Category: Economic Theory
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Notes On Mainstram Economics Is A Cult / Politics / Economic Theory
By: Submissions
Mark Blair writes:
‘Such disdain for empirical verification is not found in the physical sciences.’
Washington’s Blog
Maternal instinct? ‘Probably imaginary. An excuse to justify and perpetuate sexism.’
Encyclopedia of Feminism, Tuttle, L.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Free Markets, Libertarians, Trade Deficits,Economic Decline: Joseph Cotto Interviews Ian Fletcher / Politics / Economic Theory
By: Ian_Fletcher
Journalist Joseph Cotto interviewed me recently. Our conversation is below.
Q: Today, many people tend to confuse the concepts of free markets, free trade, and fair trade with one another. How would you describe each?
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Saturday, June 30, 2012
Mainstream Economics is a Cult / Politics / Economic Theory
By: Washingtons_Blog
Neoclassical Economics Is Based on Myth
Neoclassical economics is a cult which ignores reality in favor of shared myths.
Economics professor Michael Hudson writes:
Read full article... Read full article...[One Nobel prize winning economist stated,] “In pointing out the consequences of a set of abstract assumptions, one need not be committed unduly as to the relation between reality and these assumptions.”
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The Unseen Economic Hand / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Alasdair_Macleod
The assessment of economic growth based on Gross Domestic Product is a fallacy, because GDP is merely a measure of the amount of money in an economy. The one thing it does not measure, which is central to economic progress (note progress, not growth), is the level of entrepreneurial activity. This has important implications for the efficacy of government interventions and solutions to the current economic crisis.
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Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Economic Growth Versus Austerity: A U.S. Dollar Perspective / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Axel_Merk
Austerity versus Growth? Which economic model is sustainable? If it weren’t for those pesky bond vigilantes, it may be only politics. Let’s not get too excited that either path will work. Let’s look at the implications for investors with a focus on the U.S. dollar.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Krugman’s Greek Temple of Keynesianism / Economics / Economic Theory
By: William_Anderson
A lot of people have weighed in on the Greek Morality Play, better known as the collapse of Greece's economy, and there is no shortfall of "wisdom" and advice. (For that matter, I made comments myself on the Greek situation during an interview on the RT network last March.)
Not surprisingly, Paul Krugman has weighed in again, and this time he not only claims that the problem is not enough inflation, but also deliberately ignores the real problem behind much of the Greek collapse: Greece's notorious and "bloated" (to use a term from Krugman's employer, the New York Times) bureaucracies led by its militant public employee unions. Instead, Krugman sets up other straw men and then claims that if only – If Only! – the Germans would crank up the monetary printing presses, Greece could be saved.
Before going into specifics, I would like to point out that Krugman is correct when he notes that a single currency union of many states indeed does impose certain fiscal restrictions. The examples he uses for the United States are dishonest, and even when explaining the European currency union, he does not tell the whole story, lapsing, instead, into his usual spate of accusations coupled with his demands for more inflation. (And, yes, I will explain my point later in this piece.)
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Monday, June 18, 2012
Krugman's Keynsian Economics, End This Nonsense Now! / Economics / Economic Theory
By: David_Gordon
End This Depression Now! By Paul Krugman. Norton, 2012. Xii + 259 pages
Supporters of Keynesian economics sometimes claim it to be a crude caricature of the Master that he thought the government has only to spend more money to get us out of a depression and that getting us into debt doesn't matter because we owe it to ourselves. Keynes, it is alleged, was a vastly more sophisticated thinker than this caricature portrays him to be. These defenders may find End This Depression Now! disconcerting. Krugman, who whatever his faults certainly is not lacking in technical sophistication, defends pretty much the cartoon version of Keynesianism that we are told is oversimplified.
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Monday, June 18, 2012
You Don’t Need to be a Lefty to Support Krugman Just Economically Illiterate / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Mike_Shedlock
Financial Times writer Samuel Brittan says You Don’t Need to be a Lefty to Support Krugman.
Brittan kicks off with "The remedy for too little spending is more spending. Everything else is commentary."
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Inflation or Deflation? / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Ian_R_Campbell
Why Read: Because whether we are going to be faced with inflation or deflation in the developed countries, and the world economy generally is a critical question - and one that affects not just investors, but everyone.
Featured Article: In a recently published article Michael Pento (Pento Portfolio Strategies), said to be an Austrian School of Economics specialist, says (among other things):
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Monday, June 11, 2012
Krugman’s Tax-Enhanced Economic Recovery Fantasy / Politics / Economic Theory
By: William_Anderson
Paul Krugman apparently believes that he has struck the mother lode: He has declared that Ronald Reagan actually was more "Keynesian" than Barack Obama. Why? He writes:
O.K., by now many readers have probably figured out the trick here: Reagan, not Obama, was the big spender. While there was a brief burst of government spending early in the Obama administration – mainly for emergency aid programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps – that burst is long past. Indeed, at this point, government spending is falling fast, with real per capita spending falling over the past year at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.
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Monday, June 11, 2012
Free Trade: The Litmus Test of Economics / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Gary_North
Free trade is the litmus test of economic reasoning. It has been ever since David Hume wrote his 1752 essay on commerce.
Read full article... Read full article...Foreign trade, by its imports, furnishes materials for new manufactures; and by its exports, it produces labour in particular commodities, which could not be consumed at home. In short, a kingdom, that has a large import and export, must abound more with industry, and that employed upon delicacies and luxuries, than a kingdom which rests contented with its native commodities. It is, therefore, more powerful, as well as richer and happier. The individuals reap the benefit of these commodities, so far as they gratify the senses and appetites. And the public is also a gainer, while a greater stock of labour is, by this means, stored up against any public exigency; that is, a greater number of laborious men are maintained, who may be diverted to the public service, without robbing any one of the necessaries, or even the chief conveniencies of life.
Thursday, June 07, 2012
The No Economic Growth Paradigm / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
Western developed economies have been resorting to almost every possible trick they can conjure up to maintain financial stability and economic growth over the last few years. And while stimulus, interest rate cuts, monetary easing, currency swaps, liquidity operations, bailout/austerity programs, bank "re-capitalizations", loan guarantees, entitlement/welfare programs, data manipulation, etc. have kept them muddling through so far, the undeniable truth is that there will SOON come a time when none of those things makes the least bit of difference anymore.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Deflation Isn't the Enemy / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Michael_Pento
We now live in a world where deflation has become public enemy number one. In this current economic environment, governments seek a condition of perpetual inflation in order to maintain the illusion of prosperity in the developed world. But in reality, deflation is the free-market approach to rectify a secular period of superfluous money supply growth, debt accumulation and asset price appreciation.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
The New York Times and the End of Simple Economic Logic / Politics / Economic Theory
By: William_Anderson
Years ago, Murray N. Rothbard wrote that modern egalitarianism constituted a "revolt against nature," and Rothbard provided the intellectual ammunition to prove his point well. The modern Progressive "revolt against nature" is not limited to just egalitarianism, however, as Progressives long have tried to convince everyone that if they could just direct enough government resources at something, they could undo the very laws of economics.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Economics Battle! Krugman vs. Ron Paul on Helicopters, Gold and More / Politics / Economic Theory
By: Bloomberg
Sparks flew when Paul Krugman and Congressman Ron Paul faced off today on Bloomberg TV's "Street Smart" with Trish Regan and Adam Johnson....
Watch below to hear Ron Paul's ideas about staying in the Republican race...whether he would support Romney as nominee...how U.S. monetary policy is like the Roman Empire and why there should be legal competition to the U.S. dollar (yes, gold and silver).
Hear NYT columnist Krugman fire back on the role U.S. government should play in regulating the market economy...what economist Milton Friedman really thought about government stimulus...and what is the right level for debt for U.S. taxpayers (that's you).
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Thursday, April 19, 2012
Mark-to-Market: From David Hume to Adam Smith…From Ludwig von Mises to Hiroshima / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Andrew_Butter
From Daniel James Sanchez of the Mises Institute (somewhat condensed):
According to Ludwig von Mises, the notion of money as a measure of value is an artifact of the "classical economics" of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill, who, by and large believed that value was an objective attribute of “goods”. Economic actors, according to classical theory, only exchanged goods if the respective values were equal.
Mises had another theory which he called the subjective-marginal-utility theory of value, where value is derived from utility and valuation is a matter of preferring one set of goods over another, according to the goods' respective utilities.
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Monday, April 16, 2012
Edgar the Entrepreneur Demonstrates Harm the Minimum-wage Inflicts on Workers / Economics / Economic Theory
By: MISES
Daniel James Sanchez writes: Edgar the Exploiter is a wonderful animated short by Tomasz Kaye that defends voluntary employer-employee relations and demonstrates the harm that policies like minimum-wage laws inflict on the very people they are supposed to help.
Edgar is a capitalist who hires Simon as an unskilled laborer, until a minimum-wage law impels Edgar to lay Simon off.
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Sunday, April 08, 2012
Savings, investment, and the Keynesian preference – a follow-up / Stock-Markets / Economic Theory
By: Alasdair_Macleod
There is a general belief that government finances are somehow immune from the financial reality faced by everyone else – an illusion fostered by bond markets and supported by the public’s wishful thinking. Look no further than the plight of the eurozone for evidence of the reality. Not only that, but history tells us that countries regularly default, yet we continue to buy government bonds in the belief they are less risky than any private sector debt. And if we begin to question the status quo, we are even told by financial regulators that government debt is less risky than anything else. Banking regulation enshrines it in Basel Committee guidelines, and modern portfolio theory – which guides securities regulation – casts it in stone.
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Saturday, April 07, 2012
War Torn Iraq and Free Market Capitalism / Economics / Economic Theory
By: MISES
In the course of my deployments to Iraq I learned a great deal about economics, though I didn't realize it at the time. I hadn't yet been introduced to the Austrian School or a Rothbardian view of laissez-faire capitalism. Looking back, however, I can see quite clearly that in several important areas voluntary systems not only existed in that country but thrived.
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Learning to Think in Multiple Scales and U.S. Jobs Creation / Economics / Economic Theory
By: Ashvin_Pandurangi
Most politicians, bureaucratic officials, business "leaders", mainstream academics and media pundits in the world are stuck in a single-scale mindset. They approach every problem and issue from the perspective of a human being looking out into an increasingly inter-dependent global society. They take the structures of extensive trade, multinational corporations, global regulatory institutions, international treaties, etc. as irreversible truths that are embedded into the very fabric of existence.