Utopia, you are standing in it!

One thing in the National Party’s call for a public inquiry into monetary policy that I didn’t comment on yesterday was the framing. The press release is headed “Inquiry needed into impact of tidal wave of cash”. It is a framing I have never liked, whether coming from critics on the left or the right.

My point here isn’t to bag National. They ran with a catchy headline, but the body of their release talks more generally about the overall conduct of monetary policy. But it is a framing that isn’t uncommon (loose talk of “money printing”) so it is an opportunity to restate my view – probably a minority view, but I stand by it – of the macroeconomic irrelevance (to a first approximation) of the Reserve Bank’s LSAP programme.

Rather than write something fresh, here I’ve reproduced the relevant sections of a lecture I gave to some Victoria…

Watching today’s press conference with Fed chief Jerome Powell reminded me of something Milton Friedman said in 1978:

“Nearly a dozen years ago, I warned of an inflationary recession (Newsweek, Oct. 17, 1966). We have since then had three inflationary recessions and a fourth is almost surely on the way. During the first, the brief mini-recession of 1967, consumer prices rose 2.4 per cent per year; during the longer and more severe recession from December 1969 to November 1970, prices rose 5.3 per cent per year; during the still longer and even more severe recession from November 1973 to March 1975, prices rose 10.8 per cent per year; during the coming recession, prices are likely to rise at least 7 per cent per year.

Each scenario has been the same: rapid growth in the quantity of money followed by economic expansion and then, much later, by rising inflation; a…

In March I wrote a blog post, “Robert Lucas and the Pretense of Science,” which was a draft proposal for a paper for a conference on Coordination Issues in Historical Perspectives to be held in September. My proposal having been accepted I’m going to post sections of the paper on the blog in hopes of getting some feedback as a write the paper. What follows is the first of several anticipated draft sections.

Just 31 years old, F. A. Hayek rose rapidly to stardom after giving four lectures at the London School of Economics at the invitation of his almost exact contemporary, and soon to be best friend, Lionel Robbins. Hayek had already published several important works, of which Hayek ([1928], 1984) laying out basic conceptualization of an intertemporal equilibrium almost simultaneously with the similar conceptualizations of two young Swedish economists, Gunnar Myrdal (1927) and Erik Lindahl [1929]…

For many baby boomers like me growing up in Los Angeles, UCLA was an almost inevitable choice for college. As an incoming freshman, I was undecided whether to major in political science or economics. PoliSci 1 didn’t impress me, but Econ 1 did. More than my Econ 1 professor, it was the assigned textbook, University Economics, 1st edition, by Alchian and Allen that impressed me. That’s how my career in economics started.

After taking introductory micro and macro as a freshman, I started the intermediate theory sequence of micro (utility and cost theory, econ 101a), (general equilibrium theory, 101b), and (macro theory, 102) as a sophomore. It was in the winter 1968 quarter that I encountered Axel Leijonhufvud. This was about a year before his famous book – his doctoral dissertation – Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keyneswas published in the fall of 1968 to instant acclaim…

In the absence of mandates directing grid managers to take chaotic wind or solar power ahead of conventional power and/or massive subsidies directed to retailers encouraging them to take it and/or heavy fines imposed on them if they refuse to, there is simply no commercial market for power which can only be generated occasionally, in ideal wind conditions and/or when the sun is shining, on cloudless days.

Back in 1983 the American Wind Industry Association claimed that wind power would be “competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D”. That was 36 years ago. And there was no lack of assistance in the form of tax credits and federally sponsored R&D, along with a whole bunch of other punitive mandates and targets designed to cripple conventional generators and favour chaotically intermittent wind power.

Now…

The question I have been asked most over the last week is why the Russian ruble is been appreciating despite the fact Russia has been hit by extensive economic sanctions.

I must honestly admit that since the sanctions were introduced I have not spent much time following the development of the ruble – or rather the ruble exchange rate on our screens does not really tell us much as the ruble today cannot really be said to be a convertible currency in the traditional sense.

If, for example. showed up at an European bank with rubles and wanted to exchange them for euros then in practice you would hardly be able to do so.

This is because the Russian central bank (CBR) has been sanctioned and what happens in practice is that if you have to exchange rubles for euros the money is basically deposited in the Russian central bank…

Stardate: 4202.1 (2267)
Original Air Date: October 20, 1967
Writer: Norman Spinrad
Director: Marc Daniels

“Gentlemen, I suggest you beam me aboard.”

The Enterprise receives an automated distress call from the partially destroyed ship, the USS Constellation. Something has destroyed system L-370 (seven planets) and system L-374, where only two planets remain. Spock notes that the U.S.S. Constellation is suspended in space with limited power but it is capable of sustaining life. In order to investigate this derelict ship, Kirk, Bones, Scotty, join a damage control team abeam aboard the Constellation.

Lying alone near the ship’s controls, they find a badly shaken Commodore Matt Decker (William Windom). Commodore Decker details a harrowing situation: the Constellation had attempted to contact Starfleet when it arrived in L-374 but the fourth planet seemed to be breaking apart and the interference prevented any communication to Starfleet. Most of his…

A few weeks ago in a post about what a new government might do about the Reserve Bank, I noted with some concern that the National Party had been very quiet on the issue.

I noted then that the process for reappointing (or not) Orr was likely to be getting underway very soon, and that if the Opposition thought it was inappropriate for him to be reappointed they needed to be raising concerns now (helping create a climate in which it would be more difficult for the government to push ahead) and not wait until (as required by law) the Minister has to consult other parties on the person he proposes to appoint as Governor (by when there would be considerable momentum behind any particular name).

So it was interesting and encouraging to see a press release yesterday from Luxon which appeared to raise serious concerns about Orr’s stewardship of…

Posted by Krista J. Kesselring, 26 July 2022.

Some myths about the past float entirely free of the evidence, but some have just enough grounding in the documentary record to be particularly persistent. Witchcraft is mired with myths of both sorts. Historians repeatedly and seemingly in vain point out that the phenomenon of ‘witch hunting’ was not so much medieval as early modern – it corresponded with the age of Shakespeare and early science more so than the supposedly superstitious or saintly Middle Ages. They note that much of the energy behind the fears and trials came from educated, elite commentators not some uneducated, illiterate rabble, and from secular authorities, physicians, and lawyers at least as often as from churchmen. (King James VI/I’s witch-treatise Daemonologie, first published in 1597, is a prime example.) While patriarchy pervaded the proceedings – the majority of the condemned in England as in many…

To begin Part III of this series (here’s Part I and Part II), let’s dig into the archives for this video I narrated back in 2007.

At the risk of patting myself on the back, all of the points hold up very well. Indeed, the past 15 years have produced more evidence that my main arguments were correct.

• Lower corporate rates reduce double taxation
• Lower corporate rates reduce taxes on people
• Lower corporate rates boost worker income
• Lower corporate rates boost competitiveness
• Lower corporate rates generate revenue feedback

The good news is that all these arguments helped produce a tax bill that dropped America’s federal corporate tax rate by 14 percentage points, from 35 percent to 21 percent.

The bad news is that Biden and most Democrats in Congress want to raise the corporate rate.

In a column for CapX, Professor Tyler Goodspeed explains why higher corporate tax…

About this episode from IMDb

Episode explores new and old challenges that black communities faced 25 years after civil rights struggle began. It follows black communities in Miami and Chicago and chronicles their dramatically different responses to these challenges.

About this series

Wikipedia

Eyes on the Prize is an American television series and 14-part documentary about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The documentary originally aired on the PBS network and also aired in the United Kingdom on BBC2. Created and executive produced by Henry Hampton at the film production company Blackside and narrated by Julian Bond, the series uses archival footage, stills and interviews of participants and opponents of the movement. The title of the series is derived from the folk song “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” which is used in each episode as the opening theme music.

A total…

The erratic and occasional delivery of wind and solar has sent wholesale power prices into orbit and major energy users are simply being chopped from the grid when wind and/or solar output hits the floor. Consumers have just been hit with retail power bills which are between 20 and 30% higher than the same time last year. And this is just the beginning.

Australia’s power pricing and supply calamity is the product of policies deliberately designed to wreck reliable and affordable power supplies. Massive and seemingly endless subsidies to chaotically intermittent wind and solar have done what they were designed to do: drive the owners of reliable coal-fired power generators to the wall, by allowing wind and solar generators to occasionally deliver power to the market ahead of the cheap and reliable stuff.

It’s a calamity to be sure, but you wouldn’t know it if you believed…