Although CYNICONOMICS isn’t quite a year old, we’ll join the bloggers who report their most viewed posts at the end of the calendar year. We added up our page views here and on two other sites that publish our articles and report our stats: Zero Hedge and Seeking Alpha. Here’s the top 10:
#10 with 29,814 views. “If You Don’t Trust the Fed, Here’s an Inside View That Confirms Your Worst Suspicions.”
Excerpts from a revealing and provocative speech by ex-FOMC governor William Poole (which was published in the November/December Financial Analysts Journal).
#9 with 30,525 views. “What an Ex-FOMC Governor Really Wants to Tell You about the Fed.”
Excerpts from a November op-ed by Kevin Warsh, another former FOMC governor. We felt that this one needed translation and happily provided it.
#8 with 30,680 views. “M.C. Escher and the Impossibility of the Establishment Economic View.”
While the intermediate-term outlooks of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Federal Reserve don’t get much attention, they speak volumes about the deficiencies of these institutions. In this post, we show how easy it is to demonstrate the impossibility of the official economic view.
#7 with 32,233 views. “Why Reinhart and Rogoff Aren’t the Real Villains.”
When controversy about a 2010 academic paper swirled around the media in April, two well-known Harvard professors learned what it’s like to be the subject of a witch hunt. We show that much of the reporting was not only ugly but flat wrong.
#6 with 32,955 views. “Obamacare’s Unintended Consequences: It’s Not Just a Technology Problem.”
We offer links to a few revealing reports about Obamacare’s unintended consequences, while challenging Jon Stewart to suppress his Big Government bias and ask the questions that really matter.
#5 with 33,846 views. “The Debt Paradox That Everyone Should Be Aware Of.”
This post was part of our “7 Deadly Sins” series of articles on the various ways that public officials disguise the true scale of our government debt problem. If you like word games but missed this one, please have a look.
#4 with 34,193 views. “The Chart That Every Taxpayer Deserves To See.”
Outside of our research on historical episodes of public debt reaching today’s levels (which didn’t make the top 10 but here’s an example), our biggest spreadsheets are the ones we use to improve on official debt projections. This post offers our take on a more realistic and meaningful way to estimate the federal government’s debt burden. One of our adjustments actually made it into the CBO’s September Budget Outlook although in a slightly different form (we took full credit in any case), while the chart was presented on CNBC by Rick Santelli.
#3 with 36,774 views. “Niall Ferguson Shatters Paul Krugman’s Delusions.”
Our other Krugman critiques were more analytical (see here, for example), but this one was most read.
#2 with 38,596 views. “America’s Urban Distress: Which States and Regions Set Up Their Cities to Fail?”
We look at a few clues to the states and regions that are most likely to produce the next Detroit.
#1 with 74,917 views. “Now That Detroit’s Gone Bust, Is Your City Next?”
We look at the cities that look most like Detroit in terms of population loss.
