Mike Norman Economics

Recommended reading on the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of economics, and Milton Friedman's instrumentalism.EvonomicsEconomists Should Stop Defending Milton Friedman’s Pseudo-science George H. Blackford | former Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan-Flint

In Too Big To Fail, the “superstar” chief of Goldman, Lloyd Blankfein, along with “smart” Jamie Dimon of Chase, “fighter” John Mack of Morgan Stanley, and other titans brokered the deal of deals, just in time to stave off a Mad Max scenario for us all.The plan included a federal bailout of incompetent AIG, along with key mergers – Bank of America buying Merrill, Barclays swallowing the sinking hull of Lehman, etc. With respect to the fine actors in the film, the legend is bull. There are...

Harvard Business ReviewResearch: How the Financial Crisis Drastically Increased Wealth Inequality in the U.S. Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick and Ulrike Steins The Guardian France admits ‘system’ of torture in Algeria war of independence AFPStrategic Culture FoundationBringing Down a President Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, now Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and founding member of the Veteran...

Jason Smith comments on J. W. Mason and Arun Jayadev on MMT and conventional economics from the point of view of scientific modeling in macro.Information Transfer EconomicsWhat do equations mean?Jason Smith

More on just war theory and liberal interventionism. This is philosophy as critical thinking applied practically, i.e., applied philosophy. I largely agree with Robinson's analysis. What he omits, and which I take to be crucial, is that the argument in the abstract ignores the relevance of interference to further policy, which involves the interests and policy goals of the interferer.  This creates a conflict of interest, since it is not a disinterested action any longer but an...

More signs of the collapse of American liberalism. The Unz ReviewOn the Censorship of Michael Hoffman's Books by Amazon The Saker interviews Michale HoffmanSee also When Europeans land on the U.S. No-Fly List, they have almost no chance to challenge it, as a German couple from Stuttgart recently found out the hard way. Their case casts light on an Orwellian lack of transparency in the war on terror. Spiegel Online EnglishOrwellian Nightmare: A German Couple Winds Up on U.S. No-Fly List...

RT interview the Novichok suspects, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. They seem to be genuine and came forward to RT to clear their name. They say that the recent weeks have been a nightmare and they fear that their lives are on danger. But they are a little cagey in the interview not giving too many details of what they do for a living, just saying they are in the sports nutrition business, which has left Western press to dismiss them as Russian agents. In fact, some of the Western...

One way that heuristic thinking works.Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social ScienceN=1 survey tells me Cynthia Nixon will lose by a lot (no joke)Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

New data suggest these high income earners are living paycheck to paycheck, have fewer assets, and can't retire.                                     It seems that even the upper middle classes are suffering too. I can remember the managers at my old company working all the hours under the sun, because if they wanted to get anywhere they had to put the hours in. That's okay if you enjoy it, or work for yourself and you can see the long them benefits, but are a lot of middle management...

Throughout Western history progressive voices have supported the Empires wars. The ruling elite seem to have no problem getting members of the so called 'liberal left' on their side, in fact, this seems to be part of their strategy to get their wars going.George Monbiot of the Guardian, was recently singing on the Syrian war, and yet, years ago he wrote an article about the School of America's torture manual and the cruelty inflicted on Central America, so he can't be that naive about what ...