Mike Norman Economics

With human survival on the line the message needs to be loud, clear and repeated ad nauseam:The spending of a government like the UK which is a sovereign currency issuer is not constrained by its ability to collect tax. In other words, it is not like a household budget which needs income before it can spend. Whilst it is a good idea to review global corporate tax rules as a mechanism to redistribute wealth and resources more fairly Christine Lagarde’s claim that doing so will allow...

It’s not about the system, it’s about your behavior.

Think "money" is the biggie. Think again. Energy is real game changer.  "Money" is to the fore right now, but soon it is going to be energy. Keep your eye on energy technology. The world is in the process of scaling down carbon-based energy use and scaling up alternatives.  The industrial revolution took off with the coal-fired steam engine that powered steam ships, and railroads and factories. The harnessing of electricity and coal-fired power plants enabled the proliferation of...

The second article in this series deals with Modern Monetary Theory’s (MMT) predictive and policy successes. The article has three, separately published, parts. Part 2A deals explains why predictive ability and policy success are so critical – and notes that MMT’s critics have been conspicuously unable to provide a record of predictive failure by MMT scholars. Part 2B deals with MMT successes in microeconomics. The MMT work on microeconomics constitutes a powerful refutation of the...

Good read!  Controversy over money is nothing new in US history, since it has been a lively political issue. The arguments are not chiefly about money, although couched in terms of money, economics, and finance, but rather, politics, which involves winners and losers in the policy game. Historically, sound money advocated have been the wealthy, and functional finance people have been ordinary citizens aka "the little people" (h/t Alan Simpson).History News NetworkMMT and Why Historians...

This is the second part of a three-part series discussing the political issues that give me confidence in the primacy of fiscal policy over monetary policy. The series is designed to help readers see that the recent criticisms of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as being politically naive and unworkable in a real politic sense have all been addressed in the past. In Part 1, I gave examples of how ‘agile’ or ‘nimble’ fiscal policy can be when an elected government has it in their mind to use...

Ha ha. Noah Smith criticizes an MMT formal model expressed in words rather than equations (which he thinks is OK as a formal method and as a logician, I agree) based on, wait for it, unrealistic assumptions, which is exactly the same thing that heterodox economists accuse conventional economists of doing, that is, if one considered John Maynard Keynes himself to be a heterodox economist.MMT economists should not fall into the trap of trying to mimics the mainstream in creating formal...

The tragedy of Greece.   The Greek bailouts were a banking crisis in disguise. In an excerpt of her upcoming book, editor-in-chief, Claire Connelly, explores how Greece took the fall for decades of irresponsible lending by French and German banks. If Greece continues to participate in the European Union, democracy is doomed. It is somewhat fitting that the birthplace of democracy is now the battle ground for its continued existence. The cliche of opulence and laziness disguises real Greek...

Good presentation about why getting progressives to admit that MMT is correct won't change them. It's about politics. Short read.In my view, the way to proceed is by calling attention to economic rent — financial rent, land rent, natural resources rent, and monopoly-monopsony rent — along with socializing negative externality instead of imposing true cost.A comprehensive analysis also necessitates going beyond economics and finance to include all other areas that are relevant ‚ individual...

From Clint Ballinger via email: Hello Tom, could you post this on MN? I am making a Kindle version of the book free for 48 hours for reviewers (rather than try to send paper galley copies etc around the world). Anyone can take advantage of this though. I think the UK mirror site is free as well. The link ishttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PWRXTF2 The UK link is https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07PWRXTF2 Thanks! It is all day Sunday and Monday (US PAcific time cutoffs) 48 hours.