Mike Norman Economics

In the wake of the financial crisis, new regulations on bank capital and stress tests strengthened the ability of the major U.S. financial institutions to withstand shocks. The Trump administration’s plans to weaken capital requirements threaten to undo these gains. If they go forward, the financial system could again be dangerously vulnerable.The right amount of capital is a question of insurance: how much output to sacrifice in return for reducing the expected loss from a crisis. Equity...

The Modi government made its supposed determination to end corruption in India its signature theme. The massive damage done by demonetisation as well as the continuing chaos produced by the flawed introduction of the Goods and Services Tax have all been justified on the grounds of reducing possibilities of corruption and tax avoidance. Similarly, the imposition of Aadhaar requirements on the population for access to all manner of publicly provided goods and services is regularly justified...

Last Friday (October 27, 2017), the US Bureau of Economic Analysis published their latest national accounts data – Gross Domestic Product: Third Quarter 2017 (Advance Estimate), which tells us that annual real GDP growth rate was 3 per cent in the September-quarter 2017, slightly down on the 3.1 per cent recorded in the June-quarter. As this is only the “Advance estimate” (based on incomplete data) there is every likelihood that the figure will be revised when the “second estimate” is...

Shock data shows that most MPs do not know how money is created. Responding to a survey commissioned by Positive Money just before the June election, 85% were unaware that new money was created every time a commercial bank extended a loan, while 70% thought that only the government had the power to create new money.The results are only a shock if you didn’t see the last poll of MPs on exactly this topic, in 2014, revealing broadly the same level of ignorance. Indeed, the real shock is that...

A recent post considered one way of including a job guarantee in the income-expenditure model. Doing so makes it possible to represent various macro effects of a job guarantee within the model. An obvious effect is that the program would deliver a degree of demand stabilization. An effect that is perhaps not quite so obvious is the way in which a job guarantee would ensure supply-side changes in the economy automatically impact on demand, actual output and employment. Before illustrating a...

The worm turns.Consortium NewsThe Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate Joe Lauria, foreign-affairs journalist

[embedded content] I film about Gilad Atzmon, his life, his music, and his controversial views on Palestine. He's an amazing guy who passion is so strong he doesn't seem to fear death. His critics say he is a narcissist, but I tend to that he is just a lot more intelligent than them. Some of his stuff i don't agree with him on, but I need to learn more about him and his ideas. I do agree with him about Palestine. Golriz Kolahi (http://www.lidf.co.uk/film/gilad-and-... Gilad Atzmon is one...

In pursuit of Russia-gate, the U.S. mainstream media embraces any attack on Russia and works to ensure that Americans don’t hear the other side of the story, as with the Magnitsky myth, reports Robert Parry.... This is to journalism as ignoring data, historicity, and operations is in economics.Consortium NewsGuardians of the Magnitsky Myth Robert Parry

Until relatively recently, the decline of coal was the result of competition with gas, while new renewables weren’t even enough to cover the growth in demand. But a quick calculation shows that renewables will soon be taking out a bigger bite. Global electricity generation is currently about 20000 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year, growing at around 1.5 per cent, or 300TWh a year. Installations of solar PV and wind (I haven’t checked on hydro and other renewables) for 2017 look set to come in...

The Bitcoin mining industry consumes 22.5 TWh of energy annually, which amounts to 13,239,916 barrels of oil equivalent. With 12.5 bitcoins being mined every 10 minutes, that means the average energy cost of one bitcoin would equate to 20 barrels of oil equivalent....Bitcoin transactions are secured by computer miners, who are competing for rewards in the form of coins from the network. The more computation power they use, the better their chances. The drill rig is a computer, and hydraulic...