Thursday, October 25, 2012

A Gold-Hating, Libertarian-Hating Bloomberg Writer Tweets

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What planet is Barro on?

As to his first tweet, is he not aware that the United States just went through a major financial and real estate crisis that many libertarians warned about and hardly anyone else? Is he not aware that the eurozone is on the edge of collapse because of the various interventionist steps taken by those governments that libertarians regularly warn about? And, I'm sure everything is just dandy the interventionist heavy regions of North Korea and Cuba.

As for point 2, here is the current Harper Collins definitions of inflation (relating to the economy):
2. Economics a progressive increase in the general level of prices brought about by an expansion in demand or the money supply (demand-pull inflation) or by autonomous increases in costs (cost-push inflation) Compare deflation

3. (Economics) Informal the rate of increase of prices
Notice the emphasis on rising prices. Yet as early as 1974, Percy Greaves in Mises Made Easier commented on the danger of the move towards simply defining inflation as an increase in prices:
NOTE: The currently popular fashion of defining inflation by one of its effects, higher prices, tends to conceal from the public the other effects of an increase in the quantity of money whenever the resulting rise in prices is offset by a corresponding drop in prices due to an increase in production. The use of this definition thus weakens the opposition to further increases in the quantity of money by political fiat or manipulation and permits a still greater distortion of the economic structure before the inevitable adjustment period, popularly known as a recession or depression.
Bottom line: Barro's snide tweet relative to the point Andrew Schiff was making does nothing but display Barro's ignorance of the way in which the definition of inflation has changed from simply being called "an increase in the quantity of money" to now being defined as one of the effects of an increase in the quantity of money, "rising prices." This second definition, as Greaves and Schiff point out, tends to obscure the fact that there are other ramifications of an increase in the quantity of money beyond rising prices, such as a total distortion of the entire capital structure of the economy!

It appears Barro's has been sucked in by the newer less enlightening definition of inflation and probably has no clue has to how inflation was once viewed. Barro's ignorance, in other words, proves Andrew Schiff's point.

4 comments:

  1. I still see disaster everywhere with the tendency of agencies to alter data to fit their narrative.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So...

    Don't snipe Barro. Destroy him.

    Here's the outline:

    TITLE: CAUGHT IN THE ACT

    Barrow Tweet #1

    Greece headline and video
    Spain headline and video
    US Debt warnings
    US Forecast if lost reserve status

    Commentary: So, still not enough blood for Barro?

    Barrow Tweet #2

    Past definition of inflation from old Econ text book #1
    Past definition of inflation from old Econ text book #2

    Current definition of inflation from text book #1
    Current definition of inflation from text book #2

    Commentary: Barro, you're a propagandist and have been caught in the act!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, the last 4 years were just everybody --pretending-- there was a disaster. I see it now.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like how Ron Paul pretended there was going to be a housing crisis created by the Fed with Fannie and Freddie way back in 2001 and 2003 in vivid detail. Good thing that his exact predictions didn't happen at all.

    What a clown.

    ReplyDelete