Mike Norman Economics

Half-informed.Many of the points made have been dealt with in the MMT literature, but the author seems to be only superficially informed about it. Almost no one has taken the time to educate themselves on MMT in a serious way before offering shoot from the hip criticism.On the other hand, these are valid considerations and if people are not informed about the MMT solutions, more education is required. That includes educating MMT evangelists so that don't just spread slogans or perpetuate...

In yesterday’s short blog post – Some Brexit dynamics while across the Channel Europe is in denial (January 2, 2019), I noted that various European Commission officials were boasting about how great the monetary union had been over the last 20 years. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had the audacity (and delusion) to claim it had “delivered prosperity and protection to our citizens. it has become a symbol of unity, sovereignty and stability”. I think he was either drunk or...

Was short for a year. Just took major profit.

Zero HedgeAmerica's Defeat In Syria Is A Crisis Of Empire [how Putin outplayed the US Deep State] Tyler Durden EcnsResolving Taiwan question, complete reunification a historic task: Xi EcnsXi delivers speech at gathering marking 40th anniversary of Message to Compatriots in TaiwanThe Fourth Political TheoryGeopolitics: Theories, Concepts, Schools, and Debates Alexander DuginMint Press NewsLand of the Free – Unless You Want to Criticize Israel Philip RoddisFort Russ NewsRegime Change in...

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my twenty plus years of market-watching it is that markets hate uncertainty. Uncertainty breeds volatility and volatility usually prefaces a panic.…No matter how powerful you are, you can’t dictate to markets for very long without there being a comeuppance. Even the Fed understands this. That’s why for the past ten years central banks have embarked on a communications policy to massage markets first, to prep them for any changes in monetary policy....

India has done well to put in place the nuts and bolts of a payment mechanism for its trade and investment transactions with Iran against the backdrop of the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) in May last year followed by the imposition of sanctions against Iran.... India PunchlineIndia sequesters Iran ties from US predatory strikeM. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service

‘Make America Great Again’: Trump’s slogan seems both to yearn for a time when the United States had more influence, and to call for its pre-eminence to be restored. In its own way, it asserts that the US is – or should be – different. In fact it was only Trump’s predecessor, Obama, who was the first president to talk regularly about American exceptionalism, yet to Trump it is something that is long lost and it is his job to recover it. Yet belief in the US’s exceptional nature has been a...

American populists are largely reactive and somewhat confused. They don’t know what hit them. And they don’t know their own, often forgotten, history. Nineteenth-century American populists were not socialists, but small-scale capitalists. They were farmers, artisans, and professionals. Private enterprise was central to their values, and they wanted to preserve it for ordinary citizens like themselves. The ideal was to own your own business, not to work for a corporation. Populists fought to...

Today’s fakeout morning selloff says a lot.

Economists have long been fascinated by a 1930 essay written by John Maynard Keynes called "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" (available various places like here and here). Writing in the opening storms of what would become the Great Depression, Keynes maintained that the main issues facing the economy in the long run was an adjustment to ongoing technological progress. He wrote: "We are suffering, not from the rheumatics of old age, but from the growing-pains of over-rapid...