Mike Norman Economics

The video below is of a three-part presentation by Bill Mitchell, L. Randall Wray and Martin Watts concerning their forthcoming MMT textbook. Throughout the presentation and in the Q&A session that follows there are interesting observations on the current state of university economics and prospects for MMT and the economics discipline in general. The presentation was given at the First International Conference on Modern Monetary Theory…. heteconomistMitchell, Wray and Watts on Teaching...

There are a lot of tainted executives on Wall Street, still ensconced in their corner offices, who would like to redirect the public’s attention away from their serial crime spree and sacking of the U.S. economy by finding a new target at which Americans can focus their anger. While Russia may have attempted to illegally interfere in U.S. elections, it did not put a gun to Wall Street’s head and order it to transform America into a plutocracy for the one percent. Angry Americans are right...

The book is not an easy read but it is compelling. The last 80 pages are notes and bibliographies and the text is densely referenced. It is academic in its nature but determinedly so – as if MacLean knew that the neoliberals would come after her (as indeed they have) when it was published, attempting to undermine her thesis and destroy her reputation; and that providing links to all the background material and quotes was a vital defence against such future attempts to trash her work. A...

Chris Leslie tweeted yesterday that “Marxism should have no place in a modern Labour Party.” You’d expect me to disagree, and I do. But I want to point out that a Marxist point of view might be an asset for non-Marxists within the party. I say so for three reasons. First, Marxism draws our attention to the fact that politics is shaped by an economic base – by the nature of capitalism.... Herein lies another use of Marxism. It reminds us that the state in capitalism must fulfil two...

It wasn't long back and we were swinging in the trees but now we are designing nano-machines that will be able to produce an abundance of cheap, non polluting energy through cold fusion. Scientists don't know how it works and so are not able to develop mathematical theories for it, so they have to set up loads of experiments on a trail and error basis to find which combination works best.It would be good to get away from oil. [embedded content] HYDROTON A Model of Cold Fusion describes the...

Paraphrasing that nineteenth-century critic of political economy, we might say that “economic decision-making appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” We might credit Thaler and other behavioral economists, then, for having taken a first step in challenging the traditional neoclassical account of rational decision-making. But they stop...

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...