Population Control Nonsense

According to an American Dream article, “Al Gore, Agenda 21 and Population Control,” there are too many of us and it has a negative impact on the earth. Here’s what the United Nations Population Fund said in its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009, “Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate”: [...]

Rizzo on Samuelson

Mario Rizzo, an economist for whom I have the deepest respect, has some important things to say about a recent article by Paul Samuelson, who has had so much to do with constructing mainstream economics. Read it here.

At Least Ponzi Didn’t Threaten Violence

Suppose while perusing your annuity fund’s quarterly statement you read: “By 2038, the funds will be exhausted and the contemporary contributions will be enough to pay only about 73 percent of benefits owed.” Your emotions might run the gamut from outrage to fear. In the wake of the Enron, WorldCom, and (insert the latest name) [...]

Pulling Down the Keynesian Cross

In his third and final volume on John Maynard Keynes, Robert Skidelsky comes to the shocking conclusion that the Keynesian revolution was temporary, that Keynes’s General Theory was really only a “special” case, and that “free market liberalism” has ultimately triumphed. This is all the more amazing given that Lord Skidelsky has spent the past 20 years of his professional career studying Keynes and resides in Keynes’s old estate, Tilton House. Few scholars would have the guts to repudiate the theory of the man they adore.

Best Textbooks for a Free-Market University

“I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws . . . if I can write its economics textbooks.” -Paul A. Samuelson When I majored in economics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were precious few textbooks with a strong free-market bent. My introductory course required Paul A. Samuelson’s Economics, a strictly Keynesian work [...]

Samuelson’s Last Hurrah

As readers of The Freeman know, this column has documented the dramatic changes in Samuelson’s thinking over the past few years.[1] Along with the rest of the economics mainstream, he has shifted gradually from standard Keynesian analysis to the Classical model of Adam Smith.

Great Turnabouts in Economics

We can only admire the scholar who is willing to change when he is convinced by the facts or a new theory. It takes a strong dose of courage and honesty to go against one’s vested interest, especially after publishing books and articles on the subject.

The Myth of the Independent Fed

Dr. DiLorenzo is a professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an independent agency operated by selfless public servants striving to fine-tune the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat. Yet, [...]

Another Shocking Reversal in Macroeconomics

Who wrote this? “Fiscal policy is no longer a major tool of stabilization policy in the United States. Over the foreseeable future, stabilization policy will be performed by Federal Reserve monetary policy.”

Milton Friedman? No, it was not a monetarist.

I recently met with Milton Friedman in his home in San Francisco, and asked him who he thought wrote the above statement. “Alan Greenspan?” he queried. No, it wasn’t a Federal Reserve official.