Mike Norman Economics

Robert Kuttner reviews Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left by Gareth Dale (Columbia University Press).The New York Review of BooksThe Man from Red ViennaRobert Kuttner

As the Federal Reserve meets today to decide how to communicate its messaging on future rate hikes and balance sheet reduction, financial stability will play a key role. Yesterday, I wrote about the Bank of International Settlements new warnings on financial stability. And just this morning, I read a piece from Goldman Sachs Asset Management EMEA division head Andrew Wilson, warning that the risk of overheating was real. So let’s put some framing around this issue and ask how the Fed reacts...

The West also should not shrink from the destabilization of Mr. Putin’s regime. Imagine if a paper of record in Russia had published an editorial like that about destabilizing the US "regime." Oh, right, the head of the US "regime" is Donald Trump, and the New York Times are trying to remove him, or failing that, neuter him.The Washington Post — The Post's ViewThe West must prepare for a wounded Putin to become even more aggressiveEditorialSee alsoFred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of...

Quote by Silvia Merler/Bruegel mentioning Lars, with a shoutout to Brian Romanchuk.Lars P. Syll’s BlogThe DSGE quarrel Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo UniversityMore from LarsEconomic history — a victim of economics imperialism Empirical economics and statistical power

As with the Focus move, the decision to build the Fusion in China also signals a shift in strategy at Ford, which is responding to dwindling U.S. consumer demand for passenger cars in favor of more expensive and more profitable trucks and SUVs. Last week, Ford said it plans to relocate production of a future battery electric vehicle to Cuatitlan, Mexico in 2020 to free up capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build self-driving vehicles in 2021. Reuters Exclusive: Ford to base...

“By failing to prosecute the crime of torture in CIA custody, the U.S. is in clear violation of the Convention against Torture and is sending a dangerous message of complacency and impunity to officials in the U.S. and around the world,” [U.N. special rapporteur on torture Nil] Melzer said in the statement.… There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials in Geneva.  ReutersU.N. expert says inmate U.S. torture continues at Guantanamo Bay Tom MilesUPDATED:U.N. expert says torture...

Remember the flurry about Aleppo and its "fall" to the regime from the "moderate opposition"? Here is an eye-witness report from a journalist who was there that debunks it. Did any Western media report this?  So much for the free Western media – proving excellently their place as the second M in the MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – that is always ready to promote violence and omit or marginalise the voices of conflict understanding and peace.... TFFAleppo’s...

American history. The Establishment and its propagandists regularly insist that a structural aristocracy is a “democracy” because the latter is defined by the guarantee of certain fundamental rights (legal definition) and the holding of regular elections (procedural definition). This is, of course, a purely formal, abstract and largely negative understanding of democracy, which says nothing whatsoever about people having real, sustained power over the governing of their lives.…...

The US thinks it can "bankrupt" Russia with sanctions. Contrary to Western claims Russia in 2017 did not ‘run out of money’… What is extraordinary is not that Russia has not run out of money. It is that supposedly serious people in the West ever thought it would. The dismal truth is that no economic catastrophe in Russia is too farfetched to prevent some people in the West predicting it, whilst there is never any penalty for these people when regular as clockwork the predicted economic...

To put it another way: Sure, it’s fine to say that you “cannot reach external validity” from your sample alone. But in the meantime you still need to make decisions. We don’t throw away the entire polling industry just cos their response rates are below 10%; we work on doing better. Our samples are never perfect but we can make them closer to the population. Remember the Chestertonian principle that extreme skepticism is a form of credulity. Making assumptions is necessary. However, it is...