Terms  |
Definitions |
| AAA-Rated Securities |
The new word for what used to be known as sub-prime mortgages or, more colloquially, as worthless crap. See Fool’s Gold.
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| Action Axiom |
The “foundation” of Austrian Economics. Quoth Hans Hoppe, “This axiom, the proposition that humans act, fulfills the requirements precisely for a true synthetic a priori proposition. It cannot be denied that this proposition is true, since the denial would have to be categorized as an action – and so the truth of the statement literally cannot be undone.” Clearly, the action axiom is a platitude. Hoppe could just as well have said, “This axiom, the proposition that economists use word processors, fulfills the requirements precisely for a true synthetic a priori proposition. It cannot be denied that this proposition is true, since the denial would have to be written on a word processor – and so the truth of the statement literally cannot be undone.” See Section XIV of my 2004 paper.
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| Affirmative Action |
The antithesis of all that is good in America. I have a poster on my office wall with the complete text of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. I’ve read it dozens of times and I’m sure that I can’t find anything in there about lower college admission standards for Blacks. He didn’t say anything about job quotas either. See US of KKK-A.
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| Aggregate Utility |
Price times stock. See my Simplified Exposition.
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| Alarmism |
While the problems that we face are serious, getting all gloomy and doomy doesn’t help. We have survived recessions and – Dare I say it? – depressions before, and civilization emerged mostly intact. Even if the dollar loses its status as the world’s reserve currency, I don’t think that we’re going to be donning loincloths and foraging for food a decade from now. (At least I hope not, because I don’t look good in a loincloth.) See McPherson, Guy.
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| Answer, The |
In Section VI of my 2004 paper, I write, "credit limits are more important than interest rates and there are many people who cannot get credit at all. Interest rates only affect how much money is being transferred. They do not affect who gets it."¯ See The Question.
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| Apartheid |
What the Palestinians are living under. When a paramedic straps on an explosive vest and states in her farewell video that she wants only to “knock on heaven’s door carrying the skulls of some of her people’s oppressors,” that can only be called “bitterness.” See Carter, Jimmy.
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| Armies |
What crosses borders when goods are not allowed to.
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| Audacity of Hopelessness |
Why organizations like Hamas are dangerous. As Sun Tzu observed, when one puts people on death ground, they live. See Apartheid.
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| Austrian Economics |
Belief in the Subjective Theory of Value and, simultaneously, belief that (to quote Robert Murphy), “the consumer’s good is always the 1st order, regardless of how far back we push the analysis, even if we go back to axes carved by prehistoric men.” See Doublethink.
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| Average Period of Production |
Murray Rothbard writes, “The prices of capital goods change like a lever being pivoted on a fulcrum at its center; the prices of consumers’ goods fall most, those of first-order capital goods fall less; those of highest-order capital goods rise most, and the others less.” But he does not define “center.” Unlike Rothbard, I do know where this pivot point is located. See Section IV of my 2004 paper.
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| Axiomatic Economics |
The greatest invention since cheese. (Well, who do you think is writing this dictionary?)
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| Bank Run |
See Bear Stearns.
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| Bear Stearns |
A recent hit by the country-western band, Ben Bernanke and the Moral Hazards. “It’s a bear, bear, bear; Bear (Stearns) market!” (Sung to the tune of “Barbara Ann,” with banjo accompaniment.)
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| Beast, Infernal and from “The Pit" |
The author of this dictionary, according to Mike Huckabee’s supporters. But I’m not letting it go to my head – I think they say that about everybody.
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| Bernanke Put |
Reducing interest rates 1.25% because the stock market dipped. And it wasn’t even our stock market! The central bankers in those countries displayed an emotion rarely seen at the Federal Reserve: Calm.
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| Bernanke, Ben |
A full-time printing press operator and part-time lead singer in the country-western band, Moral Hazard. Banjo player par excellence!
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| Bierce, Ambrose |
Rolling over in his grave. “You idiot Aguilar, I did the ‘Devil’s Dictionary’ shtick over a hundred years ago! Can’t you think of anything new?”
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| Bills of Debt |
Function as Credit Money only if there is an active secondary market for them in the community. See my Simplified Exposition.
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| Bitterness |
Do poor Whites cling to religion and guns because they are bitter? Can they be bought off with the same nostrums that the Democratic Party used to buy the votes of poor Blacks? Yes and no. While the word “cling” was a bit tactless, Barack Obama is right that religious/paramilitary organizations thrive on bitterness. This is evidenced by the appeal of the KKK in the US South, of Hezbollah in Lebanon or of Hamas in the Gaza Strip – see Apartheid. However, Obama is hopelessly off-base if he thinks that poor Whites are bitter because the Republicans didn’t put the same feedbag on them that the Democrats put on inner-city Blacks. They are bitter for one reason and one reason only: Affirmative Action. When a White man’s son is denied admission to college while Black gang-bangers strut around campus with their pants halfway down their asses, he becomes bitter. See US of KKK-A.
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| Bixby, Robert |
The crucial question about the candidates is “whether they are helping to fill the hole or make it deeper. With the proposals they have on the table, it looks to me like all three would make it deeper.” To learn what hole he’s referring to, see John Maynard Keynes.
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| Block, Walter |
Co-wrote, with Joseph Salerno, the brave and inspiring mission statement for the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.
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| Boettke, Peter |
“Never be concerned about harsh criticism of your position, but always fear the weakest defense of it.” You’re my hero, Pete! So inspirational! You don’t mind if I quote your brave words on my rebuttals page, do you?
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| Bonner and Wiggin |
“Among all the empires that have come and gone, the U.S. imperium stands out as the most absurd… Everywhere we look, we see an exquisite but precarious balance between things that are equally and oppositely absurd… Something is wrong. The picture is grotesque, unnatural… like a pretty wife who rotates her own tires – it is almost too good to be true. We suspect we’re going to find out later that she sets fire to her cat.” It does seem kind of funny when you think about it. However, regarding their “theory,” See Reversion to the Mean.
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| Borrow and Spend |
Old fashioned, 1930’s-style Keynesianism. For a modern example, see John McCain’s Free Lunch.
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| Box |
What the Federal Reserve is in. See Cardillo, Peter.
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| Builders |
According to the George Bush theory of economics, these are the people who need to be artificially stimulated in the event that there is a glut of unsold houses on the market. See Recovery, Economic.
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| Bush, George |
When Hillary Clinton breathlessly tells us of dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, we can all have a good laugh because nobody died as a result of her lies. George Bush’s lies, like Saddam Hussein buying yellowcake uranium from Niger or being prepared to hit east coast cities on 45 minutes notice, don’t seem so funny anymore.
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| Caplan, Bryan |
“Out of the whole list [of best new ideas to come out of academic economics since 1949], there are few plausible cases where mathematics was more than an afterthought. Even there, intuition, not math, probably played the leading role. I invite others to come up with their own ‘best ideas’ list to repeat this casual experiment.” Very well, Dr. Caplan, my “best idea” was Axiomatic Economics. You tell me: Is mathematics an afterthought in my book? See my Open Letter to Bryan Caplan.
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| Cardillo, Peter |
“There’s no question the Fed is walking a tightrope here. They’re in a box.”
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| Carter, Jimmy |
“Hamas was not legitimized by my visit. They were legitimized by the fact that their people voted for them to be the ruling party in their parliament.” (One good thing about Barack Obama is that he does not believe in “punishing” people by refusing to talk to them, as George Bush does. That’s immature.) See Democracy.
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| CATO |
1) A conservative think tank whom I quote in the introduction to my 2004 paper, 2) Engineering shorthand for “CATastrOphic failure.” Specifically, in rocketry, this refers to ships that explode or are blown up because they are out of control. (I wonder if the people at the Cato Institute know that the name that they’ve chosen has this rather negative connotation?)
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| Change We Can Believe In |
Flip-flops that conservatives will accept and liberals will tolerate until Barack Obama
gets elected, at which point he turns back into the socialistic, gun-grabbing, race-baiting Jesse Jackson wannabe that he was before the spotlight was put on him. See Wright, Jeremiah.
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| Chatter |
The NSA, being into codes, uses “chatter” as a code word for, “We spent billions of dollars on a ‘super computer’ and were sold a box of old pinball machine parts, so we haven’t got the faintest idea what al Qaeda is plotting. However, we do know that tons of messages have been getting past us lately, so, on the basis of all that ‘chatter,’ we are going to upgrade the terrorist threat level from beige to mauve.” (No doubt, police departments all over America will spring into action, at double overtime wages, by posting guards around whatever their local landmark is – you know how those terrorists are always attacking “symbols of freedom.”) See World Trade Center.
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| China |
1) The location of the only people who will benefit from the Economic Stimulus, if Americans heed George Bush’s advice by running to the malls to spend their tax refund on trinkets, 2) “the company store to which we owe our souls,” according to Bonner and Wiggin.
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| Clark, Wesley |
“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” I agree. We’re not hiring McCain to actually do the bombing; we’re hiring him to have the judgement to know when bombing is a good idea. In America we have a tradition of civilians becoming president and of retired generals becoming president. However, a retired captain is neither a civilian nor a general. See Draft.
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| Clark, Wesley |
“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” I agree. We’re not hiring McCain to actually do the bombing; we’re hiring him to have the judgement to know when bombing is a good idea. In America we have a tradition of civilians becoming president and of retired generals becoming president. However, a retired captain is neither a civilian nor a general.
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| Client #9 |
A new aftershave lotion being promoted by Elliot Spitzer, guaranteed to attract women like flies. A dab of this stuff and $4300 will have them hopping in bed with you in a flash.
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| Clinton, Hillary |
A lot of soldiers and Marines are on their third tour, every day of which was spent doing the “jihad jitterbug” to avoid becoming a sitting target for an Iraqi sniper, but I don’t hear her talking up their sacrifice. Even if her story of running for cover at the Bosnian airport were true, who would care? Perhaps she might have obtained more votes if she’d told us that she responded by sprinting 300 yards through a hail of bullets, pulled a Ka-Bar out from under her skirt and cut the sniper’s throat while he was re-loading his Dragonov. See Lying
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| Conservatives |
What, exactly, are they conserving? Given their Drain America First policy, it can’t be our oil. The dictionary defines the word to mean, “disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc.” But if “conditions” refers to being at peace and “institutions” refers to the Bill of Rights, then that can’t be it either. I’m lost. See Liberals.
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