As Dave Barry used to say, I’m not making this up. Deeply mired in the fatally flawed myth that World War II ended the Great Depression, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman yesterday proposed that an invasion by space aliens would well provide the economic stimulus this country needs: As Dr. Robert Higgs has more than...
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The humor columnist for the New York Times, Paul Krugman, has recently taken to defending his vulgar Keynesianism against its critics by accusing them of making arguments that rely on the existence of a “confidence fairy.” By this mockery, Krugman seeks to dismiss the critics as unscientific blockheads, in contrast to his own supreme status...
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(Continued from previous post). During the 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt had a reputation as a mealy-mouth politician who made many promises but held his real plans close to his chest. The following cartoons capture that well: Of course, we now know that with his First Inaugural address (listen here), FDR took on the role...
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For weeks, we have been treated to comic opera in D.C.’s theater of the politically and economically absurd. On the stage, the actors—President Obama, the Secretary of the Treasury, congressional leaders—hop about, shouting moronic lines about the national “default” that will occur unless the government’s statutory debt limit is raised, reciting Chicken Little lines...
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Someone must have imagined that my hopes for improved economic understanding might be excessively optimistic today and thus needed to be curbed to restore my normal emotional balance, because that person undertook to smash any such hopes to dust by e-mailing me a link to a Huffington Post article by Paul Abrams, “Economically, World War II Was Stimulus...
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In a Bloomberg report today, “Economic Recovery Is Languishing as Americans Await Signal of Better Times,” Peter Coy casts about for explanations for why the economy is not in recovery, and ends with this offer: A Nobel prize goes to whoever can end this routine and get America growing again. OK, Mr. Coy, send...
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“Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two” is the superb and very timely sequel to the phenomenally successful and insightful, rap video pitting the views of macroeconomist John Maynard Keynes against those of Austrian School economist Friedrich A. Hayek, “Fear the Boom and Bust.” The original has attracted to date more than...
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The Federal Reserve emerged from the financial crisis of 2007–2009 with new powers to allocate credit to specific firms, including non-bank institutions. This development in effect makes the central bank the U.S. economy’s central planner. But why did Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke lobby for the new lending powers, rather than rely on the Fed’s...
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MyGovCost.org Director and Independent Research Fellow Emily Skarbek was a guest on the Heartland Institute’s Budget & Tax News podcast. Click to listen to her commentary on the roots of our current spending crisis, what’s at stake in the Congressional budget war, and how to use the Institute’s very timely and user-friendly Government Cost...
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In a new article for the Gannett newspapers, “Is this any way to run a government?”, Chuck Raasch interviews Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and author of the book, Depression, War, and Cold War. With Congress debating a possible shutdown of the federal government, Dr. Higgs discusses why: “The government can...
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