Mike Norman Economics

On June 24, 2018, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) released their – Annual Economic Report 2018 – which contains their latest analysis of the global economy including the risks they think the current growth process faces. It is full of myth and like previous statements from the BIS it only serves to perpetuate the policy mentalities that caused the global financial crisis. These multilateral organisations (including the BIS, IMF, World Bank, OECD etc) have become the harbingers...

John Haidt says the working class mainly vote conservative  but one of the reasons for this is to much immigration which the working class blame on the liberals. But mass immigration  has really been the policy of the right wing neoliberals as businesses wanted cheaper labour to compete with the third world. Also, immigration pushed up demand for housing which was good for landlords and bankers as the value of rents and mortgages rose. Immigration just pushes up GDP. In the end people love...

Someone finally asked Obama administration officials to own up to the rise of ISIS and arming jihadists in Syria.   Mahdi Haden, of the Intercept, nailed Ben Rhodes, Obama's National security adviser, down about Obama's arming and funding if ISIS and other terrorist groups fighting in Syria. Ben Rhodes, backed into a corner, finally admitted it but said the U.S. wasn't as bad as the others, meaning  Saudi Arabia and Qatar, etc, as if that makes it okay.  Anyway, none of ever mainstream...

We got long crude again at $64. It’s closing in on $73. What now?

The Kalecki profit equation -- named after the economist Michal Kalecki -- describes how aggregated profits are determined by national accounting identities. (Note that Jerome Levy came up with a similar approach earlier; the equation is sometimes referred to as the Kalecki-Levy profit equation.) The results are perhaps not obvious if we look at profits from a bottom up perspective. From the perspective of business cycle analysis, the key point to note is that net investment is a source of...

The global economy could be on the cusp of a productivity boom—and big opportunities for companies. Tidbit: However, capturing the productivity potential of advanced economies may require a focus on promoting both demand and digital diffusion in addition to more traditional supply-side approaches. McKinsey Five Fifty — A quick briefing in five—or a fifty-minute deeper dive The Coming Boom?

What impact might cell phone and Bluetooth radiation have on the inner ear? Cell phones can damage your hearing but Bluetooth is safe. [embedded content]

Since econometrics doesn’t content itself with only making optimal predictions, but also aspires to explain things in terms of causes and effects, econometricians need loads of assumptions — most important of these are additivity and linearity. Important, simply because if they are not true, your model is invalid and descriptively incorrect. And when the model is wrong — well, then it’s wrong.... Simplifying assumptions versus oversimplification.Lars P. Syll’s BlogThe main reason why almost...

It is Wednesday, so just a (relatively) short blog post today. I am using the time today to further scope out the material and logic for my next book with Thomas Fazi, which we hope to publish sometime in 2019. I will provide more details on that project soon but it is intended to be the followup to our current book – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, 2017). So, today, a bit of that sort of flavour. In 1977, the Young...

Why do working class people vote conservative, asks John Haidt, when it is not in their economic interest? Well, I don't agree with all of John Haidt 's conclusions because he says nothing about propaganda, but he does raise some interesting and disturbing points. Why working-class people vote conservative Across the world, blue-collar voters ally themselves with the political right – even when it appears to be against their own interests. Is this because such parties often serve up a...