Shameless Self-Promotion

Archive for Shameless Self-Promotion

U.S. Government Policy and Oil Prices

For those who like articles discussing really bad predictions confidently made by Krugman, this one’s for you. Also a nice Obama quote from 2012: “As a country that has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, but uses 20 percent of the world’s oil — I’m going to repeat that — we’ve got 2 percent […]

Tom Woods and I Dissect an Article Complaining About Cheap Gas

For your listening convenience I’ve embedded the video below, but go to Tom’s show notes for all the relevant links, both to the offending article and to the other information Tom and I brought up during the interview.

Standard Financial Models Wouldn’t Predict That Yields Would Spike After End of QE3

When it helped his cause, Krugman understood the stock/flow distinction and why you wouldn’t think the well-anticipated end of asset purchases would cause a sudden change in market price. Yet that didn’t stop Krugman from arguing recently that Treasury yields since the end of QE3 must mean Fed hasn’t been holding down yields. I walk […]

Jeff Tucker and I Talk Bitcoin

The updated version of my guide co-authored with Silas Barta (which fixed a slight mistake in a footnote, as well as some typos) is here. Jeff has a forthcoming book on peer-to-peer technology, of which Bitcoin is simply the most developed example.

NYPD = Teachers’ Union + Guns

My column at Rare analyzes the police from a Public Choice perspective. “Reform” through conventional channels is not going to happen. Now the NYPD officers involved in [the Abner Louima torture] case did get into serious trouble. In December 1999, Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole. In March 2000 three other […]

The Fed and Falling Oil Prices

This seems like an obvious point, but I haven’t seen anyone else make this connection? Anyway at IER I talk about falling oil prices. An excerpt (not having to do with the Fed angle): Whenever oil prices shoot up sharply, causing gas prices at the pump to rise as well, people “in the know” talk […]

I Read Aloud a Review of The Three Lads and the Lizard King

Just play this in the background and try not to order my book. Go on, I dare you. To order, click here.

Understanding the Laffer Curve

In my latest FEE article, I clarify the legacy of Reaganomics and I correct a popular misconception about the Laffer Curve. An excerpt: Critics like to deride the Laffer curve as “voodoo economics” by pointing to counterexamples, say of tax rate reductions that didn’t increase total revenue, or by pointing to tax rate hikes that brought in more […]