Mike Norman Economics

Must-read. The method behind Trump's "madness."Seeking AlphaEnergy Dominance And America FirstChris Cook See also Strategic Culture FoundationThe Geostrategy That Guides Trump"s Foreign PoliciesEric Zuesse

The lump-of-labor fallacy CLAIM is the wage-fund doctrine in disguise. The fallacy claim's conclusions about the ultimate futility of workers' demands are indistinguishable from the doctrine's conclusions. Only the premise from which those conclusions are deduced has been altered. Instead of asserting a certain quantity of work to be done, the fallacy claim attributes that fixed assumption to a designated scapegoat: workers, unions, populists. The claimants' own assumptions are left...

Argentina had a balance-of-payments crisis recently and required help. The IMF has agreed for a stand-by arrangement of $50 billion on the condition in the IMF’s own words: “At the core of the government’s economic plan is a rebalancing of the fiscal position. We fully support this priority and welcome the authorities’ intention to accelerate the pace at which they reduce the federal government’s deficit, restoring the primary balance by 2020. This measure will ultimately lessen the...

Axios with a report on Trump's quick remarks prior to departure for the G7 in Canada yesterday. Maybe with the arrest this week (finally!) by DOJ of the first of the criminal coup plotters against him he felt more empowered to start to finally introduce his policy changes wrt to Russia at this point...This is interesting here (TRIGGER the libertarians): "Russia should be in the meeting... You know whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to...

Sundance's take on the first day from TLR: Apparently the six-against-one plan was considered unfair to the six, so they added two more.  Unfortunately for Canada, France, Germany and the U.K., Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte are not foolish enough to take on Godzilla. As an entirely predictable outcome, President Trump won again.  It’s just so darned funny to watch this play out. The era of the titan is back, and deliciously the titan is an American...

It is enlightening to remember that at the Shangri-la Dialogue two years ago, Professor Xiang Lanxin, director of the Centre of One Belt and One Road Studies at the China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, described BRI as an avenue to a ‘post-Westphalian world.’ That’s where we are now. Western elites cannot but worry when central banks in China, Russia, India and Turkey actively increase their physical gold stash; when Moscow and Beijing discuss...

We live in a dangerous time when the FT promotes a form of hardline, and deeply undemocratic monetarism. It's dangerous that some on the left have bought into Positive Money's ideas. The battle for money has begun. It is essential that it is won.  Tax Research UKThe battle for money has begun Richard Murphy

US sneezes and all the USD zombies catch pneumonia.No JPY rally until (at least) they sync policy back up with the US on rates and  asset purchases by their CB (btw same with the EZ).Until then their firms will continue to try to make up for their shitty domestic business conditions by reducing the terms of their foreign business and continue to cause JPY weakness for their multinational depositories trying to finance the trade.This stupidity has got to end sometime... even if by luck....

First scalp is (finally!) taken:A longtime US Senate staffer was arrested on charges of lying to federal agents as part of an investigation related to unauthorized disclosure of information, according to a federal indictment https://t.co/ELncyMAsdN pic.twitter.com/2t1j8fTJ19— CNN (@CNN) June 8, 2018 The US Attorney bringing the wood: Who is the D.C US Attorney? Jessie K. Liu*Who worked on the Trump transition team* before being nominated by Trump to be US attorney in 2017Time to flip...

Deciphering the political terms of a senior State Department official, we can conclude that Europe must remain in the zone of influence of Washington at any cost, Turkey will also be under serious pressure for its attempts to pursue independent policy and criticizing Israel. It is possible that the next steps of Washington will lead to aggravation of the situation in Afghanistan. Together, all this suggests that the unipolar world and globalization have failed, the United States has failed...