Mike Norman Economics

Zero HedgeBeijing Backs Iran, "Firmly Opposes" Unilateral US Sanctions Tyler DurdenSputnik InternationalGoogle Suspends Huawei Access to Android Updates After Trump’s Ban – ReportsReutersSchumer asks government to probe rail tech from China Sputnik InternationalChinese Users Call for Boycott of Apple Phones Due to US Trade War

Today’s blog post considers the Australian election and some issues that arose from my recent trip to Scotland – all of which bear on the progress of our work in the public debate. In Australia, we have just held a federal election and it was expected (and certainly the polls and bookies expected) that the Labor Party would win easily after 6 shocking years of conservative rule. Those 6 years have been marked by scandal, three leaders (Prime Ministers), massive internal divisions within the...

Why the West is coming to an end - greed! [embedded content] The elite don't care about the environment, or its beauty.They don't care about the suffering of people: poverty and war are profitable.They don't care about living in pleasant and decent society: why do they care when they live far away from everyone else in their estates, or gated communities, or even abroad, maybe on an island.They tell us capitalism is dog eat dog, so either win at the game or go under. They tell us we are all...

Speaking at China’s second Belt and Road conference in Beijing featuring 37 heads of state, Russia President Vladimir Putin unveiled the intention to unite Russia’s Northern Sea Route with China’s Maritime Silk Road. This announcement should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the close strategic friendship between both countries since the 2015 announcement of an alliance between the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and Belt and Road Initiative. This extension...

Trade in intermediates (or ‘unbundling of production') and trade in capital have become increasingly important in last 25 years. This column shows that trade in intermediates generates a reallocation of capital across countries that exacerbates world inequality in both income and welfare. Unbundling of production hurts middle-income countries but helps those with high productivity. Trade in intermediates also increases within-country inequality, and this increase is U-shaped in the...

Turns out that Huawei was preparing for such an eventually for some time.CTGNLearning lessons from Huawei's countermeasure Editor's Note: The following article is taken from the Chinese-language "Commentaries on International Affairs" published on China Plus on May 19, 2019.

Reification error continues to plague mankind nowhere else as prominent currently as in Asia: "The bank will make “good use” of targeted monetary tools, such as cuts to the amount of money banks lock up and targeted medium-term lending facility, to channel credit to specific sectors," China turning Japanese..  and btw Japan hasn't made a new high in price of equity shares since 1989... as both moron hacker nations appear to be competing in continued zombie action to "add high powered money...

The curse of oil and Dutch disease used to force compliance. [Mark] Weisbrot and [Jeffrey]Sachs say that these sanctions “would fit the definition of collective punishment,” as laid out in the Hague Convention (1899) and in the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949). The United States is a signatory of both of these frameworks. “Collective penalties,” says the Fourth Geneva Convention, “are prohibited.” Tens of thousands of Venezuelans are dead. Tens of thousands more are under threat of death....

Devaluation would be the most disruptive.FortuneChina Is Running Out of U.S. Goods to Tariff, But It Has Other Trade War Weapons to Unleash Eamon Barrett

The US and its allies have fatally underestimated the religious motivation of their adversaries, and lost countless conflicts as a result. The Sunni-Shia divide is as real and as influential as the Catholic-Protestant conflict in the West and the Catholic-Orthodox conflict that dates to the rivalry between Rome and Constantinople and now encompasses the Western Eastern Christian worlds and their worldviews. The West, under US leadership, taking the side of the Sunnis is a huge strategic...