Mike Norman Economics

This is isn't capitalism, this is crime; it's like a protection racket. The military-industrial complex invents enemies to scam the tax payer into buying more weapons. Unlike corporations that sell to consumers, Lockheed Martin and the other top contractors to the US Government are highly if not totally dependent upon sales to governments, for their profits, especially sales to their own government, which they control — they control their home market, which is the US Government, and they use...

I hate to obsess over the Resistance’s obsession with this whole Russia thing, but: This week brought (1) a fresh reminder that Russia is far from the only country whose influence on American politics bears watching; and (2) a reminder of the (as economists say) “opportunity cost” of spending so much time watching Russia. On Wednesday the New York Times reported that the United Arab Emirates had steered $200 million to a Republican National Committee official, apparently in an attempt to...

Good one. Worth a full read. Social EuropeIs The US Hypocritical To Criticize Russian Election Meddling? Thomas Palley | Founder of Economics for Democratic & Open Societies

As of this writing, #StormyDanielsDay is the top US trend on Twitter. I don’t know what #StormyDanielsDay is. I don’t care what #StormyDanielsDay is. Neither should you. Neither should anyone else. Please stop this shit, America. If the US war machine goes after Iran or Russia it will likely mean a world war against multiple nuclear-armed countries, which could very easily send our species the way of the dinosaurs should a nuke get deployed in the fog of war. We don’t have time to focus on...

For decades, an increasingly loud chorus has claimed that economic inequality is primarily driven by class, with other possible reasons for disparities, such as race, playing a lesser role. They say that it is counterproductive to focus on inequality between races—instead, it is better to consider the inequality between all of America’s poor and its increasingly rich elite. A new study (pdf) by economists at Stanford, Harvard, and the US Census Bureau seems to refute that idea. The paper,...

Makroskop is a relatively new media publication in Germany edited by Heiner Flassbeck and Paul Steinhardt. It brings some of the ideas from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and other analysis to German-language readers. It is not entirely sympathetic to MMT, differing on the importance of exchange rates. But it is mostly sympathetic. I declined to be a regular contributor when invited at the time they were starting the publication not because I objected to their mission (which I laud) but...

Thread makes the case that Trump planned on doing the wall via the military all along... got everything he wanted for the military and then some in the Omnibus passed this week..We'll see... if he starts the wall as a Defense Dept initiative then probably a correct assessment...1. Interesting how Trump's tweets make so much more sense in hindsight. This from March 21 reveals what was on his mind with the Omnibus Bill: https://t.co/VLtTFkvCoK— Vachel Lindsay (@_VachelLindsay_) March 25,...

1.  Bank "stress test" results are due by April 5th meanwhile they have recently had to take a $30B-$40B (major) markdown of certain financial assets in response to the Jan. 1 tax reform law;and2.  Impending House approval of S.2155 the bank reform bill which will change the way (in banks favor) depository banks currently have to maintain regulatory capital against risk-free central bank deposits;and3.  First quarter earnings results start to come in along with (hopefully) some official...

This article is the second part (of a planned trilogy) of articles on the accounting issues within Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models. I have deliberately chosen one of the simplest DSGE models I could find, a deterministic (non-random) Ramsey model from the text Recursive Macroeconomic Theory by Lars Ljungqvist and Thomas J. Sargent. I have the third edition; the text is referred to as [LS2012] herein. My previous article, "The Curious Profit Accounting of DSGE Models,"...

More winning!  #MAGA(Can it get any better???? Really... can it????) SCHUMER CELEBRATES OMNIBUS BILL:‘ERA OF AUSTERITY’ COMING ‘TO AN END’?https://t.co/lyuT9gYtjb#MakeSchumerHappyAgain@THETXEMBASSY @DrSueDVM @jstines3 pic.twitter.com/a8PebtY1ga — CFJ ?? #DefundSanctuaryCities ?? #NoMore? (@_CFJ_) March 22, 2018