Mike Norman Economics

The British Labour Party is currently leading the Tories in the latest YouGov opinion polls (February 19-20, Tories 40 per cent (and declining), Labour 42 per cent (and rising). They should be further in front, given the disarray of the Conservatives as they try to negotiate within their own party something remotely acceptable about Brexit. When there is this degree of political capital available, in this case for the Labour Party, a party should use it to redefine policy agendas that have...

Everyone knows governments need to tax before they can spend. What Modern Monetary Theory presupposes is, maybe they don't. Surprisingly decent article on MMT considering the dismissive headline. Covers most of the bases.ViceThe Radical Left-Wing Theory That the Government Has Unlimited Money Tom Streithorstht Ralph Musgrave

Let’s go back to the future and create livable wage jobs again for every man or woman who needs one. There is a new economics (Modern Monetary Theory aka MMT) that has designed Job Guarantee (JG) proposals that are carefully crafted to complement the need for real, full employment when the private and public sector​s​ fail to meet the needs of our workforce. MMT economists understand that our capitalist economy must be organized for the benefit of everyone (i.e., Main Street communities,...

A new report from Bard College’s Levy Economics Institute concludes that this bold idea – cancelling all outstanding student debt – would help the entire economy and create more than a million jobs. To those who say we can’t afford to cancel this debt, the report poses a new and different question: Can we afford not to? Cancel and Grow Using widely-accepted economic tools, the report’s authors – Scott Fullwiler, Stephanie Kelton, Catherine Ruetschlin, and Marshall Steinbaum – found that...

Measuring outcomes for citizens using more than 75 metrics Iowa #1! (I am in Iowa City right now.)US News & World ReportBest States Rankings

Topic came up in yesterday's testimony by Powell... between his being chastised by dumb Democrat legislators that the US was leaving too much debt to the grandchildren...The unqualified Journo doesn't describe the technical issue correctly here: The supplemental leverage ratio, which measures capital as a percentage of assets, restricts the amount of loan-making banks can make without raising more capital. Calculation of the ratio includes the non-risk assets as well as the risk assets...

China doesn't have a good public health care system although the Chinese government is looking into it. And most Chinese don't have a Western standard of living so labour is cheaper there and is this part of the reason for its success? Maybe, but it took centuries for us to go from as rural economy to a modern industrial one (but now being industrialised) whereas China is advancing in just decades. It seems their system is greatly outsmarting our one.I wonder if  Egmont Kakarot-Handtke pure...

Can economics ever be a hard science, like physics, chemistry, or biology, or is it a soft science, like psychology or sociology as it is about human behaviour, desires, wants and wishes? Should economists just stick to just pure economics as a pure science without politics, or desires, wishes, and concentrate instead on the perfect economy?  What would the perfect economy look like, would it provide welfare to the poor, and would it see this welfare as an investment into a country's...

I thought that rising rates were supposed to be bearish????JPMorgan's profit could increase $7 billion in the coming years from rising U.S. interest rates and accelerating loan growth https://t.co/ALEGO6GU8j pic.twitter.com/yGzK1YhwG8— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) February 27, 2018 JPM current market cap is $400B with a PE of 18. So an additional $7B of earnings at 18x would imply an additional $125B or perhaps well above a 25% increase in share price. Even just a 10x would imply close to...

Not only is America full of guns where teenagers going on a rampage shoot out in schools is commonplace, men of God, those that say they love Jesus, have preached death and destruction to millions of people around the world. Billy Graham encouraged Nixon to start a war with China - in which millions of people would have died, including Americans -  and to bomb the dykes in North Korea where a million people would have died in drowning and starvation. I guess Billy Graham got inspiration...