Mike Norman Economics

How it worked, why it failed and how MMT Job Guarantee proposals avoid those problems Modern Money MattersThe UK’s Unofficial Job GuaranteeNeil Wilson

Many mainstream economists have the idea that because heterodox people — like yours truly — often criticize the application of mathematics in economics, we are critical of math per se. This is totally unfounded and ridiculous. I do not know how many times I have been asked to answer this straw-man objection to heterodox economics.... There is another issue in the use of math with respect to economics. That is translating what a model says and implies for policy formulation.For example, do...

Banking sausage still grinding... slowly. The ABA focused on pushing the bill through the House during its Washington, D.C., summit last week. The group’s leaders rallied more than 1,000 bankers to visit Capitol Hill in support of the measure before it could be swallowed by political dysfunction.  “I can’t tell you exactly where the next step is, but it will be soon, and very soon, that this legislation will be moving forward,” said James Ballentine, ABA executive vice...

The UK is facing a binary choice between a deep trading relationship with the EU or the US, according to a report from MPs on the International Trade Committee (ITC). Efforts to drop regulations in a bid to land a quick Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US could result in the erection of fresh trade barriers between the UK and the EU, the report claimed.… Detailed report. Longish.The TelegraphUK faces 'binary choice' of EU or US trade, MPs warn Anna Issac | Economics Correspondent

The news is not the news. What you are seeing on the tube on the nets is not necessarily the truth. That's a shocker, huh? Today's propaganda blitz came courtesy of Israel's Bibi Netanyahu. In a carefully staged managed presentation, Bibi one upped Colin Powell's lamentable lie fest before the UN Security Council in January 2003. While Powell's mission back then was to get the world in line for an unprovoked, illegal attack on Iraq using the false guise of weapon's of mass destruction,...

Another good one on foundations of science and economics, specifically macroeconomics — if you are into this sort of thing. These papers also fail to make any empirical predictions or really engage with data at all. I get the impression that people aren't actually interested in making predictions or an actual scientific approach to macro- or micro-economics, but rather in simply using science as a rhetorical device.... Information Transfer EconomicsThe ability to predictJason Smith

Disappointing. David Dayen surely knows that as currency issuer the federal government faces no limitation on the amount of currency it can issue, but he doesn't mention it.The InterceptWhether America Can Afford a Job Guarantee Program Is Not Up for Debate David DayenSee also With Senator Bernie Sanders in the forefront, some Democratic members of Congress are planning a bill to guarantee jobs that pay $15 per hour, not including mandatory benefits packages, for all Americans. Legislative...

War drums beating or only war clouds gathering? My opinion remains that Kiev will attack not when it decides that the time is ripe for an offensive, but when the West gives the command. Putting pressure on Putin?Fort RussUkraine Moves Heavy Forces up to Donbass Frontline: Is War Around the Corner?Eduard Popov, translated byJafe Arnold The Ukrainian president also said that “a military operation to protect territorial integrity will be completed only when the last piece of Ukrainian land,...

In 1978, the Australian social scientist, Alex Carey, pointed out that the twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: “the growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” In order to defend their business interests against the forces of democracy, the corporations that now dominate much of the domestic and global economies recognize the...

I don’t think it’s in the long term interests of the United States to enter a sort of arms race in this area. Because I think that’s going to produce a frightening kind of dystopian world. We have a lot of choices about the future that we can create. And unfortunately, I think intellectual property, the privatization of science, an arms raced mentality when it comes to the use of science, is going to produce the sort of sci-fi future that none of us really want, a kind of dark, dystopian...