Mike Norman Economics

Iraq WMD redux. Substitute "chemical weapons" for "mushroom-shaped clouds."Oh, and did I forget MH17? The Skripal incident is now, by chance or by design, part of a much larger campaign about 'western' dominance over 'the east'. Russia, which ended the unilateral moment of U.S. nuclear primacy, is currently the main target. The situation is extremely dangerous as any further escalation, in the Middle East, the Ukraine ore elsewhere, might lead to a war between nuclear armed powers. The...

Dollars & SenseNew Issue! Plus: Regional economic disparities and Hillary Clinton’s Unfortunate RemarksIncidentally, Stephanie Kelton announced on Twitter that she has a book deal and is also joining Bloomberg View as a columnist.

Good list. Anyone have suggestions to improve upon it, or a different list?I would include Abba Lerner and, of course, at least one MMT book.I would change the Galbraith entry to The Good Society.I would drop Paul Sweezy and replace his entry with Fred Moseley's Money and TotalityA Macro-Monetary Interpretation of Marx’s Logic in Capital and the End of the ‘Transformation Problem’.Lars P. Syll’s BlogTop 20 heterodox economics booksLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Imagine an investigation for attempted homicide by gunshot without the gun, bullet, ballistics match, fingerprints, powder burns, witnesses, shooter, intention, motive. You can’t imagine? Neither could the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian. The kicker. May’s version of the Skripal case is accepted by a significant majority of British voters polled this week, according to this report. May has also gained significantly in voter approval compared to Jeremy Corbyn, the Labor leader,...

On MSNBC’s “All In” on March 13, I discussed how the removal of Rex Tillerson from the position of secretary of state was the final triumph of largely Republican efforts—but with complicit Democrats as well—to consolidate the making of foreign and security policy exclusively in the White House. Since the 1947 National Security Act, there has been institutional momentum for this shift. It is important to be aware of this institutional momentum because to reverse the shift will require much...

Theresa May is lying.  I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve gas as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation “of a type developed by Russia” after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly researching, in the “Novichok” programme a...

Overseas, the United States is engaged in real wars in which bombs are dropped, missiles are launched, and people (generally not Americans) are killed, wounded, uprooted, and displaced. Yet here at home, there’s nothing real about those wars. Here, it’s phony war all the way. In the last 17 years of “forever war,” this nation hasn’t for one second been mobilized. Taxes are being cut instead of raised. Wartime rationing is a faint memory from the World War II era. No one is being required...

DURING THE NUREMBERG TRIALS after World War II, several Nazis, including top German generals Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel, claimed they were not guilty of the tribunal’s charges because they had been acting at the directive of their superiors.Ever since, this justification has been popularly known as the “Nuremberg defense,” in which the accused states they were “only following orders.” The Nuremberg judges rejected the Nuremberg defense, and both Jodl and Keitel were hanged. The United...

Not just about the impending Russian election. It's a brief summary of most of what's important going on in Russia, none of which the Western media will touch.Asia TimesIt’s all Putin’s fault… but still he wins Pepe Escobar

Stripping a phemenon of its social context, normalizing a base rate to 50%, and seeking an on-off decision: all of these can give the feel of scientific objectivity—but the very steps taken to ensure objectivity can remove social context and relevance. Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social ScienceGaydar and the fallacy of objective measurementAndrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University