Mike Norman Economics

The Lancashire city has transformed its growth model through public investment and innovation. The socialists are learning the art of the market and I'm sure the Conservatives have little defence, at least for now. It looks like the tide is turning. The labour controlled council is even going to start a community bank to provide loans to local business. And that might even win a lot of traditional Conservative voters over.  Labour may not be in government but its ideas are already...

When scientists first developed the nuclear bomb they were not sure if the bomb could trigger a chain reaction that would turn the whole planet into a fireball. Hitler said he was not going to be responsible for the destruction of all life on Earth and dropped the idea, but a few years later the US went ahead and took the risk regardless.One of the US scientists stopped working on the nuclear bomb as he thought it was immoral, and another one calculated the risk of blowing the whole planet...

Joshua Klein says that Andrew Gillum runs an extremist organisation, but it doesn't sound very extremist to me. It's the US neoliberal, capitalist model and its militarily-industrial-complex which is extremist, as Andrew Gillum points out.  But what is bizarre is that George Soros seems to be funding some of these groups that Gillum is involved with. ORLANDO, Fl. – Florida gubernatorial candidate and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum served as the director of a radical youth training...

This isn't a game anymore, the West is behaving recklessly. The US put its psychopaths in charge of the Ukraine.Ukraine will close the airspace over the Black Sea to conduct missile tests in the Ukrainian region of Kherson. This is only one element of a larger strategy, specialist Semyon Uralov claims. According to the expert, the closure of airspace is part of a “systematic escalation.” The ball of contradictions is tightening. Just remember the attempts of Kiev to aggravate the situation...

Backgrounder. This is how a nuclear launch would go down.The fact that this is even appearing is a cause for concern.RTNuclear war: Hypothetical scenario & Russia's strike options Mikhail Khodarenok, retired colonel of the Russian militarySee also In Knutov’s view, the US has been “preparing for a real war with Russia since the 2000s.” “At the time, it was a theory, but now they start practicing,” he said, referring to the numerous exercises carried out by NATO, including in the...

Socialism is "tyranny," you see. The US has been after regime change in Cuba —unsuccessfully— since the Bay of Pigs invasion. But it has done its best to ruin the economy. Because "socialism is tyranny." So now we an "axis of evil" on Latin America in addition to the Bush era axis of evil — Iraq, Iran, and North Korea — and Russia and China named as chief adversaries.Anyone else hear the sound of war drums beating getting louder? VOXJohn Bolton just gave an “Axis of Evil” speech about...

Tomorrow’s jobs number will move the markets

Given his erratic behavior, from daily Twitter eruptions to upping his tally of lies by the hour, it’s hard to think of Donald Trump as a man with a plan. But in at least one area — reshaping the economy to serve the needs of the military-industrial complex — he’s (gasp!) a socialist in the making.… William Hartung apparently misses that the first step in the plan is reality distortion, also known as "gaslighting." With such field distortion, establishing truth becomes impossible on...

These are some contributions the United States government has made to China's reform and opening up – one failed attempt at sabotage after another. And it won’t stop until the "America first" policy has become worn out, and China's reform and opening up policy has become unbreakable.... The message to the people of China. Western powers are still trying to humiliate China, now chiefly the US. This is the most powerful adversarial message short of accusing the US of threatening war.The...

Not that affordability is relevant from the MMT POV, but it's worth looking at anyway. "They" view it conventionally in terms of the interest rate "r," that is, the policy rate, and the growth rate "g" measured as change in GDP.This is the ratio of r to g, or "r : g". As long as r is greater than g, "they" consider the increasing interest affordable. In fact, "r > g" has become a meme and entered the jargon since the publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty–First...