Shameless Self-Promotion

Archive for Shameless Self-Promotion

Defending Coolidge and Libertarianism

At Mises.org this week I was a defense attorney. First for Calvin Coolidge: As far as federal income-tax rates, it’s true that Coolidge took the advice of his Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, to cut them. But that was because they had been raised to an absurd level during World War I. As this history shows, […]

One Week For “Anatomy of the Fed”!

This may be the only chance we have to offer this class, before Ron Paul Ends the Fed. Learn its anatomy so you can identify the parts that leak out onto the floor. Perhaps more plausible, is the goal of hitting 300 enrolled students by next week (the first class). As I explained in the […]

Doctor’s Orders

You know how when you were a purist, you couldn’t understand why Hollywood would ruin a perfectly great movie, by cranking out ever more variants of the same thing? Yet when you get older, you realize that as long as you can pull in more marginal revenue from yet another sequel, it makes sense.

Free Advice Posts from 2010

You can’t pick favorites among your children. Here are some memorable posts from 2010–the result of my quick skimming, not an exhaustive search: * “Those Guys Are Really Smart, Except for That God Stuff” * Legalizing Poker and Blackjack Today, Marijuana Tomorrow? * Calling a Foul in the GMU / JMK Grudge Match * Mike […]

Is Big Government a Myth?

My sources say no: Lately the supporters of big government have deployed an interesting twist to their arguments, claiming that it is a dirty right-wing lie that government has grown under the Obama administration. Unlike arguments over economic theory, surely this should be an objective exercise in looking up the facts. As we’ll see, yes […]

“Have Events Vindicated Keynesian Models?”

This is a follow-up article to the one last week that concerned Jim Manzi’s debate with Karl Smith. In this new article, I walk through Paul Krugman’s citation of Mark Zandi’s forecasts. Krugman thought Zandi’s projections of the impact of the Obama stimulus–coupled with the ex-post record of actual GDP performance–was a great confirmation of […]

How Much Faith Should We Put in Keynesian Models?

This is the first of a two-part series in which I join Jim Manzi’s search for justification for Keynesian models. For what it’s worth, one of the copy editors at Mises told me, “This one made me laugh a lot.”

A Sneak Peak at the Lara-Murphy Report

In the Lara-Murphy Report, we have a section “Pulse on the Market” where we give quick tidbits on various news items for people who don’t slavishly read Wenzel or ZeroHedge. Here’s the blurb I wrote for one issue: ==> Inflation or deflation? Depending on how you parse the numbers, you can “see” price inflation or […]