Mike Norman Economics

There are times when so-called progressives outdo themselves with their (usually self-styled) ‘genius solutions’ to the ravages of neoliberalism. They come up with elaborate ‘solutions’ that people on the Left get feverishly excited about yet fail to see how obviously ridiculous these strategies are when all the options are allowed. They, in fact, step further into the mirky neoliberal world by trying to be progressive because they fail to see what the basic issue is. One recent example of...

I covered the war in El Salvador for five years. It was a peasant uprising by the dispossessed against the 14 ruling families and the handful of American corporations that ran El Salvador as if it was a plantation. Half of the population was landless. Laborers worked as serfs in the coffee plantations, the sugar cane fields and the cotton fields in appalling poverty. Attempts to organize and protest peacefully to combat the huge social inequality were met with violence, including fire from...

How strategists think. Taiwan should buy 1,000 missiles to seal off China's central and southeastern provinces in the event of war, said the scholar. Why 1000 when two supposedly would do the job. Swarm tactics. Also good for business. Asia TimesTwo missiles could blow up Three Gorges: strategistCounterpoint. Signs of growing universalism in Europe, although  a lot of "nationalists" won't be happy even though she is first generation Belgian, born in Antwerp of a Chinese father and...

Mostly on sanctioning Russian oligarchs that the US "advisers" in the Yeltsin years created the conditions for though speedy neoliberal privatization of state assets in the belief that "the market will sort it out." "The market" was assumed to be US control. When that blew up as the Russian economy collapsed and social unrest rose, the US decided on another tack to get back in the driver's seat.Dances with BearsWe Are Back, Again – Just Two Years to Go Before the Profession of Journalism...

James K. Galbraith is a self-described "Galbraithian" (institutionalist) and also a supporter of MMT.Market WatchEconomist James K. Galbraith isn’t celebrating Dow 25,000 Greg Robb is a senior reporter for MarketWatch interviews James K. Galbraith | Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

The cost represent the use of real resources that could have been put to use constructively to address the world's problems, many of which are the result of conflict.  The social cost cannot be quantified since life is priceless. Total waste. Dumb, dumb, and dumber. World Economic ForumConflict costs the global economy $14 trillion a year Rob Smith

The good (ideal) and the bad (real) of conventional economics. The policy consequences are essentially two-fold. The first is in not recognizing the disjunction between the ideal (formal) and the real (empirical), which violates the basic requirement of a scientific approach and makes the undertaking an excursion in philosophy rather than science, even though it is dressed put to look like science. The consequence is policy formulation that doesn't lead to the predicted results,...

Trump may be reveling in the stock market's gains since his election victory, but the dollar is going in the other direction. It is getting killed.When Trump was elected the Dollar Index was at 98. Now it's at 90. Dollar/yen was at 118, now it's at 110. Euro/dollar was at 1.04, now it's at 1.23. British pound was at 1.23, now it's at 1.37. Canadian dollar was at 1.36, now it's at 1.24.Trump has been a disaster for the dollar.What's more, the dollar's fall is still in its early stages. With...

Zero HedgeWho Do Russians Consider Their Greatest Enemies? Tyler Durden

I have been thinking about a simple depiction of a demand-led economy. Mostly it draws on standard Keynesian macro, Kalecki’s work on cycles and growth, and supermultiplier models developed within the surplus approach. The main focus is on the evolution of a demand-led economy through time. The present post simply sketches the basic framework and provides some context. Perhaps in the future certain aspects can be fleshed out.... heteconomistA Simple Framework for Analyzing a Demand-Led...