Some people are indeed hung over 2001 and 2002, once again in 2010:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/me-and-the-bubble/
Okay thanks for clearing that up. I also don’t think that the libertarian position should be pro life. I mean, a person could personally be pro life but to use the State or any institution to force others to NOT have abortions would be un libertarian.
Personally, although on this thread I have made a case for no central government, I am not entirely anarcho capitalist. In fact I am probably more minarchist. I have been reading a lot of Rothbard and especially Hans Hermann Hoppe and I believe there is a strong case for anarcho capitalism but we are no where close to achieving anything like that even if it was the best way of organizing society.
If you support Mises’ conception of government, I could get behind that. If we had a small, limited Republic, it might be possible to make a final step to no government.
But I think it is odd for you to reject Rothbard and anarcho capitalists because you are a minarchist. Your and Rothbard’s ideal system might not be the same, but his analysis of economics and political theory would still be spot on. You would just disagree and say that law and defense should still be the institution of government.
For minarchists and anarchists to be fighting seems rather beside the point. I mean, if we are able to wither away the State to its limited functions, protect civil rights and end the military empire and needless wars, THEN we could hash out our disagreements.
But what we currently have is SO far from what any libertarian would support it makes no sense not to work to push the needle in the direction of liberty.
No; it says that the idea of returning to the gold standard is lunacy. As has already been said, it’s so crazy that not a single country on Earth is crazy enough to do it. It’s not going to happen.
That, no offense, is one of the most half assed, lazy and confused attempts at critiquing Austrian economic theory I have ever read. Really astonishing and it is absolutely clear that the author of that has NOT read any significant amount of Austrian economics.
The topic is overly broad for me to elaborate extensively at this time, but suffice to say, I suggest you take the time to read some of the works of Austrian economists, like Rothbard’s “Man, Economy and State” or even Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”.
Cite/link source. That’s what we do here.
It appears you didn’t actually read my post on Krugman at all! The one directly above your post that I am quoting.
It is abundantly clear that Krugman was supporting the creation of a housing bubble to replace the nasdaq bubble. A full reading of his remarks in context makes that abundantly clear. Didn’t you read the article I posted?
To argue that he was quoting someone else and really disagreed with that assessment or was only joking and not serious is hard to rationalize.
If you are honest, just admit Krugman was dead wrong. Period. That should be the end of it.
No, I don’t think you read it, for starters, it is not a single writer, and no, it is clear that the cites do point at people that did read plenty of the Austrian economics.
NO, the problem there has been one of a lack of reading comprehension from the blog you quoted.
You know its really remarkable how lacking in substance virtually ALL of your posts have been Der Trihs. At least Hallestal and others who are disagreeing with me actually post some substance.
I would like to see you write three or four meaty paragraphs intelligently critiquing the libertarian program I have outlined. I don’t think you can do it. And an intelligent critique would not contained hyperbole and sensationalism, but instead rational analysis.
I hope you take me up on this and not clutter my posts with mindless drivel. Your side might have a point, but YOU are not helping make the case.
Here you go. I only pasted it because I assumed (not without reason) that unless the entire article was in the body of the text, most would never click through and read it.
You posted this very soon after I posted mine, so I’ll respond.
Briefly.
…Oh shit, I lied. I can’t do anything briefly.
Where are you getting this from?
I never claimed Hoover was hands-off. Not once.
What I said was that things got worse under Hoover and better under FDR. Hoover stuck with gold. That was his big mistake. I never claimed he was laises-f… I never claimed he was laisses-fa… I never claimed he was a strict economic non-interventionist. Wherever you got that notion, it wasn’t from an actual reading of my post. I suggest if you want to respond to what I believe, you should actually read my post.
I would guess I’m more familiar with Austrian theory than you are.
That is why I don’t accept it.
I know Schumpeter, Hayek, von Mises, even Rothbard. I have their books. I’ve read their books. Not all of them, but most of the big ones. I even admire them, to a certain extent.* The true Austrians were the founders of business cycle theory in macroeconomics, and yes, their story of how bubbles form is at least partially correct. They did, really, get an important part of the story right. So when I say, I’m “more familiar”, I’m not talking about total books read. That’s not what I mean. I doubt that I’ve read more Austrian books than you have. I’m saying that I’ve read those books more critically, more carefully, and with a deeper understanding of the economic ideas that both preceded and also followed the original important Austrian tradition. I know both the Austrian theory, and how that theory fits into the broader context of economic thought. That is why I’m not Austrian.
I read Austrians. I read Keynesians. I read Marxists (well, Marx, not really anybody else). I read monetarists. I read Minsky-ists. I read MMTists. I read free-banking advocates. I read contemporary research papers. I read many different ideas. Even given the good things that appear in Austrian Business Cycle Theory – and there are good things, no question – ABCT does not explain everything that we need it to explain. That is why I’m not Austrian.
*Not Rothbard. I detest Rothbard. His economic ideas are nothing more than von Mises repackaged more stupidly. Practically his only economic contribution was a bit about monopoly, and the rest of his output was inane anarchist nonsense, mixed with a bit of racist balderdash for spice. He was contemptible.
You don’t know what Keynesians think because you don’t read Keynesians, or if you happen to flip open a book, you don’t pay attention to the lesson inside.
You don’t know what monetarists think because you don’t read monetarists, or if you happen to flip over a book, you don’t pay attention to the lessons inside.
Your interpretations of Keynes and Keynesians are what the people on your favorite websites tell you to think. You have already demonstrated that this is true. We’ve given any sensible person more than enough reason to understand that Krugman quotation, and you reject our reading, you reject Krugman’s clarification, and you even reject a libertarian fellow at the Cato Institute because it conflicts with the interpretation that you get from your favorite websites. Your interpretation of Krugman is not from Krugman. It’s from the hacks you read. Your interpretation of Keynes is not from Keynes, and not from people sympathetic to Keynes. It’s from the hacks you read.
Rather than reading charitably from the source, and accepting the clarifications from living people who can explain their thoughts if the first reading was unclear, you read in the most aggressively biased way possible. You prefer your own interpretation of other people’s words to what they actually say. You prefer to engage with the fantasy strawman arguments that exist in your head. You have shown no ability, in all your posts here, to engage directly with an argument you don’t like on that argument’s own terms. You always rephrase the argument in the way that best suits you, and then attack the strawman. This is a constant for you. You deal with the entire world, and every hostile argument in it, by reframing the facts in the world in a way that you’ve been taught by your hack websites. This is easier for you than trying to learn and understand from other people firsthand.
You lecture people on what they believe, rather than listening to them explain what they believe.
You might come to realize one day how completely offensively unacceptable this is.
I don’t care in the slightest about your explanations. I would trust my own reading of Austrian theory over yours. You have shown no ability to read our posts with any degree of care whatever, and we have no reason to believe that you show any greater consideration to the ideas you profess to like.
I came into this thread to correct your factual errors.
When I and others pointed out your errors, you ignored it. You still haven’t acknowledge them. You don’t care about the mistakes you make. I say again: You think these errors don’t matter because you believe yourself to be fundamentally correct at the core of your beliefs. You are mistaken. Your indifference to errors is a demonstration that you are fundamentally in error.
I don’t care about your view of the theory. You’re simply not knowledgeable enough to discuss this.
I never said that, either.
I have no idea where you get these absurd notions. I didn’t say this, or anything like this. I applauded the move to drop the gold peg. The seizures were unnecessary, and yes, wrong. Although I will say that your level of outrage is basically the internet equivalent of clutching your pearls and swooning – theatrics that are totally out of proportion with the actual nature of the offense. It was bad, but it was nothing on the level of the Japanese internment camps.
So…
There is no more point to this. (Again.) It was the strawmen that drew me back in. I hate being misrepresented.
So now I say, again: If I’ve made a mistake in an assertion somewhere, and that is pointed out, I hope I will acknowledge it. If someone has an honest question, I’ll try to respond. And if someone falsely attributes a strawman position to me, again, I will briefly (in one sentence!) tell them they’re wrong to do so. But there is really, genuinely no further need of this level of interaction. The record from the thread is already clear.
1a. Nominal targeting: I’m all for it, but it sounds politically difficult for the Fed to credibly commit to it. “Hyperinflation!”, opponents will say, when it becomes clear that a spell of inflation above the 2% target becomes necessary. Ironically, I suspect that a quiet adjustment to a 2.5-3.5% core inflation comfort zone would be easier.
1b. That said, I also think that nominal targeting is politically plausible, once people get used to it. It certainly has some nice qualities.
2a. I disagree with your assessment. I don’t think the Fed has their hand on the chain insofar as conventional monetary policy is concerned. Bernanke understands 1937. As for QE3, they feel they need to phase it out over time, which means the time to begin the phase out is before we reach full employment. They fear financial markets will have a seizure if they end it suddenly-- not unreasonable, IMO.
2b. So I’m highly dubious about an effective zero fiscal multiplier under current Fed leadership. Conceptually though it is certainly the case that Congress could givith and the Fed could taketh away.
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No point here, but you might like these charts: Four Charts to Track Timing for QE3 Tapering
Calculated Risk: Four Charts to Track Timing for QE3 Tapering -
Continuing our discussion of “Hot money”. I worry that thinking of inflationary expectations as a single number might be a mistake. In actuality, it’s at best a distribution of distributions. In other words, different players have different probabilistic forecasts. Moreover, they differ systematically. I worry that the bond market is highly elastic to Fed utterances, while auto buyers are not. So if expected long run inflation goes form 2% to 4% say, long bond prices would decline — and auto sales would fall as they are tied to higher monthly payments on auto loans more than anticipated increases in the wage rate.
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At the end of the day though, I maintain that we are flying blind insofar as unconventional monetary policy is concerned. If a couple of years we might have some decent econometric treatments of QE1, QE2 and QE3. But will we have a handle on Fed communications strategy? I fear not. Frustrating, though still interesting.
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Our soggy economy is unsurprising given continued fiscal retrenchment. But that should apparently taper off near the end of this year.
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Textbook economics will have an interesting test in Japan, though I read some murmurs this month that Abe was getting wet.
(Respond to this at your leisure or not at all. I read your posts with interest. That said, I just jumped in on this page of the thread. I skimmed some of the earlier stuff, but when people start bringing up Shadow Stats and other sources where the creators won’t reveal their secret methodology, I tend to lose interest.)
I may be mistaking one thing for another, but I was under the impressing that the various economic papers on the subjects (Reinhart&Rogoff for example) were indeed from the Austrian school.
And I think it says something very negative about society today that one can accuse someone of believing the universe is 6000 years old, and, without even entertaining their ideas, write them off as a lunatic.
Oh wait, no I don’t.
I see that as a good thing.
Look, I’m sorry, but the fact that your political views on the gold standard have been really, really conclusively shown to be backwards, and the overwhelming empirical evidence to back the idea that central banking is considerably more stable and more prosperous pushes the thought that we should return to the gold standard back into the same realm as the thought “The earth is flat”.
Yes, much like “You didn’t build that” has come back to haunt Obama again and again, and “hide the decline” has come back to haunt Michael Mann - it’s because it’s politically convenient to discredit him on account of a bullshit quote mine that very clearly does not say what you think it says. I’m sorry, but your analysis is bullshit, and Krugman says so himself. Anyone with half a brain looking at that article can tell very easily that Krugman is not advocating a housing bubble.
Well if he was, it’s even worse, because the quote was an off-hand joke by someone bemoaning that the Federal Reserve’s sole recourse without assistance from the legislative was to create another bubble. And as others have pointed out, it’s not just Krugman making this assertion - a dude from the CATO institute agreed that this was not what he meant, and that you should probably stop strawmanning Krugman.
…Wow, really? Because a columnist used some subtelty, rather than sledgehammering “I DISAGREE WITH THIS” in flaming gold letters the size of Mount Vesuvius, he obviously agreed with it? In context, there’s no denying that no, he was not actually backing that claim. Hell, he says as much himself.
Then you go on to post another long analysis article about what Krugman might have said that goes directly against what he claims he said, ignoring one simple fact: it doesn’t matter. Even if Krugman advocated the creation of another bubble in 2002, why would that matter? So 11 years ago, he was wrong about one issue (which I disagree with personally, I think you’re misinterpreting him again). For the last 4-5 years, he’s been right about everything. Well, you’re also ignoring the fact that nobody is better equipped to understand Krugman than Krugman (especially when you consider that the people you’re citing have a vested interest in showing Krugman to be a hack).
You are mistaken. Reinhart&Rogoff are called Austerians, because their paper advocated Austerity. The nickname is a bit of a playful jab. They are respected mainstream economists. They have some egg on their face due to spreadsheet and conceptual errors on one of their unpublished working papers, but their book This Time is Different is a modern classic.
The Austrian school is fringy, not especially mainstream. But much of it doesn’t verge off into crackpot land.
Ah. My mistake.
If we’re talking about raw numbers, the more casual and moderate libertarians greatly outnumber the hardcore ones. As BrainGlutton illustrated with the Pew Typology, the basics of libertarian thought do have some traction with a decent group of people, but it’s not the people that supported Ron Paul and vote capital-L Liberatarian. It’s Republicans who have no interest in oppressing gays and immigrants, or using the Bible as a roadmap for policy, but are disturbed by leftist ideas of wealth redistribution, overly burdensome regulation, and threatening a civil right (firearms ownership). They are an unhappy, underserved group: I have to hold my nose to vote Republican, as the majority of their platform is repellant, and their supposedly small-government outlook never seems to actually result in small government.
So, given all that, the ability of the hardcore to stain the “brand” isn’t all that meaningful, IMHO, because the “brand” only matters to the hardcore people. If libertarianism has a future as an ideology that influences public policy, it will be by influencing one of the major parties from within, probably the Republicans when enough of their arch-religious, intolerant base has died off to force them to re-brand. It won’t be the Libertarian Party, and the word “libertarian” needn’t even be mentioned. Just a base of voters who support primary candidates who promise (and deliver!) more limited government and protection for the rights of all, instead of trying to ban abortion and block SSM. If it happens, it’ll be a quiet, slow shift, not a noisy revolution. The hardcore Libs can come along for the ride, but they won’t be driving, they simply don’t have the numbers.
Agreed, and yet that’s Ron Paul’s position. I have a serious problem with that.
I’m more interested in “limited” than “small”, as it happens. I want the government to be absolutely great at the things it’s empowered to do (and capable of doing), and not involved at all in the things it isn’t. The Der Trihs objection to minarchism is that the government would be either too limited to function or too small to assert its power and enforce the law, but that needn’t be so. A minarchist federal government could have an FBI with 36,000 employees, just like ours. It could have a powerful military (though ours is insanely so), and so forth. It’s not the scale I’m interested in, it’s the role.
Reasonable minds can disagree, but I don’t find minarchism and anarchism compatible at all. They make very different assumptions about human nature. Also, I attribute at least 50% of what makes a government succesful to its structure. Get the structure right, and you can have the United States, 224 years and counting under the same system of government. Get it wrong, and you can have Italy or Mexico: nominal democracies that are unstable and flawed. I don’t want any anarchist influence of the structure of government, again because I think they have it all wrong and their ideal is impossible with the human species as it exists today.
I don’t know that we’re fighting, just disagreeing. There’s not much to fight over, at present.
I’m with you there, but the push needs to come from within a major party if it’s to be successful, and it won’t be anytime soon.
Nevertheless, are there any countries who currently use a gold standard?
- If there are, how do their economies compare to fiat countries?
- If there are not, why not?
This strikes me as pretty basic information, rather like establishing a general awareness of gravity before one entertains lengthy discussions on aeronautics.
Hellestal claims that:
But in order for deflation to “ruin” an economy under the conditions he stipulates, he would have to provide some theory to back up *why *it does so. Otherwise, he has not proved causation, but simply asserted it. He claims to be intimately familiar with ABCT but fails to explain why deflation isn’t a healthy reaction to an abundance of overpriced, unwanted goods produced in the boom period. If I am correct, inflationists simply find it more convenient (due to the stickiness of wages) to lower real wages through inflation rather than allowing the market to clear itself through deflation.
Perhaps he could provide empirical evidence of a deflation, accompanied by negative NGDP growth, ruining an economy. Then we could take a closer look at whether or not the deflation was a result or cause of a downturn.
Understood, but, on this board, generally it’s done to provide a link and to quote only part of the article – no more than 1/4 to 1/3 of the text, if it is under copyright. 'Ware Mods. They’ll delete a too-long C&P even if it is not copyrighted.