George Selgin @GeorgeSelgin Twitter profile

Last Seen Profiles

@nylefort

@henryflows111

@harryfreeman201

@MadM0722

@LesAbbott12

@Lazaret1981

@xantherous

@primatepaige

@pasurtihot

@PasutriSheila

@tc_whetstone

@benjamin09813

@shu_ota2

@HDaviddorantes

@JustCrowz

@dcarrerasj

@morgan_erdman26

@Mishal5251ca

@KyungUpton7619

@Surajbisht25

@stw46

@inop_8

@NosniyRBLX

@OOHHEEM

@NosniyRBLX

@swafny

@Heureux_Cyclage

@roxor_over

@iklimeuyum

@zulyzz

@VmaniakJ

@gayajman4

@LStodolski29002

@she_sanaa

@stw_pdg

George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Kidding aside, I've now read @nntaleb 's paper in its entirety. And it is not just poor. It is almost 100% baloney: sloppy or made-up history, sloppier history of thought, deplorable economics, and fatuous statistics.

George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

If seeing Nassim Taleb trash bitcoin doesn't make a HODLer out of me, nothing can!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

I would be happy to publicly debate @GaryGensler , Gary Gorton, or anyone else who claims that history proves that private currencies aren't viable without heavy handed regulation, if even then. Heck, I'd happily debate several of them at once!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

The excellent @crampell is absolutely right: the "gouging" theory of inflation is terrible economics, and worse politics. 1/2

Opinion | An inflation conspiracy theory is infecting the Democratic Party

At best, this approach has done nothing to curb inflation. Worse, it has distracted Democrats from taking actions that could help.

www.washingtonpost.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

I’m not anti-Bitcoin. I’m pro-Bitcoin minus hype.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

The Five Stages of Inflation Grief: (1) Hooray, inflation is dead! (2) OK, it isn't dead, but it's not the Fed's fault, and it's temporary. (3) So it's not temporary, but raising rates will crash the economy. (4) Let's try price controls. (5) Fed, please crash the economy!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

What Bitcoin was:

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

6 months

I do not buy lottery tickets, play the horses, or relish bungie jumping. And I’m not planning to invest in Bitcoin ETF’s. But I’ll be damned if I put up with bureaucrats and law professors denying me the ability to decide for myself whether any of these things is worth doing.

Hilary Allen

@ProfHilaryAllen

6 months

I was very disappointed to see the SEC approve exchange-traded Bitcoin products for retail investors. Everyday investors will be harmed, crypto will be brought closer to the core of our financial system - and for what?

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

This is idiotically reductionist. For starters, the gold standard wasn’t to blame for any pre-1914 U.S. crisis: had it been the problem, Canada, which shared the very sane gold dollar, would have experienced concurrent crises. It didn’t. 1/

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦

@Noahpinion

7 months

Just in case you were wondering why the U.S. doesn't have recessions all the time now...

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

1 year

Break out the cigars, boys: it’s a big baby of a book!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Thread: Bukele's Bitcoin legislation is certainly a win for Bitcoin. But is it a win for freedom?

Nayib Bukele

@nayibbukele

3 years

I’ve just sent the #BitcoinLaw to Congress 🇸🇻

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

Thread: Christine Lagarde plays loose with the facts here.

Disclose.tv

@disclosetv

2 years

NOW - ECB chief Lagarde says she does not like to see a new period of "free banking" due to cryptocurrencies. Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are required to maintain the role of central banks.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Want to write like an academic economist? Here's my sure-fire guide to Standard Econ English.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

It's remarkable that many can't understand that a currency isn't doomed simply because it looses a bit more than 2% of its value every year, as if it couldn't do so forever. The fallacy is so common that it deserves a name. I hereby christen it the "melting ice cube" fallacy.

David Zanca

@DavidZanca

4 years

@LawrenceLepard @GeorgeSelgin All is well

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but just as recent inflation hasn't all been the Fed's fault, today's decline, dependent as it is on the oil market, is no proof that the Fed is getting back on track. Real proof of that will consist of a much-lower 3rd quarter (NGDP) growth rate.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Thread: The hard thing about being a market-oriented monetary and financial reg. policy guy is the very thick accretion of myths that have developed around the field, starting in ancient times.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

On Friday I'm off to visit Cordoba and Granada, with the intent of deciding to make one of them my next home. I look forward to seeing a lot more of my European twitter friends once I do. ¡Deséame suerte!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 months

Yep, Berstein blows it. But there is a perfectly good answer to Kelton's question. (Short .)

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

3 months

This is absolutely priceless. And probably the most frightening clip you'll ever watch on the people in charge of the US economy. Jared Bernstein is literally the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, the main agency advising Biden on economic policy

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

This is one of the more absurd threads I've seen recently (and that's saying plenty!). The suggestion that the dollar's troubles stem from a "crypto attack," or that such an attack could possibly endanger it, is sheer fantasy--as bad as the hoariest anti-bank conspiracy theories.

Dave Troy

@davetroy

3 years

I can't stress this enough: the crypto attack on the dollar is not strictly a "pump and dump" or a "grift." It's an ideologically-driven attack on the legitimacy of fiat currency, the @federalreserve , and the incumbent financial system. It is the sequel to the January 6th attack.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

As @pkwsj reports, @GaryGensler continues to grotesquely mischaracterize antebellum U.S. banking:

SEC’s Gensler Doesn’t See Cryptocurrencies Lasting Long

Regulator says history of ‘wildcat banking’ in U.S. shows limited viability for private forms of money.

www.wsj.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

Milei is discussing Malthus and endogenous growth theory, fer crissakes! If that’s talking “pseudoscientific nonsense of the highest degree,” it sure beats the utter economic illiteracy of either Peronists or certain recent U.S. presidents.

Maia

@maiamindel

7 months

like the man is an austrian economist. pseudoscientific nonsense of the highest degree

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

If seeing Nassim Taleb trash bitcoin doesn't make a HODLer out of me, nothing can!

Nassim Taleb, Erstwhile Bitcoin Admirer, Publishes Paper Trashing It

Bitcoin "can be neither a long or short term store of value (its expected value is no higher than 0)," writes the "Black Swan" author.

www.coindesk.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

5 years

Following the 1619 project discussion here on Twitter, I'm struck by the snarky tone of the project's editor, even in exchanges with polite (if perhaps mistaken) critics who are also professionals. Besides setting a terrible example, it hardly inspires confidence in the project.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Thread: I don't think I've been at all coy when it comes explaining why I doubt that Bitcoin will ever become a generally-accepted and widely-used medium for everyday payments, that is, "money." Misunderstood; but not coy. Still, for @allenf32 's sake I will sum-up my view here.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

Yes, hackers find it convenient these days to request ransom payment in Bitcoin, just as kidnappers and blackmailers for a century asked for payment in Federal Reserve notes. We don't condemn the Fed for the last fact. Why condemn Bitcoin for the first?

Why Hackers Use Bitcoin and Why It Is So Difficult to Trace

Here’s what you need to know about bitcoin.

www.wsj.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

6 months

The most ringing endorsement of Milei yet.

COMBATE |🇵🇷

@upholdreality

6 months

MADURO: "A message to Javier Milei... You were put in Argentina to destroy the rule of law, destroy the State, destroy all social and labor rights, destroy the national economy and to colonize Argentina and deliver it on its knees to US imperialism... you are a fatal mistake"

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

I realized a 10% follower gain this past week, thanks to bitcoiners. Alas, I might lose it all next week: they're notoriously volatile.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

Thread: It's dangerous to say that @paulkrugman has outdone himself. But his recent attack on those of us who have done serious research on free banking, he at least matches his previous lows.

Opinion | From the Big Short to the Big Scam (Published 2022)

Fraud aside, what are cryptocurrencies for?

www.nytimes.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Perhaps the most extraordinary letters in my trove is one of the last from Milton Friedman, with whom I corresponded often. It is so because that great man felt it necessary to apologize for taking so long to write! How many would have bothered to write at all?

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

Even a year’s worth of Spanish is enough to realize that Mr. Adler is dishonest: Milei’s crackdown is exclusively concerns protesters who block traffic: “They can protest on the sidewalk,” says his minister of security.

Milei lanza un plan para reprimir las protestas: “Si se toman las calles, habrá consecuencias”

La ministra de Seguridad, Patricia Bullrich, presenta un nuevo protocolo contra los cortes de calles mientras aumenta la tensión por los recortes económicos anunciados esta semana

elpais.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 months

Nope. Central banks can "outprint" any amount of technological innovation. Works that say that the coming this-or-that tech innovation is "bound" to bring falling prices (and there have been several such) reveal a very poor understanding of how fiat monetary systems work.

tennsand

@tennsand

4 months

@GeorgeSelgin My belief is we are going to experience broader scale deflation because of ai powered automation dropping the cost of labor; wide spread usage of solar and wind for energy production dropping cost of energy; GMO yeasts to produce animal proteins dropping cost of food. Etc

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

No it isn’t. Not here. Now now. Not anytime soon. With a little luck, never.

jack

@jack

3 years

Hyperinflation is going to change everything. It’s happening.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

Thread: 3 wrong theories of bank money creation: (1) An ordinary bank must wait for reserves (deposits) to come its way in order to make loans; if they seem to maintain an 5% reserve ratio, then they can only lend 95% or deposits received.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

5 months

Well, I have survived 67 years.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Thank you, @nic__carter , for taking this principled stand! Your voice is important, and I hope others will be persuaded by it to reach the same conclusions.

El Salvador Doesn't Need a Bitcoin Mandate

The Bukele administration should consider not enforcing, or eliminating, Article 7 of its new law. Let Bitcoin flourish on its own merits.

www.coindesk.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

Calling his ideas flawed or dangerous is one thing; but the demonization of Keynes by libertarians and conservatives is silly.

DutchLibertarian

@LibertarianDuty

7 months

Javier Milei on John Maynard Keynes: "He was a criminal"

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

1 year

As #FedNow launches, a thread concerning my long-standing opposition to it.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

The Austrian cycle theory would command much more respect than it does today were it not for amateur Austrians' tendency to attribute every boom to easy money and to predict 100 "inevitable" crashes for every actual crash.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

6 months

Tell me you don’t know your Chinese economic history without telling me.*

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

8 months

If Bitcoin looks like a Ponzi scheme to you, you either don’t know what Bitcoin looks like, or you don’t know what Ponzi scheme is.

Owen Benjamin 🐻

@OwenBenjamin

8 months

Bitcoin appears to be a decentralized Ponzi scheme not a decentralized currency. People don’t spend it because they want it to go up. The dollar works because of inflation. It keeps velocity up like hot potato. If you want to store value silver gold and land. Because it’s

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

Except it ignores several important studies questioning earlier (especially pre-1930) business-cycle data, all of which tend to reduce the incidence and duration of earlier cycles. 1/

Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

7 months

This is such a great chart for showing off how good economists have gotten at stabilizing the economy.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

Face it: this, not any interest denationalization of money, is what drives most participation in the Bitcoin market today. It’s more Tupperware and Amway than Mises and Hayek.

Ash Crypto

@Ashcryptoreal

7 months

Year is 2025 Bitcoin is trading at $230k You are a multi millionaire You have retired your parents Married to a beautiful wife with 2 kids. You have it all. Be consistent and Believe in yourself coz I know you can make it happen. In crypto you can turn $1000 to $1M

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

An answer, in a thread, because others may gain something by it.

Claire Lehmann

@clairlemon

3 years

Can someone who understands money explain this to me: - the USD was backed by gold, then oil, then economic growth; - If there is no growth & the US government keeps printing... - what prevents hyperinflation?

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

11 months

Actually, any monetary or macro economist worth his salt can answer Hoppe's question, which mainly succeeds in displaying his utter ignorance of monetary theory and hstory.

Bitstein

@bitstein

3 years

How to talk to #Bitcoin skeptics:

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

The spectacle of Bitcoin fans celebrating the prospective granting of legal tender status to it by El Salvador's authoritarian President (he only just extended his executive authority over the country's central bank) must have F.A. Hayek rolling in his grave! 1/2

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

I don't suppose it would help to point out to that Cato has long been in the forefront of the fight against qualified immunity. No: smashing windows is just too darn fun.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

If MMTs ever admit that real resource constraints are binding, its game over: they'll have to quit claiming that the government is one big untapped cornucopia. And if they do that, their fan base will melt away like a lump of sugar that's just had hot water poured on it.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

11 months

Rising prices? Greed explains it! Falling prices? Greed explains that, too! Prices don’t change? Greed yet again! Thank goodness for this powerful theory: otherwise we’d have to fall back on…thinking.

Lock

@evildarkempath

11 months

The Great Depression was caused by greed and the New Deal succeeded through a prolonged effort to increase generosity

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 months

For God’s sake! Tight labor markets don’t “cause” of inflation. Nor does unemployment cure it. Instead, tight labor markets and inflation are common consequences excessive _spending_. The solution, therefore, is less spending, not more unemployment! 1/2

Olivier Blanchard

@ojblanchard1

2 months

2. As the effects of supply shocks have subsided, tighter labor markets, and the resulting rises in nominal wages, have become relatively more important sources of the remaining inflation in many countries. What happens in labor markets will largely determine the cost of the

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Actually, any economist might consider that a "tricky question." Do higher prices reflect increased scarcity? Well, that beats not letting them rise and creating shortages. Would lower prices fail to reflect relevant external costs? In that case also, higher is better. 1/2

Senator Bill Hagerty

@SenatorHagerty

3 years

Biden's nom Dr. Omarova isn’t sure whether higher gas prices are bad for Americans, calling it a “tricky question” & showing a shockingly out-of-touch perspective. Someone who wants to bankrupt oil & gas businesses is unfit to serve the American people hurting from rising prices.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

I just heard the terrible news that @sghorwitz , who fought a long and valiant battle with lymphoma, kept not only a brave but a happy face on through much of the ordeal, and almost won, has passed away. He was a fine economist and teacher, and a good fella. Rest In Peace, Steve.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

8 months

- The CB causes hyperinflation. - The CB encourages banks, big ones especially, to engage in risky behavior. - The CB monopolizes currency provision and otherwise suppresses currency competition and financial innovation.

Sam Levey

@SamHLevey

8 months

Educational opportunity! What do central banks do? - The CB is a bank for the government. - CB is a bank for private banks. - CB serves as “lender of last resort,” fending off financial crises by lending when nobody else can. - CB sets monetary policy, primarily interest rates.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

Finally!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

I'm planning a conference for everyone under 30 who doesn't believe that either BTC or MMT offers the key to economic salvation. I'm thinking of having it in my 650 square foot DC apartment. Might have to borrow a chair.

Joe Weisenthal

@TheStalwart

3 years

I’m feeling this. I think Odd Lots presents Fiat Week is an event that’s definitely gotta happen. Maybe in NYC. Maybe in Vegas. Stay tuned.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

To question the New Deal's success at promoting recovery from the Great Depression today is to risk being denounced as a revisionist "New Deal Denialist." Yet this supposedly "revisionist" view has been held by many of that depression's outstanding historians. 1/n

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

How refreshing to see a major head of state eloquently and unapologetically defend the values of the French Enlightenment.

BBC News (World)

@BBCWorld

2 years

French election rivals Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron come to blows over the far-right leader's policy to ban the wearing of the headscarf in public

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Celebrating my 64th at Rancho la Puerta yesterday, where I'm dedicating the week to not caring for once what he Fed is up too! (No, I did not eat the whole thing!)

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

If you learned what "money" is from an econ. textbook, chances are you've got it wrong:

A Three-Pronged Blunder, or, What Money is, and What it Isn't

Show me someone who doesn’t find these arguments persuasive, and I’ll show you someone who badly wants to call something “money” that isn’t.

www.cato.org

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 months

Well, it took a little longer than I had originally planned, but here is my (longish) essay defending the oh-so passé claim that banks are savings-investment intermediaries against the très chic view that they fund their loans with keystrokes:

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

I bet she mutters, "damned unfettered capitalism!" whenever she stubs her toe.

Laura Pidcock

@LauraPidcock

3 years

The sea is on fire but some people *still* think capitalism can be managed.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

8 months

Thanks to reporters like Ms. Lowrey, it’s becoming very hard to tell the difference between _The Atlantic_ and _The Onion_.

Josh Hendrickson

@RebelEconProf

8 months

New inflation narrative just dropped.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

1 year

Every young economist needs to decide: Do I wish to belong to some particular movement or school of thought, or do I just want to be a good economist? If you don’t think so, it’s probably because you made the wrong choice.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

8 months

Federal Reserve: 1913 Keynes’s _General Theory_: 1936. Now that’s what I call an influential work!

TwitKevTwit

@TwitKevTwit

8 months

@profstonge Because of Keynes we have the Federal Reserve. Now money is centrally managed just like Stalin dreamed.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Some personal news: I've just handed the reins of the @CatoCMFA to my dear friend and fellow monetary policy expert @norbertjmichel . I'll be staying on as Director Emeritus and Senior Fellow. Please help me welcome Norbert to the fold where he really belongs.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

6 years

I'm proud to have @NickSzabo4 refer to me (elsewhere) as a Bitcoin OG. Had I only had an inkling back then of the revolution he and his colleagues were plotting!

Nick Szabo

@NickSzabo4

6 years

Dr. Selgin was on the mailing list with Wei Dai and myself where in 1998 cryptocurrency (bit gold, and a bit later b-money) was invented. His description of free banking was very inspirational and informative.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

Blinded by hatred for Milton Friedman, and by his zeal to get others to hate him, Kurt Anderson has painted a grotesque caricature of the man and his economics. Alas, it is no longer possible to add "unworthy of the New York Times."

How Liberals Opened the Door to Libertarian Economics (Published 2020)

Milton Friedman’s free-market ideas found favor in a free-love era and helped redirect the country toward the right. The aftershocks of his radical arguments are still being felt today.

www.nytimes.com

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Mr. Taleb may call me "emotional" all he likes. The fact remains that, epistemologically speaking, his absorbing-barrier based "proof" that bitcoins are "worth exactly 0" is on all fours with August Magnan's 1934 demonstration that bumblebees can't possibly fly.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 months

"Private money has been allowed before, and it led to a pattern of repeating financial panics." File under: Things people know that just ain't so. 1/

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

Man can this guy lie! The law only says that employers can _contract_ with their employees to pay in stuff other than (rapidly depreciating) pesos, and that they must honor such contractual commitments.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

Apparently, Senator Warren is only familiar with two theories of inflation, both equally unsatisfactory.

Elizabeth Warren

@ewarren

2 years

Inflation isn’t some magical, unstoppable force. It’s influenced by corporate greed and price gouging. And I’ve got a plan to fight back.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

1 year

Caitlin, I hereby challenge you to publicly debate me concerning this claim.

Caitlin Long 🔑⚡️🟠

@CaitlinLong_

1 year

💯—yes, & was always inevitable bc the banking system is inherently unstable.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Cancel culture, LSE style. Creeps.

LSE campaign demands Hayek Society abolition

Another day, another student fiasco. This time the scene of the crime is the London School of Economics and a new campaign called LSE Class War, launched earlier this month with its own radical...

www.spectator.co.uk

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

OK, my first thread on misconceptions about the history of bank-issued paper currency, motivated by claims that history shows that the private market can't be entrusted with supplying currency of any sort, including digital currency. Here I deal w/ antebellum U.S. experience.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

15 days

When a knock comes on your door at 3AM, and your greatest fear is that it’s someone from Microsoft trying to sell you a new app, you badly need a refresher course in political philosophy.

Ice Age 🌋💡🧊

@IceAgeAokiji

16 days

@NapoleonBonabot Corporations being tyrannical is worse, because we literally have no say in who runs them. At least with politicians they have to at least put up a facade of listening to the people

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

More Talebaloney: Having asserted that bitcoin "is" worth zero, he writes that, because bitcoins yield no dividend, "_if_ we expect that, at any point in the future, the value will be zero when miners are extinct, the technology becomes obsolete,...

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

BTC fans who expect the USD to collapse must forgive me for doubting it: goldbugs have been repeating this prediction for as long as I can remember, and the USD is more popular today than ever.

Clean Giacomo Low-Risk Zucco⚡️🌋🧀💀🧻

@giacomozucco

4 years

@GeorgeSelgin Assuming a scenario where the dollar doesn't collapse, I think this is absolutely reasonable. But it's a bold assumption.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

How will we be able to tell if it worked?

'The only solution for climate change is letting the human race become extinct'

Anglia Ruskin professor Patricia MacCormack has written a controversial book on how our extinction could save the planet

www.cambridge-news.co.uk

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Sound familiar? In short, I say, that if anyone is a "fascist," its @DaveTroy himself. And I can declare, confidently, that unlike him I do not fling that word around. Shame on him and on all those who foolishly "liked" his silly and irresponsible thread.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 months

In a competition for "most stupid inflation theory" for which, goodness knows, there's no lack of strong contenders, my money's on the Greedflation hypothesis.

Catherine Rampell

@crampell

2 months

Corporate profits fell last quarter. Greed must finally be down, phew

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

5 months

And with my mom, who will be 96 next month.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

I can attest to this: In '73 I worked at a supermarket doing almost nothing but changing the little stickers on goods so shoppers would know precisely how rapidly their moral standards were decaying.

Binyamin Appelbaum

@BCAppelbaum

3 years

I think @rickperlstein is putting his finger on something important in this essay about inflation in the 1970s.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

"Bitcoin has no actual value." Schiff claims to be a student of Austrian economics. I guess he missed the lesson on the subjective theory of value. @BobMurphyEcon @PeterBoettke @sghorwitz @lawrencehwhite1

Peter Schiff

@PeterSchiff

4 years

As long as people don't realize or don't care that #Bitcoin has no actual value, and continue to buy it anyway, its price can continue to rise. But eventually those who don't care will start caring, and those who don't understand will figure it out. By then it's too late to sell.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Found the perfect little tapas joint in Cordova, off the beaten path, but evidently popular with the locals. I am one of those rare Americans with a weakness for morcilla!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

This @Noahpinion assessment of the New Deal is as one-sided as any of those he complains about. Saying that the NRA "helped avert damaging inflation" is just one instance of this. More like "compounded the damage from fallen aggregate demand by forcing up prices and wage rates"?

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦

@Noahpinion

4 years

1/Today's @bopinion post is about the New Deal. Some folks, like @benshapiro , claim that the New Deal prolonged the Depression. They are wrong.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

I'm afraid that @GaryGensler 's understanding of the history of private (paper) currencies is informed more by central banks' self-serving rationalizations of their monopoly privileges than by the actual historical record. It is the sort of history found in mediocre textbooks.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 years

A goal of popular writing in economics should be to give readers the impression, not only that they understand something, but that, given a few more minutes, they'd have figured it out themselves. If your readers can't help thinking that you must be a genius, you've blown it.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

5 years

Were I able to convey but a single lesson about monetary policy to all my conservative and free market friends, it would be this: that central bankers, being central planners, are as capable of erring on the side of overly-tight money as they are of erring the other way.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

4 months

Even Orwell could be foolish. Here he supposes that economic competition is like a single once-and-for-all footrace with fixed entrants, instead of a never-ending contest any firm might enter at any time.

Max von Thun

@maxvonthun

4 months

George Orwell reviewing Hayek’s Road to Serfdom in 1944: “The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led.”

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Morning in my little apartamento in Cordova.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

8 months

After my experience advising Lithuania (1990-91), I advise taking anything the IMF says on radical currency reform w/ a grain of salt. IMF officials opposed the currency board plan Kurt Schuler and I prepared (the first for any post-Soviet republic). 1/

David Andolfatto

@dandolfa

8 months

The IMF on the pros and cons of dollarization:

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

1 year

Every time a bank run happens, it gets shoe-horned into the Diamond-Dybvig theory. In truth, runs that actually fit that theory are as rare as hens’ teeth. And the runs on SVB certainly isn’t one of them! 1/2

Justin Wolfers

@JustinWolfers

1 year

Early (premature) thoughts on the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. It looks like a classic Diamond-Dybvig bank run, when each customer withdraws their money because they want to get their funds out while there's still money in the vault.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 months

It isn’t a question of regulation or no regulation: the relevant choice is regulation via contract enforcement and the play of open competition OR piling-on industry-specific statutes that often end-up catering to the very interests whose abuses they are meant to check.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

@JosephEStiglitz

3 months

How, exactly, is enterprise “free”? How are markets “free”? Without any regulations they reduce people’s freedoms not enhance them. In my new book I show why and provide another way to think about building a fairer, freer, and more just society. The Road to Freedom, out now.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

To add to my previous thread: that we had banking "crises after crises" in the 19th century U.S. had precious little to do with genuinely "free" banking, and everything to do with misguided U.S. government regulations. All monetary historians worth their salt know this.

Disclose.tv

@disclosetv

2 years

NOW - ECB chief Lagarde says she does not like to see a new period of "free banking" due to cryptocurrencies. Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are required to maintain the role of central banks.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

7 months

Instead, stupid U.S. banking and currency laws made it uniquely crisis-prone during that era. This is common knowledge among U.S. economic and monetary historians. 2/

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Selgin's BTC valuation lemma: "A theory that predicts that something that actually commands a positive market price is fundamentally or "really" worth 0, without specifying the time frame within which this "true" value will assert itself, is itself worth 0."

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

8 months

It was a stupid idea in 1776, when Adam Smith offered what is still the best explanation of the advantages of fractional-reserve banking, and it’s still stupid—as is the phony legal history its proponents rely on.

𝗟𝗘𝗞

@Lek_ANCAP

8 months

El profesor Jesús Huerta de Soto, máximo referente vivo de la Escuela de Economia Austriaca y el Libertarismo de habla hispana asegura estar asesorando a @JMilei . "Estamos asesorándole de cerca especialmente sobre la necesidad de establecer una reserva del 100% en su proceso de

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Taleb is admittedly no "imbecile" (an adjective he himself likes to assign to all who criticize him). But he's a lot more bombast and a lot less brilliance than his many devotees seem to realize, and the time for exposing this reality is long overdue.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

Personally, I find the spectacle abhorrent. And I sincerely hope some of those now celebrating will reconsider, and that upon having done so, they will instead _publicly condemn_ articles 7 and 13 of Bukele's new law.

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

3 years

MMT's say I'm a hired-gun opponent of government intervention in money. Gold bugs and bitcoiners say that, if I ever championed the cause of monetary freedom, I'm now an apologist for monetary central planning. Might it be that I just say what my research leads me to believe?

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

2 years

When it comes to making the case that Bitcoin qualifies as "money," Bitcoiners will try anything--anything, that is, except consulting economists' standard definition of the term!

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George Selgin

@GeorgeSelgin

6 months

A smug MMTer (is that redundant?) imagines that he is much smarter than Böhm-Bawerk, who is silly enough to suppose that banks serve as savings-investment intermediaries. In fact everything Böhm-Bawerk says in the quoted passages is perfectly reasonable. 1/

Shahin Ashkiani

@shaahin_a

6 months

Böhm-Bawerk, a prominent Austrian economist, notes that, whereas we myopic people see "saving" simply as not spending, a sharp-eyed person like him sees the rest of the story: banks lend out deposits He concludes that buying more wines will lead to fewer railroads being built.

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