Ep. 401 Even More Fallout From the Douglas Murray vs. Dave Smith Debate
Adam Haman returns to analyze the continued fallout from the Murray/Smith debate on the Joe Rogan podcast. As always, Adam and Bob have unique video and insights that other commenters have overlooked.
Mentioned in the Episode and Other Links of Interest:
- The YouTube version of this conversation.
- The full Murray/Smith debate on Rogan.
- Douglas Murray on Australia’s Sky News. His NY Post op ed.
- Konstantin Kisin’s article.
- A Spiked analysis of the debate.
- Pat Buchanan’s C-SPAN debate on Churchill.
- The HamanNature substack.
- Help support the Bob Murphy Show.
About the author, Robert
Christian and economist, Chief Economist at infineo, and Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute.
OMG … I fronted up and watched the Murphy vs Tankus debate and it is a long, hard slog.
I gave myself every advantage … a good takeaway curry, half a bottle of gin, some candles burning out on the back deck … even with he wind behind me and two sheets to the wind, I still only made it halfway.
Who was the moderator? He looks around 14, I suppose he uses moisturizer … when you get to my age you start to appreciate the value of looking after your skin, so good luck to the guy looking young. Anyhow, I was watching the middle guy, while listening to Tankus explain himself and I’m watching the moderator’s eyes start to slowly roll in his head, then he starts making faces like a goldfish as it comes up to the glass. Tankus is not exactly a riveting speaker.
Murphy’s answers were about what I expected, I’ve heard most of it before, but a few things jumped to my mind. First off, Tankus does the classic MMT bait & switch when he talks about the overall private sector “nett financial assets” and then teleports across to household balance sheets. I parked the video at that point and pulled up the Fed Reserve link here.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?eid=810420&rid=52
Only a small part of the household balance sheet is government bonds. So, don’t you think the rest of it might be significant? Tankus pretends that somehow things like the family home don’t represent assets.
The other thing that struck me … would Tankus regard the Fed balance sheet as public or private? I genuinely have no idea how he would answer. At any rate, if the Fed balance sheet goes up, there must be a converse side to that, based on the same basic accounting that the MMT people always go one about … so tell me how to interpret a rising Fed balance sheet?
On the issue of private debt to GDP ratio, Tankus said it was exceptionally high around 2009 – 2010 but completely different in the 2020 COVID era. Well, first thing is hang on, let’s review the MMT picture when both private debt to GDP and government debt to GDP can be sky high … how to we get to that when the sectoral balances are supposed to add up?
But regardless of the theory, I looked up the actual numbers and yes private debt to GDP was high around 2010 at approx 240% but in the Obama stimulus years it only came down to slightly under 220% which isn’t such a big deal … then it was back up to 240% again in 2020 therefore not exactly a whole new situation. If that’s the key factor then all things considered, very similar to the 2010 state of affairs.
Yes the stimmy cheques brought it down again … but again, not by much all things considered. Currently sitting approx 217% for what it’s worth … and US government debt to GDP continues going up. All things considered it has NOT deleveraged the private balance sheets … but it has cranked the heck out of government debt.