Mike Norman Economics

Poverty is not a scam. Neither is old age or infirmity or serious illness. But making poverty and the need for help look like a scam is a common political strategy, and it’s one President Donald Trump’s administration sought to rekindle last week when it allowed states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients in “test” programs. Such a change, based on fiction about who the 70 million Medicaid recipients are and how almost $550 billion in state and federal Medicaid funding is...

This reform is on the back burner for now.  Cohn is now thinking by end of first quarter '18: Cohn said on Bloomberg News that the Senate bill to roll back the Dodd-Frank Act would "hopefully" see floor time in January and pass the House “in the first quarter of this year.” The draft legislation has included some stability increasing capital exemptions for non-risk assets. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn expects Congress to pass legislation within three months to roll back...

This was from last week. Warren Buffett believes the corporate tax reform bill is very bullish for stockholders. The tax overhaul, which President Donald Trump signed into law last month, lowers the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent.  "The tax act is a huge factor in valuation," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday.  "You had this major change in the silent stock holder in American business who has been content with 35 percent ... and now instead of getting 35...

Have these people lost their minds? Who would ever vote for them?  The whole stable needs to be cleaned out.Zero HedgePutin Plot? Democrats Ridiculed For Claiming Moscow Behind Chelsea Manning's Senate Run Tyler Durden Also The Intercept Centrist Dems Launch Smear Campaign Against Young Trans Woman, All to Keep an Old Straight White Man in Power Glenn Greenwald

Germany looks to the future. Uncle Sam won't be pleased. HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver, speaking at the same conference in Hong Kong, said that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will increase the usage of RMB even further. China’s central bank announced new measures earlier this month to encourage cross-border yuan transactions in support of BRI projects. Asia TimesGerman central bank to add RMB to currency reserves: Follows ECB’s move to include China’s currency last year

Three Major Forces Dalio says this model has guided Bridgewater for over 30 years, and that there are three major forces that shape the economy: 1. Productivity Growth Productivity growth, which is measured as a percentage of GDP, grows over time as knowledge, technology, and innovations help to raise our productivity and living standards. 2. Short-Term Debt Cycle Usually lasting 5-8 years, the short-term debt cycle is a repeating pattern that occurs as credit expands and contracts.3....

Beneath the rosy picture of the upturning global economy. I would like to be optimistic that this upturn will be followed by a shallow recession and then continued economic growth. After all, banks have been recapitalized and companies are flush with cash. But on the household side of things, it’s a different story. What I see is rising economic and social anxiety and a broken social compact in advanced nations. This is feeding political populism, even as the economy enters its best phase...

Short and significant.Russia Feed.One third of Russian currency assets are in the US – what if Washington freezes them?Dmitriy Sudakov

The US argues that US intervention in foreign elections to "promote democracy" is completely legitimate because "human rights.' Liberal interventionism good, all other interventionism bad. Liberal internationalism good, socialist internationalism bad. Hypocrisy based on double standards?Actually, it not about dominance of Western liberal values, but really about Western neoliberal economic dominance as the basis of transnational corporate totalitarianism supplanting...

While this is an important post worth reading in full, I think Professor Robinson misses the point in speculation about the outcome of the ideological conflict between the US and Russia.  His account is based on political philosophy. It ignores both the economics and the geostrategy of the US based on economics, which is where the rubber meets the road. Principles are only necessary for rationalization of otherwise aggressive behavior aimed at dominance. Political dominance is only...