Mike Norman Economics

The latest in Catholic social teaching.  Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter Rerum novarum*, which advocated economic distributism while criticizing both socialism and capitalism (though not market economics per se). Its roots can be traced to the writings of Catholic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo, and is also derived from concepts present in the Bible and the cultures of the ancient Near East.— Wikipedia  While not well-known in economic circles, Catholic...

Ratcheting up economic warfare. The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on four Venezuelans and three Florida-based companies under a program meant to pressure Caracas over what the United States sees as its heavy-handed tactics to suppress political opposition.... ReutersU.S. targets four individuals, three companies in Venezuela sanctions move

The art of the deal, when practiced for 2,500 years, does lead to the palace of wisdom. I had hardly set foot in Tehran when a diplomat broke the news: “Trump? We’re not worried. He’s a bazaari (merchant trader)” – implying a political compromise will eventually be reached. Asia TimesThe other art of the deal, Tehran-style Pepe Escobar

Everything I said would happen, happened.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, speaking at a policy forum here Tuesday, identified a singular roadblock to achieving success on a host of progressive policies — and it wasn’t the Trump administration. It’s American oligarchy. Bingo! USA TODAYSen. Bernie Sanders says this one issue keeps progressive policies from advancing Nicole Gaudiano, USA TODAY

In my macro critique, I mentioned "meta-narratives" — what did I mean by that? Noah Smith has a nice concise description of one of them today in Bloomberg that helps illustrate what I mean: the wage-price spiral. The narrative of the 1960s and 70s was that the government fiscal and monetary policy started pushing unemployment below the "Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment" (NAIRU), causing inflation to explode. The meta-narrative is the wage-price spiral: unemployment that is...

The ever-vigilant Craig Murray catches out "Philip Cross." And exposes how how fake news is insidiously created on Wikipedia and why you need to be aware when you use it that it is not an objective source by any means.This doesn't mean that Wikipedia is worthless or a waste of time consulting. Rather, it is subject to manipulation and controversial areas and subjects are likely to be infected.But you probably knew that already.Craig Murray BlogThe Philip Cross AffairCraig Murray, formerly...

Another false flag? Fits the pattern.Moon of AlabamaSyria - Inconsistent, Incomplete And Implausible - The OPCW Report On Saraqib Is Another Disgrace

Forget the Deep State. There's talk of a military coup in the case of  a leftist leader being elected. No, we are not talking about Venezuela. Rather Britain.This is not a joke either. It's actually being floated seriously. This is the way that the unthinkable gets normalized. It's a tactic. Written by Paul Carter for the de facto house organ of the Conservative Party, the article makes clear that discussions on such a course of action in the event of a Labour victory under Corbyn are...

“The really fascinating battles in intellectual history tend to occur when some group or movement goes on the offensive and asserts that Something Big really doesn’t actually exist.”So says Philip Morowski in his book ‘Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown’. As Mirowski argues, neoliberalism is a particularly fascinating case in point. Just as Thatcher asserted there was ‘no such thing as society’, it’s common to find economics...