Mike Norman Economics

Three startups are getting ready to launch one of the most ambitious and important cryptocurrency experiments since the creation of bitcoin itself. Called Lightning, the project aims to build a fast, scalable, and cryptographically secure payment network layered on top of the existing bitcoin network. Essentially, Lightning aims to solve the big problem that has loomed over bitcoin in recent years: Satoshi Nakamoto's design for bitcoin is comically unscalable. It requires every full node...

The unfortunate fact that bank deposits are considered money has one side effect: our mysticism about money extends towards banking. The apparent ability of banks to "create money out of thin air" seems unfair, and this leads to questions about what limits their ability to lend. The answer is a lot simpler than one might suspect. For any other business (with the possible exception of the resource industry), output is largely constrained by their ability to find customers that they can sell...

Neoliberal union-busting in full swing.CounterpunchEU Imposes Anti-Union Law on GreeceWill Podmore

Taken from a short interview with Greece’s Banking News.  Q. According to the IMF, Greece’s debt isn’t manageable in the long-run without being either extended or forgiven. Where do you stand towards this claim? How important is the Greek debt relief? Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate, and the Powers of NeoliberalismGreek debt updateMichael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research...

In addition to Assange’s assertion that government secrecy has far less to do with national security than political security (a claim he has made before which seems to be proving correct time and time again), there’s the jarring question posed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie: “who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?” Whoa, Nelly. Hang on. What is he talking about? It would be understandable if you were unaware of...

After bitcoin goes to (essentially) zero (since it is global, even a few oddballs can prop up its value for years at some low level, like hobbyists do for all kinds of things), which it will, some will say that it was regulation that killed it, not, as I explain, because crypto is worthless because it is not part of a balance sheet and as such has no inherent value to extinguish debt. To be clear: That bitcoin can’t withstand being treated as any other ordinary good yet does not deserve...

Yuge $56B non-risk asset add on Thursday, big risk asset price markdown on Friday: Same thing that happened back in February 2016:$SPX -3.85% for week, worst since -5.96% first week of 2/2016, all 11 sectors dn, 463 issues dn, w/183 dn at least 5% & 25 dn at least 10%, 42 issues up, w/6 up at least 5% & 3 up at least 10%, $SPX lost $511B today, $945B for the week, up $752B YTD & $5.1T fr election— Howard Silverblatt (@hsilverb) February 2, 2018

Many of you might of not have seen this British documentary about how a local businessman set up his own bank. It's excellent and although it covers a serious topic the filmmakers have done such a good job of it that it is great entertainment too. After the 2008 crash a Lancaster businessman called Dave Fishwick, who had made millions out of selling mini-buses, decided to set up his own bank. He was disgusted by how the big banks had behaved in the lead up to the crash and also how they...

The new arms race heats up. The Trump Administration's newly-released Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) lays out plans to modernize the US nuclear triad by integrating nuclear capability on the F-35 fighter jet, deploying low-yield warheads at sea, and developing new silo-based strategic weapons, among other initiatives.… Nutty logic. The review claims a stronger US nuclear deterrent is needed to discourage Russia, China, Iran and North Korea from either developing new weapons or expanding...

The House Intelligence Committee memo on abuse of power by the Federal Bureau of Investigation appeared just after 12:00 pm Eastern time, and American political life never will be the same. The House Republicans make a persuasive if not prima facie case that senior FBI officials used a fake dossier paid for by the Democrats to get a court order for electronic surveillance of the Trump campaign. If the charge sticks, America will have a real life instance of the sort of scenario found in...