Mike Norman Economics

Why Law Vegas is a leading indicator of housing prices, as well as the US economy. Leisure and hospitality alone is 30 percent of the employment market. The Las Vegas market reacts quickly to changes in the overall economy faster than other areas because it is a barometer on people’s non-essential spending. Obviously someone is going to cut back on taking the family to Las Vegas first before cutting back on other essentials in the home. And since this market is heavily tied to...

Smackdown of the New York Times culture. I don't even link it to it anymore. Why drive traffic in the direction of propaganda (think "anonymous" sources) and journalistic standards that should be considered substandard?Grasping Reality Genius no-longer-quite-so-young whippersnapper Ezra is, I think, massively overly polite here: As Ezra Klein say, Jill ...Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) offers an understanding of sovereign (and non-sovereign) currencies that is applicable to a wide range of economic systems, including capitalist and socialist ones. Irrespective of the personal political preferences of its proponents, the theoretical framework in itself is neutral on the appropriate balance between public sector and private sector activity, or the relative merits of capitalism and socialism. In contrast to neoclassical theory, which starts from...

Which brings us to the common ground that Trump shares with Ocasio-Cortez: Neither one believes in budgets. Central to the Green New Deal is a formulation known as modern monetary theory, which holds that the spending power of a sovereign government is limited only by its productive resources. Trump's fiscal insanity - massive spending along with pleas for lower interest rates - is modern monetary theory in all but name, and his trillion-dollar deficits are inspirational for the authors of...

Some critics of MMT say it will create inflation, like 'money printing' has done in Venezuela, but Ellen Brown explains why this isn't the case. Venezuela’s problems are not the result of the government issuing money and using it to hire people to build infrastructure, provide essential services and expand economic development. If it were, unemployment would not be at 33 percent and climbing. Venezuela has a problem that the US does not have and will never have: it owes massive debts in a...

Ellen Brown says how in the 1930's the U.S. had a public bank called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation which rebuilt America after the 1930's crash, but after WW2 the bank was shut down, probably because it competed with the private banks. Ellen Brown also talks about MMT, although she doesn't agree with everything about it. [embedded content] This episode starts with a look at three stories from Latin America. One of corruption in Brazil, one of a coup in Venezuela, and one of a strike...

On the practical side of philosophy of science. Adding nuance to Karl Popper on falsification. Further argument for the view that theories are useful but not "true." This may seem to contradict the realist view that theories are general descriptions of causal relationships. But I don't think that this is what is is implied. Rather, useful theories can be viewed as fitting the data because they reveal underlying structures that are not observed directly but only indirectly.  There is a...

On Aug. 19, 2013, the CIA publicly admitted for the first time its involvement in the 1953 coup against Iran's elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. 1952: Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.Keystone/Getty ImagesThe documents provided details of the CIA's plan at the time, which was led by senior officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Over the course of four days in August 1953, Roosevelt would orchestrate not one, but two attempts to...

TruthoutOcasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Is a Product of Youth Uprising Alex Wong TruthoutIn Venezuela, White Supremacy Is a Key Driver of the Coup Greg PalastCounterpunchThe West’s Colonial Mindset Lives On: a Short History of Western Imperial Arrogance Tom SanfordMint Press News Pompeo Attempts to Link Iran, Hezbollah to Crisis in Venezuela Whitney WebbSputnik InternationalPompeo Claims Hezbollah's 'Active Cells' in Venezuela Are Cause for US Action Fort Russ NewsMADURO REVEALS: US...

The question of how to pay for the Green New Deal is pretty silly when you take a step back and look at the larger issue at hand. Scientists are nearly in unanimous agreement that unless we do something unprecedented in the next twelve years, the Earth will become irreversibly hostile to human life in twenty years, with an estimated cost of $69 trillion to deal with this apocalyptic future. Given that the global GDP for 2017 was $75 trillion, it doesn’t matter what economic theory you...