Mike Norman Economics

Anyone still reading The Guardian? "Guardian" of what one asks? The Establishment?Is there another option to the editor being either a moron or else complicit? Unless there is an exculpatory explanation quickly forthcoming that passes the smell test, some people need to be fired.Needless to say, The Guardian has joined a growing list of unreliable media that I will no longer be linking to, at least until there is a change in management.Disobedient MediaThe Guardian’s Reputation In Tatters...

Instructive. Margaret Thatcher may have been a neoliberal but she was not a fascist.Grasping RealityMargaret Thatcher Against Friedrich von Hayek's Pleas for a Lykourgan Dictatorship in Britain: Hoisted from the ArchivesBrad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

On Friday the ECB launched, with minimal fanfare, a brand new system aimed at enabling banks to settle payments instantaneously across Europe, helping them to compete with PayPal and other global tech giants. Developed in little over a year, the ECB’s not-for-profit TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) system will let people and businesses in Europe transfer euros to each other almost instantly, at extremely low cost, and irrespective of the opening hours of their local bank.... Wolf...

Narrative creation operates based on pattern-recognition and repetition. "Tell a lie big enough and often enough and …. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. — Joseph Goebbles, Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik, quoted in Big Lie at...

Knowledge as a factor of production. Knowledge is broader than information. Knowledge includes tacit knowledge, skill, and critical and creative thinking. In other words, the study of knowledge involves epistemology, logic and language, psychology, and other relevant fields in addition to information.  Information can be formalized but a great deal of knowledge cannot, at least given present limitations and future prospects through technology. Labor as the human component of...

The "free trade agreements" have little to do with tariffs and can be better described as "investor rights agreements" in that their main purpose is to shield companies from sovereign law. Laws are designed to protect a nation from environmental and labor abuses, and that might otherwise impinge on profits. The beneficiaries of the agreements are not so much the nations as the elite business owner class in each country. The opulent minority. Free trade in the sense that private companies...

Strategic Culture FoundationThe West Slips Down Another Step Patrick Armstrong The Nation War with Russia? Stephen F. Cohen | Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History, and Politics at New York University and Princeton University TASSKremlin unveils agenda of canceled Putin-Trump meeting Sputnik InternationalAnonymous Reveals Proof "Russian Meddling" in Catalan Independence Vote Fake Sputnik InternationalDefamation Impossible: Hackers Leak More Details on UK's Info War in...

The IMF hitman in Europe, one Poul Thomsem recently published a European Money and Finance Forum (SUERF) Policy Note (October 2018) – A Financial Union for the Euro Area – where he basically told us that any changes that the IMF will allow to occur in the Eurozone architecture will be minimal and will not stop Member States “from being forced to undertake large pro-cyclical fiscal adjustments when the next shock or major downturn hits”. The term “large pro-cyclical fiscal adjustments” means...

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As I said 2 weeks ago. Stock market has bottomed.