The New York Times magazine is running a lengthy feature on NYU’s plans to become one of the elite economics graduate programs by an aggressive recruiting campaign.  The president of NYU sees economics as one of the prestige fields that he can use to advance the reputation of the university.  I found this article interesting for its insight into how the academic ranking game is played. Mises himself taught at NYU, and NYU was at one point a minor bastion of Austrianism.

“It’s the bond market, stupid!” (Economist): “An odd thing is happening in the market for risk and the market of the riskless, also known as the equity and government-bond markets: prices are rising in both. The S&P 500 share index, up by over 20% from its low earlier this year, continues to soar. Meanwhile, rising prices in the bond market have driven yields on the ten-year note down to 3.35%—a level last seen when Elvis Presley was a youngster.

Re: Ponnuru’s query: I address this point in my book Economics for Real People: “The desire to hold cash alters prices. It is true that not everyone in the economy can put more dollars under their mattress at the same time. As there are only so many dollars in existence, everyone’s efforts to trade goods for a certain number of dollars cannot all succeed.

According to CNN, Greenspan “showed his whimsical side Thursday” in a casual talk to class of inner-city students. When he was 16 years old, “he joined a traveling band, playing clarinet for $6 a week plus room and board.” “Money was money back then, it really bought something,” said Greenspan. He was born in 1926, so the year would have been 1942: in current dollars, $6 per week would be $67.73 per week plus room and board today.

CNN: Unemployment rises to 6.1% :

The unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent in May as businesses cut thousands more jobs, the government said Friday, extending the labor market’s prolonged slump.

A wonderful piece by John Naughton of the Observer, thanks to Karen De Coster at the LRC blog. Naughton writes: “In fact, when it comes to many topics in which I have a professional interest, I would sooner pay attention to particular blogs than to anything published in Big Media - including the venerable New York Times.

This article (CNN) examines the injection effects that are now ocurring in response the Fed’s program of inflation. 

If Mises and Rothbard emphasized the crucial monetary point that “while an increase in the money supply, like an increase in the supply of any good, lowers its price, the change does not—unlike other goods—confer a social benefit,” the chairman of the central bank has a different view. According to the Washington Times, Twelve-year-old Shannon Wilkins was asked what he learned from Greenspan’s talk at a D.C.

“Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman who is often called the second-most-powerful person in the United States, was made an honorary black man yesterday. He was also called ‘a bad brother.’”

Writes Justin Raimondo in Antiwar.com: “As an extra, added bonus: we now have the Mises blog – where you can read the latest about the issues that really matter, written by scholars and students associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, from a pure free-market perspective.”