Mike Norman Economics

Abba Lerner quote.Lars P. Syll’s BlogFunctional​ finance — how to cope with inflationLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

I  (Tom Hickey) recommend reading this paper now that "socialism" is the new buzz word. You may recall Professor Wolff from The Poverty of Liberalism, In Defense of Anarchy, and A Critique of Pure Tolerance (with Herbert Marcuse and Barrington Moore, Jr.), which were popular at the time of the "countercultural revolution" in the Sixties and Seventies. He also published scholarly works on Emmanuel Kant and Karl Marx. He blogs at The Philosopher's Stone, which I follow and occasionally offer...

Peter Dorman reflects broadly on what economics is about. Worth considering, although it is only tangentially relevant to MMT as a school of monetary economics. But it does bring up key questions that extend from philosophy to sociology, anthropology, history, and political science, as well as economics. Economies are embedded in societies as their material provisioning mechanism. In doing economics the way it is usually done, it is easy to loose a lot of this, especially in focusing on...

On the historical meanings of "socialism."See my comment there. The Philosopher's StoneA WORD OF CLARIFICATION Robert Paul Wolff | Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Amherst

The main lesson I want to draw from this post is (excluding being autarkic/poor or being in a monetary union):  If a country wants to maintain a fixed exchange rate, the country must accumulate a lot of foreign reserves to be sovereign (or maybe some capital controls?)  If a country wants to have floating exchange rates, it must convince its trading partners (or its trading partners’ trading partners) to hold its national currency as foreign reserves. losinterestMonetary Sovereignty...

See my comment there.Lars P. Syll’s BlogDoes MMT — really — ignore expectations?Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Our brains are neuroplastic and change according to the environment. Poor children are often negatively affected by poverty which makes its difficult for them to learn or do well at school. A viscous circle can set up where these children will grow up into adults who continue to under achieve and live in poverty, and so their children will under achieve as well.Some of these people live in the underclass and can be an enormous burden on society as many get involved in crime, drugs, and...

Exposing horrendous crimes against humanity is a crime, according the Washington. It's shocking to see this. As a teen I thought mankind was becoming enlightened, and I was optimistic. I believed it when they said that good always wins in the end, but now I know it is the winners who get to write history.  They complain that Wikileaks doesn't go after authoritarian states, but the US supports most of these states. There is no democracy in the US. [embedded content] PAUL JAY: Well, I think...

Alan Shipman has written a biography of Wynne Godley! Palgrave Macmillan site for the book, or Google Books I dind't know this was even in the pipeline. The Case for Concerted Action Alan Shipman: Wynne Godley, A BiographyV. Ramanan

Much of the critique that Palley delivers was also waged against Abba Lerner’s ‘functional finance’ approach — on which much of MMT is based — back in the 1940s and 1950s. Even if some of today’s ‘Keynesian’ economists do not understand Lerner, there once was one who certainly did: I recently read an interesting article on deficit budgeting … His argument is impeccable. John Maynard Keynes (CW XXVII:320) Lars P. Syll’s BlogThomas Palley claims MMT fails to provide plausible...