Mike Norman Economics

MMT in Germany. Tonight at 6PM I will give a lecture with the title Modern Money Theory and European Macroeconomics – an Alternative to the Policy of Austerity?. It takes place at room S27 at Von-Melle-Park 9, Hamburg University. The lecture is part of a series organized by AK Plurale Ökonomik Hamburg and will be held in English. More information is available here. econoblog 101Lecture tonight at Hamburg UniversityDirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin

The German Contra Magazin called on NATO to understand that a war against Russia is "suicide". Readers of the publication noted that Germany remembers this especially well....In NATO, there are forces that are convinced of the correctness of a "military solution" of confrontation with Russia. However, anyone who attacks the Russians "actually commits suicide" because of the strength of Russian weapons and Moscow's readiness to use them in case of a threat to its security. An author of...

Another case in which investigators fail to ask the right questions. Dances with BearsThe CIA Bull In Glenn Simpson’s Russia ShopJohn Helmer

Short overview of New York Magazine's take on Greenwald on Trumpgate and Russiagate.  The whole article at New York is worth a read. Example. Greenwald is no longer invited on MSNBC, and he’s portrayed in the Twitter fever swamp as a leading villain of the self-styled Resistance. “I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he says. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually...

The UK Guardian Editorial ran a sub-header yesterday (January 21, 2018) “Democracies will fall under the spell of populists like Donald Trump if they fail to deal with the fallout of globalisation?”, which I thought reflected the misunderstandings that so-called progressive have about ‘globalisation’ and its impacts on the capacities of the sovereign state. The UK Guardian Editorial was responding to the release of the latest Oxfam report (released January 16, 2018) – An Economy for the...

Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest 1%, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday. As global political and business leaders gather for this week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity’s report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor.... “The economic model is not working at all,” Oxfam report co-author, Iñigo...

The dog ate my homework. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost about five months worth of text messages between two staffers who worked on probes into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails and possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to a Republican lawmaker.Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, revealed in a Jan. 20 letter that the FBI’s technical system failed to...

Chinese engineering has become so advanced that German jet engines could soon get a major boost from China. Officials in China have begun talks to sell sophisticated aerospace technology and manufacturing equipment to Germany for the production of high-performance jet engines.... Discussions for the sale are still in the early stages, but even the possibility of an agreement with Germany, which created the world’s first production-ready jet engine and has long been revered for its design...

So I've never really understood Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). In some sense, I can understand it as a counter to the damaging "household budget" and "hard money" views of government finances. To me, it still cedes the equally damaging "money is all-important" message of monetarism and so-called Austrian school that manifests even today when a "very serious person" tells you it's really the Fed, not Congress or the President that controls the path of the economy and inflation when neither...

The record of economic sanctions in forcing political change is dismal, but as a way of reducing a country to poverty and misery it is difficult to beat. UN sanctions were imposed against Iraq from 1990 until 2003. Supposedly, it was directed against Saddam Hussein and his regime, though it did nothing to dislodge or weaken them: on the contrary, the Baathist political elite took advantage of the scarcity of various items to enrich themselves by becoming the sole suppliers.… There is...