabbling in onboard vehicle “safety” technology that allows the company’s vehicles to be controlled from a central location, and the competition is being brought down by […]

Two Cheers for Credit Cards

(Not three cheers, mind you.) The intro: Ever since someone in grad school deviously introduced me to the concept of “irrational” debt aversion, I have been carrying credit-card balances that are far too high. Believe me, I understand the tricks these companies pull, like the clause in fine print where you unwittingly pledged away your […]

More Disinflation Disinformation

In a recent blog post titled, “More on Disinflation” Paul Krugman comments on the headlines trying to interpret the recent CPI announcement: As Mark Thoma recently suggested…it’s odd that most macroeconomic forecasts show inflation remaining stable or even rising despite continuing very high unemployment. Both history and logic suggests that this is wrong. And declining […]

Economics, Selfishness, and the Gospel

The comments on my first attempt got swamped. (Hey kids, can we please drop the potty talk?) The problem is that people started arguing about something that was irrelevant–I could say “orthogonal” to impress you–to my criticism of Bryan Caplan. So let me state it again. Maybe I’m wrong, but none of the critics (in […]

Surprisingly Close Agreement Between Rowley and Murphy

[UPDATE below.] The well-read von Pepe has been sending me links from Charles Rowley. I will have more to say on them in the future, but this one on stagflation got me excited. At first I was very pleased that Rowley’s arguments were so similar to my own. But then I got a little concerned. […]

"Terrorist" a Meaningless Word

Glenn Greenwald documents the contradictions in the Establishment’s use of the word “terrorism”–which it denied to Joseph Stack, the Austin plane crasher: Contrast the collective hesitance to call Stack a Terrorist with the extremely dubious circumstances under which that term is reflexively applied to Muslims. If a Muslim attacks a military base preparing to deploy […]