Robert P. Murphy

On June 23, the Obama administration, in conjunction with other governments, announced a plan to release a total of 60 million barrels of oil from strategic oil reserves in the U.S. and other countries, at a rate of 2 million barrels per day for 30 days. (more)

Under current projections, the U.S. Treasury will hit its statutory debt ceiling before summer. This provides the chance for newly elected Tea Party-backed legislators to show they are serious about rolling back Obama’s agenda. The only method to force politicians to make tough budget cuts is to take away the credit card. Congress should refuse to raise the Treasury’s debt ceiling. (more)

This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics went to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides for their work on “search theory,” especially as applied to labor markets. The irony is that their award-winning work provides peer-reviewed justification for a commonsense solution to high unemployment. Continuous extensions of unemployment benefits have the paradoxical effect of paying people not to find work. (more)

In 2001 and 2003, under the administration of George W. Bush, Congress passed significant tax reductions. These will expire on December 31, if Congress does nothing. Instead, Congress should seize the opportunity to show economic leadership, by extending the cuts and cutting federal spending. (more)

Libertarian Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” movement has gained the support of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). At the same time, anarchists in Greece riot against fiscal austerity measures, while organs of the strongest government on the planet—namely, the U.S. Justice Department and SEC—accuse Goldman Sachs of skullduggery. (more)

With an ailing economy, nearly double-digit unemployment and a sense among Washington lawmakers that something, anything, must be done to “create” jobs, politicians of both political stripes have turned to “green” jobs as the panacea to cure all ills. (more)

President Obama has been talking tough on deficit reduction, but many left-leaning pundits and economists warn that such rhetoric will prolong the economic slump. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow warned that Obama’s proposed partial spending freeze was Herbert Hoover’s strategy, while Budget Director Peter Orszag cautioned that FDR’s attempt in 1937 to rein in the deficit prolonged the Great Depression. These warnings may also help prolong the economic slump because they are based on faulty history. (more)