Mike Norman Economics

  Interesting theory along the lines of Scott Adams, who has pretty consistently been proved correct by events and who Armstrong cites. (All real theories must be falsifiable; let's see in a year's time whether the US is more entangled or less entangled. It should be pretty apparent by then and, by the end of Trump's first term, obvious to all.) Strategic Culture FoundationTrump Cuts the Gordian Knot of Foreign Entanglements Patrick Armstrong

Backgrounder.NEOIranian Protests: Deep State’s Unfinished Business Tony Cartalucci One factor that I seldom see mentioned in the extensive commenting on Iran both in the mainstream and alternative media is that the protests are grounded in Iranian politics and the contention for power between the conservative hardliners and the liberal government now in power. The Rouhani government is labeled "reformist" as if that is a good thing. "Reformist" means neoliberal. There are two major...

Don't believe everything you see. RTThese fake images of ‘Iran’ are being shared on social media

Backgrounder.NEOWill China Give North Korea Up? Konstantin Asmolov, leading researcher at the Centre for Korean Studies at the Institute of the Far East RAS

Money certainly makes you more comfortable and increases the quality of life, but are some rich people less happy than they could be? “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich,” quipped the comedian Sophie Tucker. “Rich is better.” There is merit to Tucker’s argument. All else being equal, more money is better. This is because, as professors Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton point out in their very useful book, Happy Money, money provides access to things—products, experiences, and services—that...

Video and transcript.TRNN2017 A Banner Year for Corporate Mergers, Which Further Deepens Inequality Gregory Wilpert interviews Michael Hudson

An economic doctrine named Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is surging in popularity and offering answers. MMT is debunking popular narratives about the harsh necessity of austerity and belt-tightening. It is showing that money is not a finite abstraction, but a limitless public utility that can be used to meet human needs. More than this, however, MMT and its heterodox economic cousins offer a framework to build directly democratic, egalitarian political structures, and thus reimagine and...

Does U.S. President Donald Trump think Iranians are fools with goldfish memories, who cannot remember the CIA-sponsored coup in their country in 1953? Does he also think other governments in this ancient part of the world were not alarmed by Trump’s tweet voicing support for Iranian protesters, perhaps with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates? It is not necessarily because these governments support the regime of mullahs in Iran. And they do not necessarily...

There's 'terrorists' and there's 'freedom fighters'.A protestant paramilitary group wrote to former Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey to warn him that MI5 had asked them to assassinate him, according to newly disclosed documents. The Ulster Volunteer Force – a loyalist group classified as a terrorist organisation by the UK – contacted Haughey during his third term as Taoiseach in 1987, claiming that two years earlier, an MI5 agent had provided information about his home, his cars and...

Violent crackdowns overnight on Sunday against protesters have led to a violent backlash in Iran, as some of the protesters look to raise the stakes with attacks of their own against police stations, with reports of some posts and stations being set ablaze.… At least one policeman has been confirmed killed, shot with a hunting rifle, and three others were reported wounded. The killing took place in Najaf Abad, on the outskirts of the major city of Isfahan. Iranian state TV also reported...