Mike Norman Economics

US President Donald Trump said he will meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the not too distant future to discuss an arms race that Trump called “out of control.” He also congratulated Putin on his election victory. Further details to follow. That's all RT says. KV

More pieces being moved on the grand chess board.SalonBehind this week’s Russia headlines: A mystery, a leap to conclusions and a fateful turn Patrick Lawrence | Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Salon

Policymakers have helped to perpetuate an economic model that is ultimately unsustainable. The article is based on Bill Mitchell's analysis of US unemployment.AlterNetThe Fed Is on the Verge of Making a Major Policy ErrorMarshall Auerback / AlterNet

A majority of the American public believe that the U.S. government engages in widespread monitoring of its own citizens and worry that the U.S. government could be invading their own privacy. The Monmouth University Poll also finds a large bipartisan majority who feel that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a “Deep State” of unelected government officials. Americans of color on the center and left and NRA members on the right are among those most worried about the reach of...

I am generally not in favour of trade protection. I grew up in a country that had very extensive protection (tariffs, import quotas) on manufacturing goods, which was justified on a number of grounds – capacity to shift to defense industries; stable employment; and more abstractly, an expression of becoming a ‘modern’ nation, leaving our agrarian roots behind. The initial move to impose high tariffs was that a young industry would take time to develop – the so-called infant industry...

Hyman Minsky’s financial theory of investment rests on a bifurcation of an economy’s price systems. On the one hand, there’s the price system for goods and services. And inflation here is what central banks look to hold in check. But at the same time, there is a wholly separate price system for assets. And it’s here where stability leads to asset price inflation, a build up in debt, instability, and, eventually, crisis. Economics professor Randall Wray is a real Minsky scholar. He studied...

PPP rather than GDP. Purchasing power parity calculations of GDP attempt to measure all the goods and services produced by a country with a common set of prices. This means we add up all the cars, tables, haircuts, knee surgeries etc. produced in both the U.S. and China, and assume that each item costs the same in both countries. According to the projections from the I.M.F. China's GDP is already 25 percent larger by this measure and will be almost 50 percent larger by the end of the...

A young Syrian man telling the truth about Syria exposing Western lies. A really nice guy; see how easy going, friendly, and modern he is, just like most young people in the West? But his secular society is surrounded by the some of most evil people on the planet backed by even more of the most evil people on the planet, the criminals that run the US, Europe, and Israel.And what's so strange is that hardly anyone in in the West knows the truth, or that our media is Orwellian spewing out...

Richie Allen, like me, was outraged at the UK Parliament Prime Minister Questions Time where Theresa May and Boris Johnson accused Russia of the Salisbury poisoning. Richie Allen says that the British parliament is full of traitors as 80% of them are Zionists and their allegiance is to Israel, not the British people. This broadcast is only 20 minutes wrong. This is what I wrote in the comments section. To see all these lies makes me feel sick. The British public must be stupid to think...

I thought this is good. I like this guy, it's a shame that more ordinary people don't take an interest because if they did we could stop these wars. Robert Inlakesh says that Assad is not bombing his own people as our leaders and the media are saying, and that the video footage that is being shown is of Israel bombing Gaza. Robert Inlakesh has been receiving death threats.This world is far more wicked than I ever realised. I thought there was at least good guys as well as bad guys, and that...