Mike Norman Economics

Everyone said contraction, but I said faster growth and inflation. I was right.

The first is a should-read. The second is a backgrounder.Asia TimesSun Tzu and the Art of Fighting a Trade War From Baltic Sea to Black Sea, Russia aims for a win-win Pepe Escobar

[embedded content] In this video Hilary Clinton admits that the US government created and funded Al-Qaeda in order to fight the soviet union, and she even considers that as a good thing. But she claims that the Americans are fighting Al-Qaeda nowadays. If you really fighting Al-Qaeda, then who are the scums and terrorists you used in order to topple the government of Qaddafi in Libya.

The journalist Katie Hopkins from the Sun newspaper interviews Oksana Boyk from RT and makes the Russians look like liberals as she is so extreme. Okay, she admires Putin and may not be a Putin critic, but she lays into the Muslims asking why do they come here to the free west? She says, "Isn't it because Christian lands are free and tolerant and open?", Oksana Boyk replies saying its because Western countries bombed their countries, but Katie Hopkins takes no notice of that and neither do...

Always wanted a Kalashnikov? Here's your chance. The just-unveiled Russian electric supercar concept by AK-47 creator Kalashnikov has caused heated debate online. Many mocked its old-school design, while others said they’d gladly drive such a vehicle for that very same reason. Forestalling the obvious parallels with Elon Musk’s creations, Kalashnikov Concern said that its CV-1 “electric supercar concept… will allow us to stand in line with the world's electric car manufacturers, like Tesla,...

The state of the nation is parlous.  "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." Mt 12:25 (KJV), Abraham Lincoln  Links:The NationStephen F. Cohen: What the Brennan Affair Really Reveals Stephen F. Cohen | Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, History, and Politics at New York University and Princeton University Armstrong EconomicsThe Press Conspire to Influence the Elections Come November 2018 to...

Econ 101. The standard model is misleading. Having gone through a handful of the most frequently used textbooks of economics at the undergraduate level today, I can only conclude that the models that are presented in these modern mainstream textbooks try to describe and analyze complex and heterogeneous real economies with a single rational-expectations-robot-imitation-representative-agent. That is, with something that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.….For almost forty years...

If you buy products or services from any of the 50 companies listed below (and you likely do), you are supporting modern American slavery The American Conservative run a good article today by Doug Bandow called,  The Madness of Military Intervention in Venezuela, where he said criticism of the Venezuelan dictatorship was justified, but war wouldn't improve the situation. He says, there are many odious  regimes in the world and North Korea uses slave labor prison camps. That might be true,...

The takeaway: The appropriate modes of economic organization vary from country to country. In saying this, I’m following Edmund Burke, who wrote: Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. The answer might lie in a distinction made by Burke as described (pdf) by Jesse [Norman]....

One of the principle ways in which so-called progressive political parties (particularly those in the social democratic tradition) seek to differentiate themselves from conservatives is to advocate large-scale public infrastructure investment as a way of advancing public good. You can see evidence of that in most nations. Nation-building initiatives tend to be popular and also are less sensitive to the usual attacks that are made on public spending when income support and other welfare-type...