Mike Norman Economics

A massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The militarily- Industrial complex is raking it in.  The United States military has spent more than $5.6 trillion on conflicts since 2001, more than three times the Pentagon’s actual estimate, according to a new study. The Department of Defense reported earlier this year that it had spent around $1.5 trillion on conflicts, including putting putting troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, air raids in Syria and Iraq to battle...

Weaponizing information to counter weaponized information. Nations like Russia and China make billions of dollars a year in the arms industry. Their arming of other nations with the latest in defence technology is not only a means of supporting their respective economies, it also fits into a diplomatic and national defence strategy of their own. As information technology increasingly shapes the future of economics, society, politics and even warfare, the export of “information arms”...

Professor Cohen puts to bed the charge that Vladimir Putin is a Stalinist, a crypto-Stalinist, or is trying to rehabilitate Stalin.   I would compare the Russian attitudes — there is a wide range of it — to American attitudes and now raging controversies about people formerly regarded as American heroes over their connection with slavery. This is epitomized in the demand to remove stature of Confederate heroes and it is also reflected in the controversy over slave ownership by the...

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) defines how we think about our recent past, our present and our future, yet there is no clear consensus account of why it happened. There have been so many explanations put forward.... Mainly MacroWhat really caused the financial crisisSimon Wren-Lewis | Professor of Economics, Oxford University

Opening remarks by Mr Carlos da Silva Costa, Governor of the Bank of Portugal, at the Bank of Portugal Conference on Financial Stability, Lisbon, 17 October 2017. Bank of International SettlementsCarlos da Silva Costa: Opening remarks - "Conference on Financial Stability"

Remarks by Mr Stephen S Poloz, Governor of the Bank of Canada, to the CFA Montreal and Montreal Council on Foreign Relations, Montreal, Quebec, 7 November 2017. Bank of International SettlementsStephen S Poloz: Understanding inflation - getting back to basics

There are no doubts, and many reasons, for the poor performance of most of the euro-area economies. Yet the austerity policy agenda (from the Stability and Growth Pact, the “fiscal compact,” etc., with the drives for balanced budgets), the pursuit of “structural reforms,” and the failures to address the current account constraints on euro-area member countries have all contributed to the lacklustre economic performance. In short, entrenchment of neoliberal policy coupled with a failed...

Managing brain waves and neural passageways. "The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway." Of course, this process based on new scientific understanding began long before the Internet and social media. It's at least as old as the rise of the PR, marketing and advertising industries, which took off around the time of the publication of Propaganda by Sigmund Freud's...

Investigation referenced by libertarians at Cato so tread carefully (ie not an endorsement). They put the focus on envy (takes only 2) rather than jealousy (takes 3 minimum) as operative in the "rich vs. poor" thing. The more surprising findings involved envy and fairness.  Envy, directed toward those better off than you, predicted support for redistribution.  "When a rival outperforms you in some activity, your relative standing decreases," said Sznycer. "People sometimes act to chip...

One wonders what goes on in the heads of politicians sometimes. Perhaps not much other than a warped sense of their purpose in life – which for some seems to be to advance themselves rather than advance societal well-being. In recent days, fiscal debates have raged on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, there is the Trump tax cut debate. The correct progressive response would be to focus on why these cuts will not advance anybody but the rich and will do very little if anything to create...