Mike Norman Economics

Did you know that war propaganda is against international law? Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, obliges states to impose certain restrictions on freedom of speech. The article was the product of a long debate among UN members. Countries from the Soviet bloc and many non-aligned nations, notably Brazil, were keen to include a prohibition on propaganda for war, and also to make it as...

I viewed this yesterday but I had reservations about putting it out as it seemed to be full of conspiracy theories, but after reading Philip Giraldi's article about the neocons, where he said Washington will announcing to the public on the 16th Jan the details of how to prepare for nuclear war, I decided we can't be complacent and just say this is a conspiracy theory, we have to be open minded. We need to get as many people as we can to see what's going on, then they might discover that...

An absolutely fascinating documentary about the nature of our universe. All time is here at once but that doesn't mean our future is predetermined because it is already in place. We know how the past shapes the future, but what if the future also shapes the past, and what if this reaction is occurring all the time? Also, advanced mathematical physics shows us that consciousness plays a role in bringing our universe into existence, so could it be, therefore, that consciousness -  which...

Gavin Kennedy's new book on Adam Smith setting the record straight is now available.Adam Smith's Lost Legacy An Authentic Adam Smith Gavin Kennedy | Professor Emeritus, Heriot Watt University

The cost of housing is so outrageous in California that stories that might once have seemed preposterous now seem completely unsurprising. Case in point: In a scene straight out of a dystopian movie about a ravaged future Earth, homeless people set up an encampment at a toxic Superfund industrial site in Oxnard, saying they had nowhere else to go. Media coverage of the extreme cost of housing in the Golden State has focused on how it has increased homelessness and poverty, led more people...

The rise of Bitcoin (and other crypto-currencies) appears that it will have a negative net effect for most law-abiding citizens, but it has provided us with a rather wonderful teaching opportunity. It underlines the weaknesses of existing analytical techniques. (I discussed Bitcoin in a previous article, but I used it to take a sideswipe at DSGE models, and I didn't bother giving the correct answer.) Due to article length, this article will discuss incorrect valuation techniques. Part II...

This is the third and final part of my response to an article posted by American political analyst Jared Berstein (January 7, 2018) – Questions for the MMTers. In this blog I deal with the last question that he poses to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) economists, which relates to whether currency issuing governments have to raise revenue in order to “pay for public goods” and whether prudent policy requires the cyclically-adjusted fiscal balance to be zero at full employment to ensure “social...

Neocons appearing in the mainstream media will continue to have their eyes on the ball and seek for more aggressive engagement in places like Iran and Russia. [embedded content]                                                     Tucker Takes on the Neocons Award winning journalist James Risen has recently described in some detail his sometimes painful relationship with The New York Times. His lengthy account is well worth reading as it demonstrates how successive editors of the...

Experience has shown that assuming a framework based on methodological individualism, microfoundations, and rationality based on utility leading to general equilibrium through the so-called "invisible hand" of market competition generating spontaneous natural order is not fruitful for explaining the macro scale of economic behavior and its results in terms of a general theory.Assuming that scaled up micro analysis explains macro effects risks the fallacy of composition, at the very least....

Backgrounder.Graham E. FullerIran—On the Brink?Graham E. Fuller | adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University, formerly vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, and a former senior political scientist at RAND