Mike Norman Economics

Powell makes ridiculous and unjustifiable claims in his dismissal of MMT.

More proof we are ruled by morons.  The battle line is drawn, with the ruling elite and neoclassical economists at the center and the flanks occupied by Austrians and Libertarians on the right and clueless progressives on the left, with corporate media in the background, facing off with the MMT economists at the center flanked by MMT advocates, backed by a public that agrees with genuine progressive goals. Now it is a battle for hearts and minds. Quartz Actually, deficits do matter,...

Robert Murphy again. Nothing new. Just posting for the record.Zero HedgeMMT Is Even More Dubious Than AOC's Green New DealTyler Durden

Hilton asked Trump: "You’ve got people who will see that offer from the Democrats, from the progressive Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Here’s the Green New Deal, here’s the guarantee of a job,’ and think, ‘yeah, that’s what I want, it’s that simple.’ What do you say to those people?" To which Ivanka responded: "I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last 4 years. People want to work...

It is Wednesday and despite being on the other side of the Planet than usual (in Helsinki at present) I am still not intending to write a detailed blog post today. I am quite busy here – teaching MMT to graduate students and other things. But I wanted to follow up on a few details I didn’t have time to write about yesterday concerning the role that NAIRU estimates play in maintaining the ideological dominance of neoliberalism. And some more details about the Textbook launch in London on...

Powell spews the thoroughly refuted dogma that the U.S. is on a fiscally unsustainable path.

In my years of training and coaching people I have noticed 2 types of behavior that cause failure.

But few are focusing on the real measurable — not what it will cost economically to address the problem, but what it will cost economically to not address the problem. "Cost economically" here means exactly and only what the people at Forbes and Bloomberg think it means — How does economic activity slow when atmospheric temperature rises? How are profits and wealth affected? This analysis looks at no other factors affecting the economy, such as the cost of recovery from super-storms. One...

I haven't linked to the WaPo in some time since it is seriously compromised. Now it is paywalled, too. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are also on this list. The one aspect I think worth debate, which Noah Smith has previously brought up, is the issue of whether to craft a comprehensive bill that addresses all issues or to create a comprehensive proposal and craft many separate bills to address the complexity involved. This is a political issue that involves strategy....

This is a good historical backgrounder and it should be read for that reason alone. But Michael Roberts also brings up other issues that follow upon this history that are relevant to the current debate, at least some of which that have been brought up previously in the comments here. Highly recommended. As Maria Ivanova has shown, there remains a blind belief that the crisis-prone nature of the latter can be managed by means of ‘money artistry’, that is, by the manipulation of money,...