Mike Norman Economics

Economists often point out that, when spending and output growth in the private sector is moving really fast either up or down, the government can offset this. This fiscal offset can act as a stabilizing force in that it prevents the economy from overheating when private sector growth is running hot, It can also prevent a depression when private sector spending and output is collapsing. But sometimes, governments choose to mimic the private sector and amplify the trend in the economy. This...

One of Bill's best titles. Maybe "unicorns" would be better than ponies though. It's fantasy all the way with them. Last week (February 8, 2018), we witnessed the US Senate spectacle with Rand Paul embarrassing himself with his lack of economic knowledge but also embarrassing both major parties – the Republicans for their gross hypocrisy and the Democrats for their gross idiocy. The – Congressional Record – of Paul’s speech (starting S817) is a classic. Also, last week, the stables were...

George Monbiot was wrong, so I sent an email to him with a link to this Jimmy Dore video pointing this out. [embedded content]

Privatized and politicized intelligence is undermining the mission of providing unbiased information to both high-level decision makers and the American public, explains George Eliason in this first of a three-part series.… This three-part article series is a top-down look at the deep state. Its purpose isn’t to identify every company and every player. Instead, this lead-in is a primer showing the layout of the land at the highest levels and why things have gone so very wrong inside the...

Professor Paul Verhaeghe says how we are competitive creatures but also cooperative creatures. Think of a football team where group effort and cooperation wins the game, but everyone would love to be the person who gets the goals. In neoliberalism, says Paul Verhaeghe, the coopperatrive bit has been left out with only the competitive bit left in.have a look at the embedded video and about ten minutes in you will see  an experiment with monkeys where for completing a task one gets a grape ant...

I think this is quite important. A young millennial named Bernie talks about the rift between Cenk Uygur, of the The Young Turks, and Jimmy Dore over Russiagate. Cenk Uygur was debating this with Kyle Kulinski  of the The Majority Report and Kyle takes the view of Tom Hickey and myself here about Russiagate, that the Russians did not hack the US election. In the end Cenk agreed with Kyle but added that as Trump as done many businesses deals with Russian oligarchs and that some of these...

RICHARD PENDLEBURY, who spent weeks on the frontline, investigates why ARE so many of our heroes committing suicide? But successful suicides are only the tip of the iceberg as many other soldiers would have attempted suicide. How do the ruling elite get away with their wars? KVDaily Mail-In one year at the height of the Afghan war, more British soldiers took their own lives than were killed by the Taliban

Moving where the market is.Gives import substitution new meaning.Sputnik InternationalFrench Farmer Makes Fresh Start in Diary Production in Russian Village

More than a century ago, the effective operation of the public economy was a significant, active concern of economists. With the insurgence of market-centrism and rational choice economics, however, government was devalued, its role circumscribed and seen from a perspective of “market failure.” As Backhouse (2005) has shown, the transformation in economic thinking in the latter half of the 20th century led to a “radical shift” in worldview regarding the role of the state. The very idea of a...

The first half of the twentieth century was a challenging time for economics. The Great Depression wiped out incomes, investments, and most importantly, optimism. But when the traditional laissez-faire approach proved ineffective, the work of Keynes and FDR showed that there was another way. The New Deal employed American workers directly and restored confidence among business owners. Today, we could benefit from a similar program. It’s time for a new New Deal, or a Job Guarantee Program,...