Mike Norman Economics

Most still clueless? Bruegel Did Economics Fail? Sylvia Mercler See also I haven't read Phil's book yet but it looks interesting. He explored a lot of the issues at his blog, Fixing the Economists, which has been inactive for some time. The Reformation in Economics is a book written by the Irish economist Philip Pilkington. It is a book that aims to deconstruct contemporary neoclassical economic theory in order to determine to what extent it is scientific and to what extent it is...

Does anyone really need any additional evidence of the lopsided nature of the current recovery? Employers certainly don’t. They’re managing to hire additional workers, thus lowering the unemployment rate. But they don’t have to pay the workers they hire much more than they were getting before, with wages barely staying ahead of the rate of inflation. As a result, corporate profits continue to grow. Clearly, what we’re seeing remains a one-sided recovery: employers are getting ahead—and...

China’s rise is both unambiguous and unstoppable, whether the West likes it or not. Refusing to acknowledge reality will only generate more tension – and more risk, because failing to accommodate China will destabilize the rules-based order on which the world has come to rely.… The handwriting is on the wall, but in Chinese characters that few in the West seem to be able to read. Uh oh. Collision course.This post can be read as advice to the liberal West, or as a warning — or both.Project...

On May 4, 2018, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – April 2018 – which showed that total non-farm employment from the payroll survey rose by just 164,000 in April, which was an improvement on the very modest rise in March. The Labour Force Survey data, however, showed that employment only rose by 3 thousand) in April 2018 but was accompanied by a substantial fall in the labour force (236 thousand) which meant that...

"In general, our key task for the next few years is a significant raise of the citizens' real income. And there is a good foundation for that now. The economy has grown more stable, it has handled the sharp fall of oil prices, attempts to put pressure via sanctions, the changes of the global political settings," the president said, as quoted in the press release of the Kremlin, issued Monday. Sputnik International Putin Names Key Task for Russian Government in Coming Years

Most US citizens don't realize it, but the US government has continued and even intensified its regime change agenda in Latin America and successfully helped reverse the so-called "pink tide" of left-of-center governments over the past ten years, says CEPR's Mark Weisbrot.... TRNNUS Interventions in Latin America Continue and Intensify Greg Wilpert interviews Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

India has for more than a decade had a rural jobs guarantee program in place, for unskilled workers. If India can succeed in designing and implementing such a policy, why can’t the US? Economist Jayati Ghosh wrote this assessment of The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (MGNREGA) in The Guardian in 2015: Naked CapitalismWhat India Can Teach the US About a Federal Job GuaranteeJerri-Lynn Scofield

One video is by Bill Mitchell, another is by Steve Keen, and another by Immanuel Wallerstein.Naked KeynesianismOn the Blogs -- The Video EditionMatias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

I think Alexander Beunder attacks the wrong target — rationality. The foundational assumption of homo economics is methodological individualism based on a hidden assumption of ontological individualism, which is characteristic of many forms of liberalism as a philosophical position. The major opposing view is that of Aristotle, that humans are social animals. Thus, the key conceptual distinction is between homo economicus and homo socialis. The basic assumption of homo socialis is that...

Mike sent this chart out to his subscribers this week; bringing attention to a recent acceleration in the rate at which the Fed seems to be reducing Reserve Balances: This would seem to be confirmed by the statements of the Fed's Quarles on Friday here: The figure illustrates that the Fed's securities holdings are projected to decline about $400 billion this year and another $460 billion next year as Treasury and agency securities continue to roll off gradually from the Fed's portfolio....