Mike Norman Economics

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...

I decided to reproduce this in full as every paragraph seemed pertinent and I kind if felt most people here would read it all to why end anyway.  Do Americans know how they have been conned, and yet a significant amount of them still vote for the neoliberal system? KV How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off the Inevitable? Paul Craig Roberts When are America’s global corporations and Wall Street going to sit down with President Trump and explain to him that his trade war is not with...

Gordon M. Hahn explains why he concludes that Russia is poised to win the gas wars at this point, while the US is in a weak position.Russian and Eurasian PoliticsRussia, the West, and Recent Geoeconomics in Europe’s Gas WarsGordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the Center for Terrorism and...

France and Germany signed an agreement last week (June 19, 2018) – the so-called Meseberg Declaration – which saw Europhiles shouting out that Germany has finally bowed to pressure from Emmanuel Macron and agreed to reforms of the Eurozone. Commentators applauded the ‘momentum’ that the ‘Declaration’ introduced to the European integration debate, although they admitted the shifts were slower than a snail might achieve on a bad day. Soon after the ‘Declaration’ was released the revolt of the...

Jimmy Dore says how the so called left are criticizing Trump for not being tough enough on Assad, in fact, they want America to go for all out war with Syria. Tucker Carlson says how the U.S. Is allowing terrorist groups like, ISIS, Al-Nursa, and ABC, whatever the other groups call themselves next, to fight the war against Assad. The Democrats are pretending to be outraged with 'Assad's brutality' while the US ally, Suadi Arabia, is bombing and starving millions of Yemanis. In fact, Crown...

As far as I can tell, Stephen Lendman holds virtually the same views as me and I have read a number of his books and they were all good. He is now friends with both Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson. KV “We do not have a civil war, since a civil war is based on inter-confessional, ethnic, religious or other conflicts,” Assad explained, adding: “We do not have this in Syria. You can go anywhere, particularly in government-controlled areas, and can see all the layers of Syrian society...

Looking at the recent data and assuming the dynamic equilibrium model is correct along with a linear trend in rate increases, we see that the indicator will enter the error band sometime before 2020:… However, the period of time the spread spends inside that error band ranges from a few months to a year (yield curve inversion is usually described as being an indicator a recession will happen within a year). So unless we have other data, we won't be able to predict the timing of this future...

Short. These excerpts summarize the answer I would have given, too. Q. Which books can tell me, from a philosophical standpoint, what makes life worthwhile or worth living? A. Philosopher and author Julian Baggini writes:  Surprisingly, few of the world’s great philosophers have directly addressed this question. Instead, they have focused on a subtly different question: what does it mean to live well? In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasised the need to cultivate good...