Mike Norman Economics

 ConclusionWhile a just cause wins its champion wide support, an unjust one condemns its pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying practices of using strength to intimidate the weak, taking from others by force and subterfuge, and playing zero-sum games are exerting grave harm. The historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding truth with its power and trampling justice to serve...

It is likely that I will be participating (remotely) in an academic panel about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), with a “pro” and “con” side at a Canadian academic conference. This article is my initial thinking, and is a way of soliciting feedback. The “story” behind the panel is whether we learned anything from the pandemic shock....Bond EconomicsMMT After The Pandemic ShockBrian Romanchuk

It’s gonna take me time to process this whole thing.

 Another post of conventional economists not being keen on applying logic to their reasoning.Lars P. Syll’s BlogThe Keynes-Tinbergen debate on econometricsLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo UniversityPolitics seems to suffer from a similar syndrome. While economists sacrifice logic for mathematical modeling including tractability, some politicians appear to be mathematically challenged.[embedded content]

Last Monday, I wrote about the global need for us to abandon meat production for food, and, instead take up plant-based diets. Many people interpreted that argument as a personal attack on their dietary freedom, which indicates they fell into a fallacy of composition trap and declined to see the global issue. As part of my series on the Degrowth agenda, the other aspect about food which is important is that we have a propensity to produce too much food and distribute what we produce...

Between 1993 and 2011 the Department of Justice Antitrust Division issued a trio of policy statements (two during the Clinton administration and one under Obama) regarding the sharing of information in the healthcare industry. These rules provided wiggle room around the Sherman Antitrust Act, which “sets forth the basic antitrust prohibition against contracts, combinations, and conspiracies in restraint of trade or commerce.”And it wasn’t just in healthcare. The rules were interpreted to...

None of us should put too much stock into any long range economic outlook. But CBO’s economic outlook impacts its (baseline) budget projections, which matter for policymaking in all kinds of ways.By assuming a gloomier economy—no growth, higher unemployment, stickier inflation, and more aggressive rate hikes in the near term (among other things)—CBO is telling lawmakers that projected deficits over the period 2023-2032 will be $900 billion higher than previously forecast (back in May 2022)....

 Funny … and sad.Sometimes it’s hard to talk about economists about this sort of thing because they get all defensive about it.Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social ScienceContradictions within economic theory. All well known but still important and, I think, not taken as seriously as they should be.Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

 New resource that complements Michael Hudson's Junk Economics.Tax Research UKThe glossary is liveRichard 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

Iran turns East (along with Russia), forsaking former ambitions with the West after being rejected. China is waiting with open arms to take advantage of Kissinger's nightmare scenario now become a reality.However, this is not a military alliance (yet) but rather an economic benefit for all sides, including other countries in the region, not the least of which is India, which will receive Eurasian resources through the New Silk Road (BRI) that is being developed, although the West is trying...