Mike Norman Economics

Other than speculators there is no such thing as dollar “demand” setting exchange rates.

Hyman Minsky inspired many leftist economists, like Steve Keen and Micheal Hudson, but on the benefit system it seems he was very right wing. Matt Bruenig gives Minsky's views a good hearing, but at the end he says that the benefit system has been a success at ending much of the poverty in the US.I like the idea of lowering the retirement age to create more jobs and keeping youngsters in school longer to learn more skills. Alas, the trend has been to increase the retirement age. KV Economist...

Going back to my title, I quote from the 1997 book of the late Presidential advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives to make the point of what US foreign and defense policy under Trump today is. It is nothing less than application of the Brzezinski geopolitical challenge and the preventive war notion of the Bush-Wolfowitz doctrine in context of today’s emerging resistance to an American sole superpower domination. Brzezinski,...

I think there are three reasons: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions @Asymptosis asks a good question – why isn’t #LVT Everywhere?Andrew Lainton

Why the Canadian "housing bubble" hasn't burst. Quick summary: it's a policy choice, but this comes with some consequences, like pricing some cohorts like unendowed youth out of the market, and also some uncertainty, like what happens if there is a recession and debt cannot be serviced.  Moreover, Brian explains why this cannot be modeled. While it is foreseeable as a contingency, the timing is not forecastable. Although this is based on a policy choice and determined by Canadian law...

Mike sent this out in a note the other day.Household debt service bouncing along the bottom at 40 year low.You can see how over the last 10 years households have been starved of credit as banks had to divert allocation of their regulatory capital against the additional $trillions of Reserve Assets the Fed created under the various QE policies.This should begin to bottom as Fed has stated that they intend to reduce their QE policy by $400B this year and over $400B next year; allowing...

Now that is really upping the ante on economic warfare. Its' not even disguised anymore. Ironic after Alan Greenspan let the banks "terrorize" not only Americans but the world, and Ben Bernanke did nothing about it either.AntiwarUS Imposes New Sanctions on Iran, Labels Central Bank Head a Terrorist Jason Ditz

With an introduction by David Ownby and Timothy Cheek. From the intro: This essay by Jiang Shigong 强世功 (b. 1967), published in the Guangzhou journal Open Times (开放时代) in January 2018, aims to be an authoritative statement of the new political orthodoxy under Xi Jinping 习近平(b. 1953) as Xi begins his second term as China’s supreme leader. It offers a new reading of modern Chinese history in general and the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in particular, arguing that Xi...

Backgrounder. Not looking good.Detailed and nuanced report. Maybe more than you want to know. Cutting to the chase, a lot of backroom deals. Looking at it structurally, our political project, the historic coalition that led to the Constitution of Montecristi [ratified by Ecuadorean voters in 2008] was gradually weakened over time by internal attrition. Contradictions were generated that made it difficult to keep the whole coalition together. During Rafael Correa’s last term in office the...

Russia responds, not tit-for-tat, but asymmetrically as it said it would. Navalny helped the EU compile sanctions on the people who made Crimea’s return to Russia possible in 2014. A year later, he submitted a list of Russian bureaucrats he believed should be sanctioned to the FT, many of whom were indeed later sanctioned by the West. Also in 2015, professional oppositionists Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza traveled to the US to lobby Congress into putting Russian journalists –...