Mike Norman Economics

Deconstructing the aggregates. The gap resulted mainly from differences in statistical approaches, such as whether or not to include transit trade in the calculations, according to Zhang Monan, researcher with China Center for International Economic Exchanges. Such discrepancies have inflated the U.S. calculation of its trade deficit with China by about 20 percent every year, according to Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan. The United States is home to many multinational companies that...

You cannot pay taxes until the game distributes the money first.

A set of conditions will keep it going.

The state is the form a human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical violence within a given territory. --- Max Weber, "Politics as Vocation," (33), translated Rodney Livingstone. In context, Weber claims that the monopoly is a consequence of a historical process in which intermediary powers and institutions lose their capability for independent use of physical violence. He leaves it a bit ambiguous if it is appropriate to call earlier...

The politician hoping to be Italy’s next prime minister blasted the decision to expel Russian diplomats from the country. A fellow coalition member criticized the outgoing government for “serving the will of foreign states.”  RTAct of enslaved govt: Center-right coalition to take power in Italy slams Russian diplomat expulsion

I have a lot more links, especially on financial markets. And I probably will add a few later. But I want to get this post out. So I am going to stop here for now. Credit Writedowns Links: De-dollarization, top down US policy and the new Cold War Edward HarrisonSee also Two European elections – in Germany on 24 September 2017 and Italy on 4 March 2018 – warn that the peoples of Europe are drifting apart. Much of the recent deepening of these divisions can be traced to Europe’s single...

In a new paper, French political economist Thomas Piketty, author of the bestselling 2013 book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," argues that Western political parties on the right and left have both become parties of the "elites." Yet the 65-page paper from the notoriously punctilious economist — titled "Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right: Rising Inequality & the Changing Structure of Political Conflict" — is more surprising for the lessons it has for the political left in the...

The U.S. government could commit to full employment by offering any willing and able person a job in public service. But should it? Known as a job guarantee, the once heterodox idea went mainstream last year with the endorsement of the Center for American Progress. While the specifics of any particular plan vary, CAP proposes “a large-scale, permanent program of public employment and infrastructure investment—similar to the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression but...

As Black Knight writes, it looks at the – quite dramatic – effect the mortgage rate rise has had on the population of borrowers who could both likely qualify for and have interest rate incentive to refinance. It finds that the number of potential refinance candidates has tumbled to the lowest since December 2008.... To be sure, it is hardly a shock that after a decade of record low rates, the current rise in rates means a collapse in refi activity: after all anyone who could, and would,...

This is not a joke.Zero HedgeUS Demands China Keep Importing American Garbage Tyler Durden