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Mike Norman

Mike Norman

Mike Norman is an economist and veteran trader whose career has spanned over 30 years on Wall Street. He is a former member and trader on the CME, NYMEX, COMEX and NYFE and he managed money for one of the largest hedge funds and ran a prop trading desk for Credit Suisse.

Articles by Mike Norman

Claims that mainstream economics is changing radically are far-fetched — Bill Mitchell

13 hours ago

I have received several E-mails over the last few weeks that suggest that the economics discipline is finally changing course to redress the major flaws in the curricula that is taught around the world and that perhaps Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) can take some credit for some of that. There has been a tendency for some time for those who are attracted to MMT to become somewhat celebratory, even to the point of declaring ‘victory’. This tendency is not limited to the MMT public who comment on social media and the like. My response is that we are probably further away from seeing fundamental change in the economics profession than perhaps where we were some years ago – after the GFC and in the early years of the pandemic (which continues). My answer reflects the incontestable fact that the

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Will BRICS launch a new world in 2024? — Pepe Escobar

3 days ago

BRICS doubled its membership at the start of 2024, and faces huge tasks ahead: integrating its newest members, developing future admission criteria, deepening the institution’s groundings, and most importantly, launching the mechanisms for bypassing the US dollar in international finance.The financial plans are toward the end of the post. No details yet, but a plan is supposed to be presented at the BRICs meaning in the fall of this year. An alternative BRICs currency is not being planned at this stage when BRICs is just getting off the ground and has yet to be adequately institutionalized yet itself. It still just "a club" at this point. Lots of work to be done, especially with many more countries already lining up for membership.The CradleWill BRICS launch a new world in 2024?Pepe

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Joe Stiglitz really should not talk about modern monetary theory when he so obviously has no clue about what it actually says — Richard Murphy

3 days ago

Joseph Stiglitz makes freshman mistakes about MMT in addressing the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on the sustainability of the UK’s national debt. Richard Murphy calls him out on it.Funding the Future (formerly Tax Research UK)Joe Stiglitz really should not talk about modern monetary theory when he so obviously has no clue about what it actually saysRichard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

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Keynes was wrong because he failed to consider class conflict — Bill Mitchell

5 days ago

Important for MMT aficionado’s. I was asked during an interview the other day from Paris whether I was a Post Keynesian. I replied not at all and explained that I have never felt that my ideas fit into that category although in a facile sense we are all post keynesian in a temporal sense. Most progressive economists would answer yes if confronted with that question, even most of the economists involved in advancing Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). My point of departure is that while there was a lot of important analytical material in Keynes’ writing that is worth preserving and integrating into, say, MMT, where Keynes went astray was his antipathy to the insights provided by Karl Marx. In particular, I consider that Keynes seriously misunderstood what the dynamics of the class conflict were

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Disclaimer

5 days ago

LOL… Need a similar disclaimer when reporting on the debt doomsday morons who have been continuously wrong for 40 YEARS…I find it hilarious that Bloomberg feels it necessary to include this disclaimer every time Kolanovic makes a market call. pic.twitter.com/sclIvqZm9V— wu wei (@wu_wei_invest) March 12, 2024

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Global South Repositioning — Fadhel Kaboub

5 days ago

Not MMT per se, but a post on recent doings in the real world by an MMT economist of rising prominence in the Global South. This post is broadly about a strategy for decolonization and leveling the playing field.Global South Perspectives—Reflections & Analysis by Fadhel KaboubGlobal South RepositioningFadhel Kaboub, Associate Professor of economics at Denison University (on leave) and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He currently serves as the Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development at the Organisation of Educational Cooperation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.He also held a number of research affiliations with the Levy Economics Institute, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), Power Shift

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How Sustainable is our National Debt? — NeilW

6 days ago

The UK House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee is running an inquiry entitled “How sustainable is our National Debt?”The GIMMS written evidence to the inquiry has now been published….New WaylandHow Sustainable is our National Debt?NeilW

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Why and how economics must change — Jayati Ghosh

10 days ago

While this post is not MMT, it is consistent with MMT and implies that MMT is needed to address the issues that stem from wrong assumptions about the relationship of economics, finance, money and banking, as well as the mistaken view that money is neutral, being only a veil over what is at bottom a barter economy under the veneer of a monetary economy.While MMT doesn’t deal directly with the relationship of economics and power, being an institutional approach is incorporates the role of power implicitly in its analysis of the the relationship of economics and finance. Much of what is presented as received economic wisdom about how economies work and the implications of policies is at best misleading and at worst simply wrong. For decades now, a significant and powerful lobby within the

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America Enters the Samizdat Era — Matt Taibbi

11 days ago

The bloodiest period of Soviet totalitarianism ended in the fifties, but the habits remained long after, including the advanced system of alternative media that ultimately broke the state: samizdat.Tonight, along with Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and New York Post reporter Miranda Devine, I’ll be accepting the inaugural Samizdat Prize, given by the RealClear Media Fund. Samizdat is a bit of a play on words, since like a lot of politically oppressive groups the Soviets had a mania for reducing beautiful language to state-acceptable ugly compound words (GosPlan, GULAG, etc.), so in place of GosIzdat (State-Publish, the official publisher) dissidents created Sam- or “Self” Izdat: “Self-Publish.”Ten years ago PBS did a feature that quoted a Russian radio personality calling Samizdat the

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“The Debt Crisis Is Here”: The Conference Board Is At It Again — Brian Romanchuk

11 days ago

The Committee for Economic Development (CED) of Conference Board recently put out “Explainer: The National Debt” which is pretty much a greatest hits of debt scare mongering. Other than the references to recent events and data, it is timeless: the authors could have put out the same report in any year since the mid-1980s and not much of the contents would have changed. Anyone who thinks that the MMT debate would improve things just needs to read the report to see that progress in conventional economics is largely illusionary.….Bond Economics"The Debt Crisis Is Here": The Conference Board Is At It AgainBrian Romanchuk

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Pavlina Tcherneva – Whatever it Takes: How Neoliberalism Hijacked the Public Purse — Pavlina R. Tcherneva

11 days ago

The spectacular government spending post-2008 and post-2020 appeared to upend the neoliberal logic of the past decades, enabling bold public action and opening the door to a more just and democratic social order. Specific policy choices stamped out this opportunity. These pivotal moments did, however, point to policy levers that can facilitate a breakthrough….Brave New EuropePavlina Tcherneva – Whatever it Takes: How Neoliberalism Hijacked the Public PursePavlina Tcherneva | Founding Director of OSUN-EDI, Professor of Economics at Bard College, Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute, and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability

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MMT sees America through rapid economic recovery — Stephanie Kelton

11 days ago

Modern monetary theory has been influential in helping America rise out of the recession that crippled the economy during the pandemic, writes Professor Stephanie Kelton and Dr Steven Hail.The overwhelming number of articles appearing attack MMT pretty much as the work of the devil.  Regarding the the quote, "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" (misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi), we seem to be at the attack stage. Independent AustraliaMMT sees America through rapid economic recoveryStephanie Kelton | Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University, formerly Democrats’ chief economist on the staff of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and an economic adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders

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After Nigeria’s eNaira Disaster, Another “Live” Central Bank Digital Currency, Jamaica’s Jam-Dex, Founders — Nick Corbishley

14 days ago

Just three countries have so far introduced CBDCs, according to the IMF, and two of them are already having serious issues. The roll-out of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), while still in its early stages, is not going as smoothly as the central banking community may have hoped. The latest central bank to admit to serious difficulties is the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) whose governor Richard Byles has acknowledged that the rollout of the country’s CBDC, the Jam-Dex, has been a lot slower than originally anticipated. In fact, the total amount of Jam-Dex in circulation has remained stuck at just 230 million Jamaican dollars (USD 1.47 million) since the first — and so far only — batch of the digital currency was “minted” 19 months ago.The Jam-Dex is one of just three fully-launched retail

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Voters Say Biden Will Make Inflation Worse

14 days ago

Biden still has a big “inflation!” political problem…. Story at National Pulse:As the U.S. economy braces itself for the third year of an inflation surge that has substantially hiked the cost of living and sharply depressed real wages, most registered voters believe President Biden’s policies will cause prices to rise.   A poll by CBS News and YouGov released Sunday shows that 55 percent of registered voters believe Biden’s policies will trigger price increases. Only 17 percent of registered voters believe his policies will cause prices to decline.  Twenty-seven percent believe his policies won’t impact prices either way, suggesting that 82 percent of voters believe Biden is ineffective at controlling inflation or is actively making it worse.Voters Say Biden Will Make Inflation Worse,

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British government designs fiscal policy within a flawed framework – result = poor policy — Bill Mitchell

15 days ago

This week, the UK Chancellor releases the latest fiscal statement (aka ‘the budget’) and will also have a eye to the general election which must be held before January 28, 2025. One would expect the government would stall the announcement and delay the election for as long as is possible, given the current situation and the cumulative impacts of 12 years of Tory rule, which are plain to see at all levels of British society. All the talk is of tax cuts, that typical ‘sugar hit’ approach to winning votes that soon works it way out of the system. The debate as to what the British government should now be doing is clouded, as these debates are always clouded, by the input of organisations such as the Office of Budget Responsibility, which claims its charter is to “to examine and report on the

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As US Modern Monetary Theory advocates make their case in Australia, Gareth Vaughan explains the world through their lens and how it might go down in New Zealand — Gareth Vaughan

23 days ago

This article, which is favorable to MMT, contains a good explanation of what MMT is and isn’t.interest.co.nzAs US Modern Monetary Theory advocates make their case in Australia, Gareth Vaughan explains the world through their lens and how it might go down in New ZealandGareth VaughanAnother side of the story.[US] Conservatives, [El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele] said, “always tell me that the problem is high taxes, but they are wrong.”“The real problem is that you pay high taxes only to uphold the illusion that you are funding the government, which you are not,” he claimed, before describing how the government is financed by Treasury bonds, which are purchased by the Federal Reserve with printed money backed by the bonds themselves.“The government is funded by money printing, paper

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Japan sinks into recession – but there is more to the story than the mainstream narrative would care to admit — Bill Mitchell

29 days ago

Last week (February 15, 2024), the Japanese Cabinet Office released the latest national accounts estimates for the December-quarter 2023 – Quarterly Estimates of GDP for Oct.-Dec. 2023 (The First preliminary) – which showed that the economy had slipped into an official recession (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth) and in the process had moved from being the third largest economy in the world to become the fourth behind the US, China and Germany. According to the media release – 2023年10~12月期四半期別GDP速報 – the quarterly growth rate was -0.1 per cent (annual -0.4 per cent). Domestic demand was weak, contributing -0.3 per cent while net exports contributed +0.2 per cent. Part of the story is related to a ‘valuation drop’ because the yen has depreciated in recent months, undermining

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The Smith Family manga–Episode 12– the Season 1 finale–is now available — Bill Mitchell

February 17, 2024

Episode 12 – the finale for Season 1 in our new Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – is now available. We will let everyone calm down from the excitement for a little while to give us time to write and draw Season 2, which will begin on May 24, 2024.In the meantime, have a bit of fun with it and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryThe Smith Family manga – Episode 12 – the Season 1 finale – is now availableBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

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US inflation rate is declining – no case for further rate rises — Bill Mitchell

February 14, 2024

The US CPI data released yesterday showed that inflation continues to decline and the so-called ‘surprise’ that seems to have shocked the ‘markets’ are mostly down to the eccentric way the US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates housing costs. The data provides no justification for further rate hikes in the US or anywhere else for that matter….William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryUS inflation rate is declining – no case for further rate risesBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

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Why economics is an impossible science — Lars P. Syll

February 11, 2024

The title might better read, Why orthodox economics is an impossible science. While so-called orthodox economics fits this bill, it doesn’t necessarily apply to so-called heterodox schools like MMT.One of the characteristic criticisms of MMY economists by so-called orthodox economists (like Paul Krugman) is "Where’s your model?" For neoclassical" economists, who assume formalization as a sine qua non of doing economics, required methodological assumptions include "equilibrium and maximization" as Krugman is fond of saying. The post linked to below objects that this not even possible given the attendant conditions, other than as a "toy model" serving as "a teaching tool." Such models cannot underlie a casual explanation of real change in the world of events that economists then assume

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Yi Gang on China’s Digital Yuan — Zichen Wang

February 10, 2024

Former Central Bank governor lectures on the theories and practices of China’s ambitious central bank digital currency.China appears to be the most ambitious among major economies to develop its central bank digital currency – the digital yuan, and we have covered its development before.On October 10, 2023, Yi Gang, China’s central bank governor between 2018 and 2023 gave a public lecture at Tsinghua University entitled 数字人民币的相关理论与实践 Theories and Practices Related to the Digital Yuan….Almost everything you wanted to know about the digital yuan. PekingnologyYi Gang on China’s Digital YuanZichen Wang

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What is Yi Gang trying to say in his 1st interview after retiring from PBoC? — Zichen Wang

February 7, 2024

Not about MMT but rather about "money."Today, I am sharing a January 12, 2024 interview of Yi Gang, former Governor of the People’s Bank of China, by 金融时报 Jinrong Shibao (literally Financial Times), a newspaper by the central bank.Yi obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and became an Associate Professor with tenure at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, before going back to Peking University, his alma mater. He later joined the People’s Bank of China and rose through its ranks until heading it between 2018 and 2023.Yi retired in July last year and his five-year tenure at the helm of China’s central bank is known for, according to Bloomberg, “a restrained policy approach focused on moderate stimulus and reducing financial risks in

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Samuelson on the legacy we leave for grandchildren — Richard Murphy

February 3, 2024

Paul Samuelson, the author of what still might be the most-sold textbook of the post-war era had this to say on page 427 of his first edition, addressing a subject then very close to the thoughts of many of his readers:Can it be truthfully said that “internal borrowing shifts the war burden to future generations while taxing places it on the present generation”? A thousand times no! The present generation must still give up resources to produce the munitions hurled at the enemy. In the future, some of our grandchildren will be giving up goods and services to other grandchildren. That is the nub of the matter. The only way in which we can impose a direct burden on the future nation as a whole is by incurring an external debt or by passing along less capital equipment to our

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