Mike Norman Economics

I'll break a self-imposed rule and link to the WaPo for this. The debt burdens not only the debtors but also the entire economy by dampening consumer demand. The federal government guarantees more than 90 percent of all outstanding student debt. A recent paper by Scott Fullwiler, Stephanie Kelton, Catherine Ruetschlin and Marshall Steinbaum of the Levy Economics Institute found that if the government canceled the debt it owns and bought out the remaining private creditors, it would...

There is an interesting dilemma currently emerging in Australia, which provides an excellent case study on how governments can use fiscal policy effectively and the problems that are likely to arise in that application. At present, the Australian states are engaging in an infrastructure building boom with several large (mostly public sector) projects underway involving improvements to road, ports, water supply, railways, airports and more. I travel a lot and in each of the major cities you...

First, Ernest asserts that “the nature of pure of mathematics itself leads to styles of thinking that can be damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues,” since math facilitates “detached” and “calculative” reasoning.... Second, he argues that the “applications of mathematics in society can be deleterious to our humanity unless very carefully monitored and checked,” worrying particularly about how math facilitates transactions of money and finance....Finally, Ernest...

Sticking the dagger in and twisting it.CounterpunchConfession of a Putin-Nazi DenialistCJ Hopkins, author and playwright

General Electric Co. (GE) will be unceremoniously sacked from the Dow Jones Industrial Average on June 26, it was announced yesterday by the S&P Dow Jones Indices folks. GE was one of the original 12 companies in the index when it was created in 1896. The Dow now consists of 30 companies and GE has been in the index continuously since 1907. Curiously, GE – an industrial giant that makes highly sophisticated commercial jet engines for Boeing and turbines for power plants among numerous...

Abstract J M Keynes carefully read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) before he was 28. Of extreme importance to Keynes was Smith’s categorization of a group of upper income class citizens, whose speculative and financial interactions with the private banking industry created a very severe danger to the society as a whole, as being projectors, imprudent risk takers, and prodigals. Keynes’s description of Smith’s projectors, imprudent risk takers, and prodigals in the General Theory,...

Modeling economic forces, power relations, and stock-flow consistency:a general constrained dynamics approachby Oliver Richters and Erhard Gloetzl Abstract: In monetary Stock-Flow Consistent (SFC) models, accountingidentities reduce the number of behavioral functions to avoid anoverdetermined system of equations. We relax this restriction using adifferential algebraic equation framework of constrained dynamics.Agents exert forces on the variables according to their desire, forinstance to...

Russia draws a red line for the new US "Space Force" that the President established to ensure US dominance of space. Escalation.Another treaty about to bite the dust? (Outer Space Treaty of 1967.)RT‘Way to disaster’: Moscow warns US against deploying WMDs in space, threatens with ‘tough response’

It's not so much that the US is "agreement incapable" as that the US has no intention of keeping its agreements, as the historical record shows. They are just a matter of temporary convenience subject to overall national policy, strategy and tactics. Pear relates a sad story that starts with treaties with Native Americans, leading to the expression, "White man speaks with forked tongue."Naked CapitalismWhy North Korea Can Never Trust the U.S. David William PearSee alsoMedium It’s Time To...

Canada has endorsed US trade warfare against China, Russia, the European Union states, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, but registers its dismay when the Trump Administration refuses to give Ottawa an indemnity pass so that it can benefit from the damage inflicted on the others. Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has accepted a “Diplomat of the Year Award” from Foreign Policy Magazine, a subsidiary of the Washington Post and the Jeffrey Bezos media conglomerate which is sworn to topple...