Mike Norman Economics

The inventor of the world wide web warns over concentration of power among a few companies ‘controlling which ideas are shared’ The GuardianTim Berners-Lee: we must regulate tech firms to prevent 'weaponised' web Olivia Solon While the chattering class is obsessing over social media, the deep state is operating behind the scenes. Advanced capitalism leads to corporate statism, the symbiotic relationship between the state and capital, which is the definition of fascism. "It can't...

My new working paper, joint with Pawel Zabczyk, is out now as an NBER working paper, a CEPR discussion paper and a NIESR discussion paper. Here is the abstract:We refer to the idea that government must ‘tighten its belt’ as a necessary policy response to higher indebtedness as the household fallacy. We provide a reason to be skeptical of this claim that holds even if the economy always operates at full employment and all markets clear. Our argument rests on the fact that, in an...

The conservative-patriarchal conception of life, featuring a strong leader and state, still dominates the consciousness of the overwhelming majority of Russians - much to the chagrin of the nation’s liberals. What's the difference between American Tea Party conservatives and Russian conservatives? Many in the Tea Party distrust the state and the government but Russian conservatives like an authoritarian state where they think Putin will crack down on gay marriage and other forms of...

The Chinese National People’s Congress has voted for an amendment to the constitution that abolishes presidential term limits. The step may mean that President Xi Jinping might remain in office for life. Sputnik discussed this with Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King's College, London.... Most of the punditry on China is from people that have little actual background or access to information, so their bloviating is a combination of...

I’ve been fooling around recently with assembling a comprehensive account of sources and uses of funds for the US corporate sector from the Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts (IMA). (It’s much easier to do this with the IMAs than by combining the NIPAs with the financial accounts from the Fed.) The goal is a comprehensive account of flows of money into and out of the corporate sector, grouped in a sensible way. My goal here is not to make any specific argument, but to provide context for a...

Former CIA Officer and whistleblower Kevin Shipp says the reason for all the crime and treason at the FBI and DOJ all boils down to one thing – the Clinton's so-called “charity.” "The shocking thing about that is all the former directors of the CIA that have come out to support her, from Clapper to Brennan to Morell to Robert Gates supporting her being elected, knew about this criminal syndicate. Comey was protecting it. Lynch was protecting it. Weissmann was protecting it. And that is the...

U.S. President Donald Trump seems intent on launching a trade war. He is ignoring appeals to common sense coming from Europe and Asia, but one country stands to lose more than any other: Germany. German business is already fretting about the effects of Russian sanctions. They are viewing Trump's trade policy as a stab in the back, and no way to treat a staunch ally.Spiegel OnlineThe Trade Warrior: Donald Trump's Attack on German Prosperity Der Spiegel StaffAlsoSputnik InternationalMerkel:...

Clearly, humans are in many ways very similar – we share the same physiology and have the same basic needs, such as nourishment, safety and sexuality. So what effect can culture really have on the fundamental aspects of our psyche, such as perception, cognition and personality? Let’s take a look at the evidence so far. Experimental psychologists typically study behaviour in a small group of people, with the assumption that this can be generalised to the wider human population. If the...

Source: Emmanuel Saez, UC BerkeleyReal-World Economics Review BlogU.S. Average Household Income, 2015

Recent Pew research surveys conducted in 38 and 30 countries, respectively, across the globe suggest the following troubling trends for Washington: American hegemony is waning; Russian public diplomacy may be making some inroads in many countries, including some NATO countries, the world is increasingly split apart between the West (plus Japan) and all the rest, and the effectiveness of China’s ‘quiet rise’ economy- and trade-based foreign policy.… US soft power in decline.The major problem...