Mike Norman Economics

[embedded content] This video might not work in your country. On my first attempt YouTube said it was not available in my country, so I did another search and it said the same thing, then suddenly it shot up on my screen. It's very good. Bill Binney resigned from the NSA in October 2001, after 30 years with the agency where he was viewed as one of their best analysts: he quit because he believed that Bush-appointed leaders in the Agency had chosen to respond to the challenge of electronic...

Andre Vltchek describes how the 1965 military/ Islamic coup in Indonesia wiped all traces of socialism replacing it instead with Western backed unbridled capitalism which has led to massive exploitation of the Indonesian people and their land. This once very beautiful country is now reduced to endless open mines, open sewers, masssive poverty, enormous pollution, where the extractive industries are run by local crooks and the Western elite. The Western media paints Indonesia as a thriving...

I always thought that it was probably a conspiracy theory that the CIA supported the Kosovo Liberation Army and started the war in Yugoslavia but I looked it up today and in Wikipedia it was all there, the drug trafficking, human body parts for transplants trafficking, organised crime running the KLA, and the involvement of BND, the German Secret Service, which is just an arm of the CIA because Germany is a vassal state of the US.  The Guardian - Peter Beaumont, Ed Vulliamy and Paul Beaver...

It's getting cold in Iowa so we are headed southwest. Expect intermittent posting through the holidays. Things are usually relatively quiet from now through the new year anyway.Wishing happy holidays to all.

The other day, Rethinking Economics and the New Weather Institute published "33 theses" and metaphorically nailed them to the doors of the London School of Economics. They're re-published here. I think the "Protestant Reformation" metaphor they're going for is definitely appropriate: they're aiming to replace "neoclassical economics" — the Roman Catholic dogma in this metaphor — with a a pluralistic set of different dogmas — the various dogmas of the Protestant denominations (Lutheran,...

Robert Kuttner reviews Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left by Gareth Dale (Columbia University Press).The New York Review of BooksThe Man from Red ViennaRobert Kuttner

As the Federal Reserve meets today to decide how to communicate its messaging on future rate hikes and balance sheet reduction, financial stability will play a key role. Yesterday, I wrote about the Bank of International Settlements new warnings on financial stability. And just this morning, I read a piece from Goldman Sachs Asset Management EMEA division head Andrew Wilson, warning that the risk of overheating was real. So let’s put some framing around this issue and ask how the Fed reacts...

The West also should not shrink from the destabilization of Mr. Putin’s regime. Imagine if a paper of record in Russia had published an editorial like that about destabilizing the US "regime." Oh, right, the head of the US "regime" is Donald Trump, and the New York Times are trying to remove him, or failing that, neuter him.The Washington Post — The Post's ViewThe West must prepare for a wounded Putin to become even more aggressiveEditorialSee alsoFred Hiatt is the editorial page editor of...

Quote by Silvia Merler/Bruegel mentioning Lars, with a shoutout to Brian Romanchuk.Lars P. Syll’s BlogThe DSGE quarrel Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo UniversityMore from LarsEconomic history — a victim of economics imperialism Empirical economics and statistical power

As with the Focus move, the decision to build the Fusion in China also signals a shift in strategy at Ford, which is responding to dwindling U.S. consumer demand for passenger cars in favor of more expensive and more profitable trucks and SUVs. Last week, Ford said it plans to relocate production of a future battery electric vehicle to Cuatitlan, Mexico in 2020 to free up capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build self-driving vehicles in 2021. Reuters Exclusive: Ford to base...