Mike Norman Economics

Let's hope Jeremy Corbyn and his team cotton on to MMT soon. This will leave the Tories as the high taxation, austerity party with diminished public services. Pay more, get less.Bryan Gocke says that MMT would be difficult to implement as the elite have so much power and run the financial system and corporations and would stymie a Labour party which tried to implement it, but he thinks there's a chance it could win through. I might add, after all, who would have thought the NHS could have...

This is false for a fixed regulatory capital and when subjected to time domain analysis: Banks do not lend out reserves and a particular bank’s ability to expand its balance sheet by lending is not constrained by the quantity of reserves it holds or any fractional reserve requirements that might be imposed by the central bank. — Nathan Becker (@netbacker) July 14, 2018 Not taking issue with netbacker but perhaps the one who put this idea in his head...

Just when you thought it was safe -  more doom and gloom from Nomi Prins who predicts another financial bust coming soon.She says how Western central banks bailed out the banks but did nothing form main street, but in China the central bank used quantitive easing to rebuild its infrastructure, like putting high speed rail all over the country. She says how the West laughed at the ghost cities that China built which stood empty, but China plans long term and the new high speed rail system is...

Paul Jay describes everything they is wrong with our society and what we can do to save it. The elites are not fit to rule, says Paul Jay, as they are in an orgy of mass profits and can't believe their luck, and so they have no incentive to change, even if they are bringing the world to an end. They are also destroying western civilisation as Nomi Prins describes.The elites believe they can ride the storms of climate change and environmental destructing and watch the world go to hell while...

Weekend reading.This post presents the Marxist position on human nature as socially embedded and historically determined in contrast to the the natural law position of classical liberalism that is based on individualism.Longish, but clearly written and informative.CounterfireMarxism and Human Nature Elaine Graham-Leigh

AXIOSAmazon leaves retail competitors in the dust, claims 50% of U.S. e-commerce market Marisa Fernandez

In Losing Military Supremacy, his latest, groundbreaking book, crack Russian military-naval analyst Andrei Martyanov deconstructs in detail how, “the United States faces two nuclear and industrial superpowers, one of which fields a world-class armed forces. If the military-political, as opposed to merely economic, alliance between Russia and China is ever formalized – this will spell the final doom for the United States as a global power.”The US deep state (its influential bureaucrats) may...

Happy to see Patrick Lawrence writing for AlterNet.AlterNetWhat’s Going to Happen When Assad Wins the War in Syria?  Patrick Lawrence, Independent Media Institute

More weekend reading. Longish, but the author has it about right in my view.  While Konstantakopoulos is a self-identified Marxist, he asserts that his analysis is based on logic and observation, and while informed by a Marxist perspective, it stands on its own merits. I would largely agree with that. The historical dialectic is headed in a very dangerous direction, and the danger is existential given modern weaponry. Defend Democracy PressΤhe structural, fundamental factors...

Is the time of the release just ahead of the Trump-Putin summit coincident or poisoning the well?  People on different sides will view this diffidently. However, most people only read headlines and the message is that the Russian intelligence interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, calling into question the legitimacy of Donald Trump as the president of the United States, as well as his independence of Putin's putative control over him through kompromat. Low blow.Moon of...