Mike Norman Economics

Crosspost of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson's op-ed in the New York Times.Russia InsiderI Helped Sell the False Choice of War Once. It’s Happening Again.Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, US Army (ret.)

Chinese banks have continued to expand rapidly both domestically and abroad. Together, they constitute the largest banking sector in the world by far. This column places the Chinese banking system in a global context. Although very small relative to their domestic claims, Chinese banks’ foreign claims are substantial for many borrower countries in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean in particular. Many of these banking connections are related to Chinese outward foreign direct investment, with...

Nearly five months after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, more than a hundred thousand US citizens there still lack clean drinking water, and almost one-third of the island has no reliable electric power. As initial life-sustaining recovery efforts still grind toward completion, Puerto Rico’s Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has wasted no time using his territory’s recovery as an opportunity to push a number of policy proposals right out of the “disaster capitalism” playbook: from privatizing the...

Debunking the persistent wages-fund and lump of labor fallacies. Thirty years after Hoyt, Leopold Amery delivered a series of lectures in which he evaluated The Fallacies of Free Trade, paying particular attention to Smith's "terminological inexactitude." Smith's concept of capital viewed the capital of a nation as merely an aggregate of individual capitals. The difference, Amery explained, was that an individual's capital "is the result of saving, and grows by saving from profits or by...

 It's on. China will soon be able to trade oil using its own currency by creating a futures market to rival the international benchmark contracts which are traded exclusively in dollars.  The China Securities Regulatory Commission confirmed its plans to begin the trade of yuan-based oil futures on the Shanghai Futures Exchange from March 26 on Friday.  China is now the world’s largest crude importer which is understood to be a large part of its drive to establish a benchmark which reflects...

Student loan debt is a crushing problem in America. Over 44 million people have such loans, with an average balance of about $30,000 — making for a total debt pile of $1.4 trillion. Unsurprisingly, people often struggle to repay these debts with their entry-level wages after graduating. Student debt is now the most common form of troubled debt, with about 11 percent of them 90 days or more delinquent. Worse still, thanks to Republicans and neoliberal Democrats alike, they are almost...

Equally patent is the fact that the traditional indicators of forward inflationary pressure (e.g. money velocity) are not quite in agreement with the measured inflation (which has exceeded the Fed target four months in a row now and has been beating analysts' expectations over the last three months). The only way the two figures can be reconciled is via increased debt levels on household balances sustaining consumption growth.… true economicsMoney Velocity and Signals of Households Leverage...

Another really interesting video which shows how the deep state works. The Dulles brothers worked for the CIA but also worked in Wall Street at their law firm, it was a revolving door. The Dulles brothers did not work alone but were part of the ruling elite who really run America. This inside group of ultra rich would make all the decisions, what counties leaders were going to be disposed of, all the coups, and every war. They run the corporations and had significant shares in the others and...

Ramanan analyzes the sleight of hand going on in the neoclassical world now regarding employment and fiscal policy.The Case for Concerted ActionTwin DeceitsV. Ramanan

If Bitcoins are indeed worthless, then financial markets should price them at zero. But the introduction of futures trading actually boosted the price in the short run. Even after recent declines, there’s no sign that prices will reach zero any time soon. On the other hand, if Bitcoins are valuable simply because people value them, then asset prices are entirely arbitrary. The same argument can be applied to any financial asset. John Quiggin's BlogBitcoin kills the efficient market...