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Tag Archives: Scott Sumner

Bubble trouble: about asset booms and busts

April 19, 2013 – 10:30 am

Assets are items that produce income or retain value across time periods. Gold is a pure store-of-value asset, as it produces no income. Bonds are pure income assets, as they have no value apart from the income they produce–they are best thought of as a congealed money stream, their value being set by that money [...]

By Lorenzo | Posted in Economics, History | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (12)

Check your expectations (3) Milton Friedman not going far enough

April 15, 2013 – 10:30 am

Milton Friedman’s 1967 Presidential Address (pdf) is something monetary economists regularly say anyone interested in monetary economics should read. Having recently read it, I have come to the conclusion that it is something anyone interested in monetary economics should read. As is normal with Friedman, it is beautifully clear, one his great attributes. His analysis holds [...]

By Lorenzo | Posted in Economics, Public Policy | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Bilbo baggage

January 10, 2013 – 9:30 am

The further back you can look, the further forward you are likely to see. Winston Churchill. With the release of the first film of The Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey, the blogosphere is rife with Middle Earth allusions. My favourite is Frances Woolley’s wonderful post (with some great comments) The Macroeconomics of Middle Earth, though [...]

By Lorenzo | Posted in Blogging, Economics, England, Environment, History, Law, Literature, Marriage, Politics, Popular culture, Public Policy, Religion, Sexuality, Society, Technology, Welfare | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (20)

They did it again

September 19, 2012 – 10:30 am

One of my basic analytical principles is that things reveal their nature in history (including the history that has not happened yet — that is, what has happened is not the sum of possibilities). If one wishes to understand current events, then cultivate a sense of history for the past is the cause of the [...]

By Lorenzo | Posted in Australia, Economics, History, Public Policy | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Networked zealotry

August 13, 2012 – 10:30 am

A feature of the internet has been the growth of networked zealotry; where intensely held attitudes are expressed in overheated rhetoric and ad hominem abuse, not as solitary aberrations (though that also happens), but in self-reinforcing internet coteries. This has fed off, and possibly intensified, the bitter “culture wars” of the US; the intensification of [...]

By Lorenzo | Posted in Academia, Blogging, Britain, History, Media, Politics, Science, Society | Also tagged , , , | Comments (73)

Debt and boom

July 19, 2012 – 11:02 am

The slogan for this post is: don’t think debt, think safe assets. (This post is partly provoked by this post by Paul Krugman responded to by Scott Sumner and by Marcus Nunes.) In my Debt, Doom and Despair post I noted that a hugely debt-burdened post-Napoleonic Wars UK (where the national public debt was probably about [...]

By Lorenzo | Posted in Australia, Britain, Economics, History, Public Policy, Taxation, Technology, Welfare | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

About Austrian economics

April 24, 2012 – 3:45 pm

I find Steve Horwitz, along with George Selgin (prominent advocate of free banking and supporter of a productivity norm [pdf] for monetary policy), the most accessible of contemporary Austrian school economists as they are both clear writers who seek to engage with those who are not of their school and are refreshingly free of the nastiness [...]

By Lorenzo | Posted in Economics, Entrepreneurs, History, Philosophy | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (38)