We are at historically unprecedented times. Consider these facts: There are over $9T worth of government securities that are yielding negative nominal interest rates. That’s right, people are giving governments trillions of dollars with a guaranteed negative return. Hmmm. Many unicorns are losing money but still getting premium IPO prices. Lyft lost nearly $1B last […]
Archives
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Love your Enemies–a critical reflection
29 Mar 2019
Dr. Smith once again showed why he is the leading Berean light with his recent series on loving your enemies–how do we engage in the public sphere while honoring Christ? As usual, he is hitting the key question which Christians should be wrestling with. His honest reflection is one that challenges and inspires us to […]
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The most important price in our economy is socialist, not capitalist. Bernie, you’ve already won!
20 Mar 2019
Yesterday I was teaching on money in macroeconomics, and we discussed how the Fed influences the whole complex of interest rates. That naturally led to the question, how does the Fed “know” what the right level of reserves are, what the correct Fed funds rate should be, etc. What we know for sure is that […]
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AOC, Green New Deal and Monetary Theory?
27 Feb 2019
It was hard for me not to geek out yesterday. I teach Money & Financial Markets in the spring, and we mostly focus on traditional banking texts with a special look at the financial crisis. Seldom do we get to the specific monetary theories–Austrian, Post-Keynesian or other heterodox approaches. But the wisdom of youth, as […]
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The New York Week in Political Economy
18 Feb 2019
Amazon is up first. It’s amazing that I actually have some agreement with AOC–why should we be subsidizing the dominant firm in the world? This has been interesting and illustrative as some politicians think that how you create good jobs in your area is to bribe a specific firm with special favors. Gov Cuomo and […]
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Its hard in my flesh not to smile at the ongoing self-destruction in the Democratic party in Virginia. I’ve long considered identity politics highly destructive to our country–essentially the Democratic Party has embraced as an organizing principle what the Federalist Papers warned as a serious danger, that of faction. And as that tendency toward faction […]
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Is this issue about race, or is it really all about politics and power? Certainly for the Democratic party, where Gov Ralph Northam is being pressured by the Democrats for an offensive photo from his law school yearbook of the 1980s, its hard to tell. I suspect Mr. Northam will be on his way soon, […]
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AOC Mania(c)!
24 Jan 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC by her fans, is the dynamic new congresswoman from NYC who openly embraces seemingly every nonsensical thing that formerly was considered a caricature of Democratic thought. And rather than being considered crazy by her party, she is lionized by the younger energetic part of the Democratic base. Sit in at […]
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The Greatest Economic Fallacy?
18 Jan 2019
Recently I had a nice discussion with an uber driver, and upon learning that I was an economic professor he asked me why I enjoyed teaching economics. I suggested that exploding economic fallacies is perhaps the most fun part of my job, since as Ronald Reagan used to quote (I think from Mark Twain originally): […]
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Dad, what’s an interest rate?
07 Jan 2019
Almost every year faculty get some list of what today’s students never knew about, such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are ancient history. Some likely don’t know about the presidency of George H.W. Bush, other than perhaps a vague knowledge that he was George W. Bush’s father and an earlier president, and none remember […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach