In Monty Python’s movie, Life of Brian, one of the Jewish revolutionary leaders tries to whip up anti-Roman sentiment by asking, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” They all hate the Romans, but when they stop to think…
Blog Archives
The REAL Reason Elites Abandoned The Unemployed In 2010
Paul Krugman’s (2013) book, End This Depression Now documents how governments in Europe and the US adopted conventional textbook fiscal and monetary stimulus only in the beginning of the economic crisis of 2008. Then Krugman says, “A funny thing happened…
Posted in Macro
Walmart, Job Destroyer?
My former PhD advisor, Joseph Persky, published research a few months ago showing that a new Walmart in Chicago destroyed, “approximately 300 full-time equivalent jobs in nearby neighborhoods. This loss about equals Walmart’s own employment in the area.” Persky’s work…
Small Is Ugly – Old Version
UPDATE: I posted a better version with more details. Click on the link. Most Americans work for someone else. Entrepreneurialism is rare. Would it be better for America if average firm size shrank and there were more, smaller firms? Economists…
Posted in Development, Macro
The Fed Hates Unemployed People
The Fed is the one institution in America that is specifically responsible for centrally planning our economy by controlling the supply of money, the price of money (interest rates), and the inflation rate. Although the press and the textbooks commonly…
The Paradox Of Debt
There are various macroeconomic theories that claim recessions are caused by changes in debt. These theories make intuitive sense. For example, in Minsky‘s version, investors get overly speculative during periods of economic stability and take greater and greater risk in…
Posted in Macro
Fed Rebels Fight The Evil Empire
Earlier I had posted my prediction that the Fed is hopelessly always going to be dominated by banking interests due to regulatory capture. Fortunately, there are sometimes public servants in government who feel an obligation to do what is best…
Medianism 