The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) “doesn’t fight inflation, it manufactures and maintains it.” This is a quote from the 2011 book The Evil Princes of Martin Place which I used in my first public piece on the RBA and inflation.

In my industrial organization course, I discuss the economic theory of the firm. It is important in that there are many ways real world firms don’t correspond to the way they are presented in microeconomics models. When dealing with differences between the assumptions or implications of a microeconomic model or analysis and the real world, I have often been struck by how often nirvana appears as a standard of comparison, which leads to confusion and many erroneous conclusions.

In 1833, Uriah P. Levy commissioned two statues of Thomas Jefferson.

As the first Jewish commodore in the United States Navy, Levy overcame anti-Semitism within the ranks. Levy credited his ability to serve as a religious minority to “one of the greatest men in history … [who] serves as an inspiration to millions of Americans [and] did much to mould our Republic in a form in which a man’s religion does not make him ineligible for political or governmental life.”