[This article is excerpted from chapter 21 of Human Action: The Scholar’s Edition and is read by Jeff Riggenbach.]
 

Economics is Hard. Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise by Katrik Athreya, a research economist at the Fed can be summarized “Kids, don’t try this at home. Economics requires adult supervision.”

I appreciated this review of Percy Greaves’s book by Richard Ebeling.

Many books have appeared over the years about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And among them have been outstanding “revisionist” works challenging the “court history” of America’s “innocence” in the events leading up to that “date that will live in infamy.”

A 10% levy on tanning is set to transpire soon in an attempt to feed the federal government an estimated 2.7 billion in, supposedly, needed funding. The comedy is of course in their faulty economics.

Incidentally, I realized after the initial reaction to this that a lot of the younger anti-Keynesians wouldn’t recognize the song. (Not that I’m that old myself–but my dad was a big “oldies” fan so I’m quite familiar with ’60s rock.) The actual song is The Buckinghams’ “Susan.”

Looking at the New York Times headlines this morning, Recovery Slows With Weak Job Creation in June and Recovery is Losing Steam, I’m finally beginning to understand the strange change of language that has occurred in the last 18 months or so. The word recovery is a euphemism of some sort. It actually means a depression.

The post-stimulus macroeconomy is panning out pretty much the way Austrians said it would. Unemployment is still high, and now that the Census workers are fired, jobs are being shed. Home construction is declining. Manufacturing growth is falling. Stocks: don’t make me laugh.