Mike Norman Economics

Russian aluminum giant Rusal has activated a contingency plan asking customers to pay in euros instead of dollars to try to skirt round U.S. sanctions, a source close to the matter said. De-dollarization. ReutersExclusive: Rusal triggers Iran-style defense after U.S. sanctions - source Dmitry Zhdannikov, Pratima Desai

The American Conservative is quite good. It even has an article today criticising the privatisation of veteran health care, which is another racket.  KV The president will very likely order an illegal attack on another government in the coming days. Trump has no authority to order an attack on the Syrian government, which has not attacked the U.S. and doesn’t pose any threat to America or its allies. There is no international mandate for military action against Syria, and there is no vital...

... even before the US Treasury announced its newest sanctions against Russian individuals and their companies for “malign activity around the globe”, ... President-elect Vladimir Putin was preparing a successor cabinet of ministers on the principle that they would be organized as a headquarters staff for fighting a war on all fronts, without the option of negotiating terms with the enemy. The impact of the US sanctions, along with the campaign of the British Government in the Skripal...

Dani Rodrik has a nice interview to ProMarket, the blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Rodrik’s views are dissenting but within the conventional DC wisdom/New Consensus. For example, he said as recently as last year that free trade is fine as long as losers as compensated, which is far from accurate, as free trade leads to loser regions as well. Still he has better views than neoliberals. In this interview Rodrik is asked about the...

Zuckerberg’s auto-da-fé before the Congressional inquisition is designed to send a message to his tech industry colleagues, as well as provide official cover for the future enforcement of draconian rules against deviants from the official script. “Misuse of social media!” cry the new Inquisitors. But who decides what constitutes “misuse”? Isn’t that what the First Amendment is all about?…. The suppression of free speech in the US and the rest of the “capitalist democracies” (a glorious...

Professor Thomas Palley has once again launched a critique of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in "Modern Money Theory (MMT) vs. Structural Keynesianism." One could argue that there are some useful nuggets in his argument, but they are arguably behind the times. His critique is of how he perceives MMT -- which has only a limited relationship to MMT as it exists now. I probably should have ignored his article, but too many people have discussed it, and so I do not want to leave the impression...

[embedded content] Despite no conclusive evidence, the US has declared a 24-48 hour window to attack Syria. If only this could be seen on mainstream TV. I still can't believe this is happening, the whole of the MSM lying, all lock-stepped together like an army goosestepping with their faces fixed, hard turned towards their leaders. No dissent. KV

Inflation, markets, all as I said, but it may all be irrelevant if we attack Syria.

The corporate media is silent because if people knew what was going on there would be a revolution. KV PCR There is no longer any doubt that the criminally insane government in Washington is driving the world to the last war. https://www.rt.com/news/423634-unsc-security-threats-syria-chemical/ https://www.rt.com/news/423627-russian-military-checks-chemical-douma/ UPDATE: As Americans we must face the possibility that we have a criminally insane government in Washington that is...

These guys are maniacs. They don't care about decency, human rights, fellow Americans, the American society, they don't care how many millions of people they kill, all they are interested in is the control of the World's resources and World domination. They are monsters and out and out evil! Will the public ever wake up?  It was the first time in history that the head of a major international organization was removed during his/her term of office. There is much controversy surrounding the...