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The Austrians Attempt a Beckworth Smackdown

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Well, at least Bob Murphy does over at Mises.org.  He attempts to tear apart the case I made for QE2 in the National Review Online. Strangely, his blistering attack never once addresses the key point of my argument: QE2 is an imperfect attempt to address the on-going excess money demand problem.  He commits a host of  mischaracterizations about my article that all stem from his avoidance of  this issue.  My takeaway from the piece is that Bob Murphy does not take seriously monetary disequilibrium.  If Bob Murphy wanted to do a reasonable critique of my piece, then he should have questioned whether there really is an on-going excess money demand problem as I claim. Instead his piece amounts to anti-Keynesian rant where among other things he labels me a "Monetarist-Keynesian." Come on, everyone knows that I along with Scott Sumner, Nick Rowe, Bill Woosley and Josh Hendrickson are known around the economic blogosphere as Quasi-Monetarists!

Fortunately, Jeffrey Tucker of the Mises Institute has agreed to publish my reply where I attempt to explain to the Mises.org readers the importance of monetary disequilibrium and in particular the excess money demand problem. [Update: my reply has been published here.] In the meantime, interested readers can go check out the replies to Bob Murphy's article  from  Josh Hendrickson and Bill Woolsey. They both do an excellent job explaining the monetary disequilibrium view. 

 P.S. I did get a chuckle out of the picture of me constructed by the folks at Mises.org.  It was very clever.

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