Mike Norman Economics

Crossing the Rubicon. There is no UN mandate for this. While the US could not directly force SWIFT to cut off Iranian banks, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had warned that penalties would be applied to SWIFT and any other firms that refused to comply with the latest sanctions, effectively forcing SWIFT to pick between compliance with US demands or angering top EU officials. It picked the former. Zero HedgeSWIFT Cuts Off Iran Central Bank As Tehran Sells 700,000 Barrels To Anonymous...

Spoiling the fun. Meanies. On November 11, Sipila stated that Finland’s GPS signal had been intentionally disrupted during NATO’s exercise Trident Juncture over the past few weeks. “It is possible that Russia has been the disrupting party in this. Russia is known to possess such capabilities,” Sipila told public broadcaster Yle. On November 6, Finland’s air navigation services issued a warning for air traffic due to a large-scale GPS interruption in the northern part of the country....

Smackdown.Sic Semper TyrannisClapper and Brennan are felons? Probably yes.Col. 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 1994, all the U.S. military...

Engels quote. Grasping Reality Friedrich Engels on invention as a factor of production Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Short synopsis of the General Theory.The Political Economy of DevelopmentRe-reading KeynesNick Johnson

The ‘Matching functions’ mentioined in the quote explain unemployment by assuming that finding a job or a worker takes time. And this does explain unemployment – part of it (2%-point?). The rest must be explained by crises and the inability of the market system to create jobs. As is clear from comparing graph 2, short-lived crises cause lower levels of job creation and higher levels of job destruction. Basically, these swings are not even that large. But together they lead to a fast...

Answering the four big objections from critics of UBI A very good article on the merits of the Basic Income, and I think, probably the best one I've read. And it might not be so expensive after allAt present, most UK adults are taxed at a zero rate on the first £8,164 of earned income, 12% from £8,164 to £11,500, and 32% above £11,500. What this means, in effect, is that anyone earning £11,500 or more is effectively being given a freebie from the state of £3680, compared to being standardly...

Yep, they're for real and you can buy one. One person who bought one said it pissed him off it was made in China.Could it be a clever marketing ploy to wind up liberals which Trump supporters might buy to piss them off? [embedded content]

Last Friday I took part in a panel to launch a new book, World in Crisis: A Global Analysis of Marx’s Law of Profitability, published by Haymarket Books, edited by Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi. The presentation was at this year’s Historical Materialism conference in London. My presentation was on ‘Finance, Imperialism and Profits’, in which I stressed the need to develop Marx’s theory in order to explain the world today. I argued that an accurate measure of a rate of profit (in...

Well, I just watched a bit of a very depressing video where a biologist reckons we only have a year to live, but certainly no more than ten, as there will be massive crop failures due to climate change. I watched ten minutes of it and then decided it was too depressing for here.But the next video that came up was totally different and very inspiring. It's a little sad in places, but it's a documentary of great hope, love, joy, and passion and is about what makes life so great and...