Mike Norman Economics

With respect to to this post, readers might be interested in a long set of follow-up debates below. h/t Patrick Bond, whose contribution was just published here at Human Geography. David Harvey Denies Imperialism In a major critique of David Harvey’s work, the radical political economist John Smith takes on Harvey’s claim that the “East” is now exploiting the “West,” a statement, he argues, that is backed up by nothing more than his authority. Harvey could not be more wrong, or about a...

Even if free trade is ultimately broadly beneficial, the fact remains that as trade has become freer, inequality has worsened. One major reason for this is that current global trade rules have enabled a few large firms to capture an ever-larger share of value-added, at a massive cost to economies, workers, and the environment....  The only significant exception to these trends is China, which has designed industrial policies specifically to increase the share of domestic value-added and to...

Rob Johnson and George Soros: A Better Bailout Was Possible: "A critical opportunity was missed when the burden of post-crisis adjustment was tilted heavily in favor of creditors relative to debtors.... When President Barack Obama’s administration arrived, one of us (Soros) repeatedly appealed to Summers... [for] equity injection into fragile financial institutions and... writ[ing] down mortgages to a realistic market value.... Summers objected that ... such a policy reeked of socialism and...

Maybe... Taleb ofc approaching it stochastically, "process of elimination" here... and the "system" eliminates the input that corresponded to the failed outcome...Deterministic science trained people instead "make adjustments" in response to failure... ancient Greek "katartismon"... based on the original deterministic functional understanding and the initial input People don’t learn. Skin in the game has the attribute of removing bad drivers from the system.Systems learn by removing....

The recent book by Jesse Norman simply entitled “Adam Smith” is a pleasure to read. There are of course innumerable books on the founder of the political economy, so why another one? Norman’s book is directed toward that, at times elusive, general educated reader, and has, in my opinion, three objectives: (i) to situate Adam Smith in his time, both intellectually and politically, (ii) to argue that there is a remarkable consistency between the Adam Smith of the Theory of Moral Sentiments,...

Jim O'NeillTerence James O'Neill, Baron O'Neill of Gatley, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and a former UK Conservative government minister, is a British economist.O'Neil is chair of the spooky Chatham House think-tank (Like the USA's Council on Foreign Relations).O'Neill thinks that, in some respects, a Labour government would be better than the current Conservative government.O'Neill writes at the ft :-"I am not overly concerned by some aspects of a prospective...

An interesting article, but I'm not a historian so I don't know how accurate it is. Because the winners write history and many of the facts are missing, Sylvain Laforest says his conclusions are speculative, but he thinks he has got it about right. Rather than a great mystery, the parachuting of Hess is much more an explanation about the historical reality that transpires in the most obvious way, thanks to the 180 degrees change of behavior by the US about its involvement in the war after...

Milton Friedman said greed was good, but that wasn't we were taught as children by our families, schools, and Sunday schools, where we had it drilled into us that being greedy was very bad indeed. And we all agreed, because children are born with an innate sense of right and wrong.  Then the Conservatives came along, which is the party of law and order and family value, and said that greed was good after all. Now we see how greed is destroying the US economy. As the wealthy continue sucking...

According to the scientifically unqualified, this is a “bailout!”: Alan Schwartz, who was the chief executive of Bear Stearns when the investment bank collapsed, the first casualty of what would become the global financial crisis, said it was the government that set the price tag for Bear’s March 2008 fire sale to JPMorgan Chase at $2 a share.  Shareholders were livid after Schwartz announced a deal with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon that valued the company’s stock, which had...

G.W.Bush once said that sometimes money trumps peace.  On rare occasion a story is unearthed in the mainstream media which demonstrates in stunning clarity how major foreign policy decisions are really made in Washington, especially when it comes to waging perpetual war in the Middle East often under the official rhetorical guise of "protecting civilians". A bombshell Wall Street Journal report details a leaked classified memo which shows Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided to...