Mike Norman Economics

Finally. Long time coming, but this is a very important development.

It seems she was not physically tortured in the strict sense of the word but her prolonged harsh and vindictive treatment waiting over five months for her repeatedly delayed trial amounted to ‘torture’. We do not know what interrogation techniques were used. We will be told one day. She was and is a political prisoner and has been treated like a terrorist. Politically aware Russians will remember this case with particular rage. No American imprisoned in Russia on whatever charge has ever...

I would be skeptical of this if I had not witnessed it in France and the United States in the past. In fact sort of behavior has a name in law enforcement and criminal justice. It's called "punitive" enforcement. On the one hand, it is mindset of some that join law enforcement, and it is also a result of a punitive culture in some departments that is at least condoned by superiors and supervisors. So, there are two factors operative. One is sadistic disposition, and the other is...

The structures of the global economy present challenges to any country or political party that wants to try to break out of U.S. hegemony. Even for countries as big and with as much potential as Brazil or Egypt, countries that have experienced waves of relative independence, the inertia of these economic structures helps send them back into old patterns of extraction and debt. In this moment of right-wing resurgence it is hard to imagine political movements arising with plans to push off...

Last week, Warren Mosler and I had one of our regular catchups and we discussed at length the state of play in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We are quite protective of it. We mused about how we started out on this Project and where it has gone. As old stagers do when they get together. We also reflected and compared notes on what the state of MMT is now, given the increasing visibility of the ideas in the mainstream media all around the world and the proliferation of social media activists...

Something nice! [embedded content] What makes Noorung, the stray dog, so scared that he doesn't leave the water's edge?

It speaks for itself. [embedded content] That’s the question that motivates writer Wajahat Ali to travel to Israel in a new documentary from The Atlantic. Ali, who has been critical of Israel, embarks on a personal quest to understand the perspectives of some of the 400,000 Israeli Jews who live in the occupied territory in defiance of international law—and to hear from the Palestinians who oppose them. In his travels through the West Bank, Ali visits the family of a Palestinian terrorist,...

It is truly incredible that most of the advocates of this trade policy do not even seem to understand the class nature of their agenda, equating the interests of a tiny group at the top with the interests of the whole country.... TruthoutTrade: It’s Still About Class, Not Country Dean Baker | Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.CSee alsoRobert ReichChina Tariffs are a Regressive Tax on Americans, and Risk a Recession

Short essay in Spanish for the special (40 year anniversary of the journal Coyuntura y Desarrollo, published by the Fundación de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo, FIDE). It is essentially a critique of the concept of middle-income trap and the idea of how the demographic transitions (discussed herebefore) affect the process of development. It suggests that the deindustrialization of the Latin American periphery results as much from the decisions in the hegemonic country to open up China,...

Oh, my. The Fourth Reich? And not Germany this time?Times are getting rude.The Vineyard of the SakerWhy Russia Has No Right to Surrender to the West Aleksandr Neukropny Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina SiardSee alsoThe Ghion HournalDestroying The Laws Rainer SheaSee alsoThe National InterestDon't Let Ukraine Drag America into War Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest