Mike Norman Economics

The latest internal polls reveal that 40 years after the Islamic Revolution, over 70% of Iranians of all social classes have zero trust in any negotiations involving the US government. And that even includes an increasing number of millennials, for whom the Islamic Revolution is just an echo of a distant past. That may not be the exact sentiment in Teherangeles, California – the capital of the Iranian diaspora, which may number over half a million people worldwide, mostly...

It is clear that once dominance of the US Dollar and the system which sustains it is removed, consequences for the United States could be catastrophic. The question is NOT about IF US Dollar will survive as world's reserve currency--this is not even up for a debate--it is WHEN and HOW the departure will happen. Reminiscence of the FutureAbout US Dollar and Sanctions, Yet Again.Andrei Martyanov

I confess I expected better. Paul Mason misses the fact that it is not ‘hit and hope’ it is actually the way money IS created – the neoliberal deceit is the ‘fact’ that we tax and spend. The Treasury has after all, admitted as much as, indeed, have the Bank of England in September 2017: “Regarding whether taxation is necessarily required to finance government spending the answer is no, it is not. Along with raising money by taxation, governments can borrow money and they can create money...

Barkley Rosser either makes a bad mistake in starting with Marx's definition of "socialism" as state-ownership of the means of production as exclusive, or he is carrying water for the ownership class that uses this arbitrary definition to demonize the opposition to its rent-seeking and parasitic rent extraction, e.g., by socializing negative externality, the result of which is now climate change. I suspect that he was shooting from the hip and shot himself in the foot instead of hitting his...

The increasing uprising against Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in the media is salutory because it means our ideas are now considered to be a threat to the mainstream economics (for example, Paul Krugman now buying into the carping) and to the heterodox tradition (for example, the British economists who self-identify with that tradition). The high profile debate around the Green New Deal has been associated with MMT and this has brought all sort of crazy attacks on MMT from those who think...

Paul Krugman has piled onto the "MMT explained by non-MMTers" bandwagon, with a critique of Functional Finance. Functional Finance is largely associated with the Old Keynesian Abba Lerner, and is one of the key intellectual roots of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). In my view, the most interesting part of the article is that it contradicts the commonly made assertion that there is very little new in MMT (which Krugman hints at in the article as well). In presenting his summary of Functional...

Elliott Abrams is held to account in front of Congress, but the slippery scaley-back wiggles out of it by refusing to answer the question. He's feels no guilt and never has because the media is never held him to account. Would anyone in Putin's government be allowed to get away with war crimes like his? The U.S. lectures the World but no country lectures America about its long history of crimes against humanity. [embedded content] Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has a heated exchange with Elliot...

The backers of Ocasio-Cortez’s bill released and then withdrew an FAQwhich seemed to suggest the investment would be paid for using the methods advocated by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT rightly argues, as against free-market economics, that a state with a sovereign currency cannot go bust. The state can create growth, and thus the means to pay back money borrowed; and it can create money, via the central bank, which can be used to lend to government.For many people on the radical left,...

Frequent contributor to MNE, Detroit Dan, just posted this piece, with links. I think you will like it.MindorenyoMMT Elevator Speech Detroit Dan

Sputnik International interviews Michael Hudson. Audio and transcript.Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of NeoliberalismSuper-Imperialism at the PentagonMichael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University