Mike Norman Economics

Qing Luan, director of SenseTime’s augmented-reality group, previously developed office apps for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. She says she returned to China because the opportunities just seemed much bigger. “We were struggling to get a thousand users; then I talked with my friend who was working at a startup in China, and she said, ‘Oh, a million users is nothing—we get that in several days,’” she recalls. This is the key point about everything involving China. It's yuuu...ge!The...

This portends to have wide-reaching ramifications. Turkey is already on the outs with Germany, and now the US.  Is Turkey long for NATO?  It's fairly certain that Erdogan blames US covert operations for the coup attempted against him. Asia TimesTurkish market crumbles as Erdogan overreachesKenny Hodgart

No wonder the deep state is doing everything possible to keep the details of torture secret. Fortunately, legal discovery has made some of the story available.  Two surviving prisoners and the family of a detainee who died at the Colbalt site reached an out-of-court settlement with the CIA psychologists in August after a lawsuit was brought for their role in the torture. As was hoped, the CIA and Pentagon were forced to declassify the documents related to the case in pretrial discovery. But...

U.S. President Donald Trump may have a personal interest in keeping the rest of the world wondering what he is actually up to. But the pervasive sense of uncertainty he has created since Day 1 in the White House is hardly conducive to his presidency or U.S. national interests, never mind global stability.... Trump may believe the U.S.' unrivaled capabilities give him boundless room for maneuver in handling foreign policy issues. But in that he would be mistaken. Scrapping the Iran nuclear...

"There's a coalition coming together that is going to challenge every Republican incumbent except for Ted Cruz," Bannon told host Sean Hannity on Fox News' "Hannity" on Monday night.…  "There's a basic agenda that Trump ran on and won. He carried states Republicans haven't carried in living memory — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. This agenda works. The American people voted for it," he said in part."By the way, [Mitch] McConnell would not be majority leader unless Trump — in North...

Bill addresses many issues in this post that MMT economists don't ordinarily focus on like capital markets, capital flows, capital flight, capital controls, and exchange rate depreciation. Since most progressives don't understand the background and dynamics they generally get sucked into commonly deployed neoliberal traps. Bill shows how they don't need to.Bill Mitchell – billy blogPrime Minister Corbyn should have no fears from global capital marketsBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics...

This is a longish article that puts forward analysis diagnosing the challenge and proposes a plan in outline for addressing it, based on full employment, a job guarantee and a basic income. The latter part of the article is about the opportunities present by our entering the Information Age. Those opportunities can be seized rather than left to the whims of the market and its penchant for rent-seeking in a neoliberal environment.A lot in crammed into this one piece. Hopefully, people will...

Snarky backgrounder. Humorous read of some sorry history, centered around former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson.The Vineyard of the SakerNY Times: 1949 – When China lost that ‘elusive’ quality needed for AnglobalizationThe Saker

Britain’s broadcasting regulator on Monday concluded that Al Jazeera did not violate any rules in its controversial undercover investigation exposing the Israeli embassy’s campaign to target British citizens critical of Israel, a campaign that included attempts to destroy the careers of pro-Palestinian British politicians. The move by the communications regulator, known as Ofcom, clears the way for a follow-up documentary focused on Israeli influence in the United States, the existence of...

And there is a third way to think about justice. For this we can go back to Mozi, the legendary philosopher, political activist and opponent of offensive war who lived in China in the years surrounding 400 BCE. As he looked at inequalities of power and wealth, Mo argued that the core problem was “unequal love”, that people cared more for those in their own family or other social group than anyone else. In an extreme form, this led to wars of domination or conquest, since the rulers...