Now that the Treasury has ruled out the scheme of minting a $1 trillion platinum coin as a means to circumvent the gimmicky debt limit, it is instructive to take a closeer. For the scheme could have metamorphosed into far more than one-time political trick to avoid the debt limit. In fact it was an implicit challenge to the much vaunted and sacrosanct “independence” of the Fed.

[Part 2 of “The Secession Tradition in America,” a paper presented at the 1995 Mises Institute conference, “Secession, State, and Economy.” Click here for Part 1, “Secession: A Specifically American Principle”.]
 

Professor Salerno, the great thing about Paul Krugman is that he’s a walking reductio ad absurdum.  Critics of Keynesianism don’t even need to point out, “Well Dr. Krugman, by the same logic, you could also say...”  He saves critics the trouble, because he’s already there. He performs the logical reductio himself, and promulgates the resulting absurdities as pearls of Keynesian wisdom.

In today’s Wall Street Journal

“Most Americans recognize the need to reduce government spending to rein in the national debt. But there is another reason to cut government spending for specific programs: If more people have less incentive to stay out of the work force, they might seek jobs and help spur economic growth.”

here.

N.B.: coarse language.

Ben Bernanke’s confided yesterday that he is unaware of any new method of stimulating economic growth. Spoke Bernanke: “As far as I’m aware, there’s no completely new method that we haven’t [already tapped].” So Helicopter Ben has run out of innovative and unconventional ways to create new money.

The Wall Street Journal takes note of Paul Krugman’s attack on “Austrian/Ron Paul types” (1/13/13) page C1, “Ahead of the Tape”).

We have all heard of the boy who cried wolf.

A similar charge is being leveled against pundits who warned of runaway inflation as a result of the Federal Reserve’s extraordinary stimulus. Economist Paul Krugman, for example, pilloried “Austrian/Ron Paul types” for being so wrong the past three years.

Even after a tripling of the monetary base, Mr. Krugman’s sanguine view is in favor.

[Part 1 of “The Secession Tradition in America,” a paper presented at the 1995 Mises Institute conference, “Secession, State, and Economy.”]