Mike Norman Economics

Under a "free market system" platforms become the curators of content and its flow because "business decisions are best left to the private sector." However, the dynamics of this market limit competition and the tendency is toward concentration. This leaves just a few at the top in the drivers seat. Content creation and distribution are increasingly being combined as major players go vertical. The result is growing market asymmetry.  Is this an issue that should be addressed politically...

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Steve keen tweeted this. So, Steve Keen is in with us on this one, and he reads the OffGuardian too. A great guy. KVImagine Izvestia ran a headline in January 2018 titled “Rescuing Donald”, in which it proudly boasted that a group of crack Russian election-fixers had been sent over to Washington to make sure Trump beat Hillary. Does anyone imagine it would stop short of impeachment for Trump and maybe even hot war with Russia? Yet 22 years ago Time magazine ran just such a feature on how...

From collusion to blowback Dr Nafeez Ahmed is a serious scholar and not a conspiracy theorist. He once worked for the UK Guardian but he started getting too close to the truth for them. He still sometimes writes for The Independent. KV  Except -  The terrorists who rampaged across London on the night of 3 June were part of a wider extremist network closely monitored by MI5 for decades. The same network was heavily involved in recruiting Britons to fight with jihadist groups in Syria,...

I laughed my head off when I saw this. So I emailed Eugenia and begged her to subtitle this in English (press “cc” to see the English subs). Not only is this video really funny, it is blissfully politically incorrect. Just see for yourself! Truth be told, the message of this video is pretty clear: vote for Putin or brace for either Commie or Western hell. In a deeper sense it also shows how most Russians feel about Soviet or Western “values”. By the way, a lot of people in Russia...

James Montier is one of my favorite market strategists. He is really good on behavioral economics. And his work inspired one of my favorite posts here on 17th century philosophers Descartes and Spinoza. James is also very good on his macro because he understands modern money and the sectoral balances framework of the late Wynne Godley.... Credit Writedowns James Montier: The Advent of a Cynical BubbleEdward Harrison also We are going from a market protected by the Fed to one in which the...

The business model of the news media has moved away from hard reporting and toward punditry and opinion. Viewers enjoy opinion-driven content and it costs a lot less to produce than hard news. And that means the news industry has moved from factual reporting to — for all practical purposes — some form of imaginary mind reading to fill the hours. I’ll need some examples to make my point. Below I will imagine how several headline stories about President Trump could have been reported...

Bill answers the main questions about MMT and a progressive agenda to address wealth inequality. There is no need for a currency issuer to tax to obtain the funds it issues itself. The reasons that a currency issuer should tax excessive wealth is political, in that wealth conveys political power. Neoliberalism differs from classical liberalism (laissez-faire) by harnessing government to promoting the interests of capital rather than reducing government involvement in the economy as...

The new Russian underwater doomsday weapon Status-6 is a fitting symbol of the New Cold War and its senselessness. The National InterestStatus-6: What Russia Is Saying About Its 100-Megaton Nuclear Torpedo Lyle J. Goldstein | Professor of Strategy in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI.

More than two months after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced his intention to launch the world's first state-sponsored cryptocurrency to try and help Venezuela raise some badly needed foreign capital, the Petro - backed by 5 billion barrels of oil that are still waiting to be pumped out of a local oilfield - is now a reality.... To fuel demand, the government guarantees that it will accept the Petro as payment for taxes and fees. It has also said it will seek to promote the...