Mike Norman Economics

NEOMagic imperialism and the great American wall Andre VltchekBlack Agenda ReportEt tu, RT? Amplifying Western Disinformation on Rwanda Ann Garrison Rolling StoneAmazon’s Long Game Is Clearer Than Ever Matt Taibbi Defend Democracy PressNew Study Details 'Staggering' $6 Trillion (and Counting) Price Tag of Endless US War Julia Conley Project SyndicateDisaster Capitalism Comes to Puerto Rico Martin Guzman and Joseph E. StiglitzFort Russ NewsInternationalism: Kim Jong-un Wishes Assad...

Human sacrifice to the Trump god.Sic Semper TyrannisThe Entry of the Commoner Scapegoats in WahhabeelandCol. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.) At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to...

The Federal Reserve will conduct an extensive review next year of how it tries to guide the U.S. economy, the U.S. central bank said on Thursday. “Now is a good time to take stock of how we formulate, conduct, and communicate monetary policy,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, noting that the Fed was close to meeting its goals of maximum employment and a 2 percent inflation rate.  In a statement, the Fed said it would reach out to a “broad range” of stakeholders and that it...

Why do we have 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes to an hour?Why do we have 360° in a circle? Finding this out was awesoman. Of course, I thought!And why do we use base 10? Because it's easy, I thought. Nope, it's more obvious than that. [embedded content]

MMT. Edward Hadas makes a couple of mistakes:  Steven Keen is not an MMT economist although he is an MMT ally and QE is not the same as fiscal injection in that the former creates no new aggregate net financial assets in non-government while fiscal injection does. But these are subtle points and the rest of the piece is favorable, so no quibbles.  Reuters is a news service, and I initially picked this up at NADAQ. So MMT is getting wide exposure.Reuters Breaking ViewsHadas: Fear of...

Clint Ballinger uses an automotive analogy to show how MMT is not so much a matter of changing policy as much as it is of using the full power of currency sovereign. Then the self-induced limitations on using the full capacity of fiscal space disappear automatically. The mistake is largely due to the erroneous government as firm or household analogy. A sovereign currency issuer is not limited in the amount of currency it can issue, unlike currency users that must obtain the currency. The...

Already backpedaling on campaign rhetoric.  After they won their primaries, some young progressives curbed their pro-Palestine rhetoric. Now they are in Washington getting oriented. Next up: early test votes in the new year sponsored by the pro-Israel lobby, writes As`ad AbuKhalil. Consortium News Newly-Elected Progressives Confront AIPAC Test As’ad AbuKhalil | Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, StanislausSee also at Consortium NewsAnother...

The information transfer model tracks this pretty well. Information Transfer EconomicsUnions, inequality, and labor shareJason Smith

Banks are not intermediaries between savers and borrowers, and finance is not allocating existing savings to future investment. The opposite is true. Bank credit is self-funding; in credit extension, loans (assets) create deposits (liabilities). In finance as allocation of capital, investment creates saving.Lars P. Syll’s BlogKalecki and Keynes on the loanable funds fallacyLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Chinese consumers are embracing credit. This has huge implications for increasing China's consumption to investment ratio, which needed for the transition from low-income, to middle-income to high-income country. This implies growth of the domestic economy and less dependence on the external sector. It will also bring China trade surplus more toward balance and over time likely into deficit as "the Chinese consumer" replaces "the American consumer" as the purchaser of last resort. And it's...