Mike Norman Economics

Yet it is very difficult to tell these other stories. History is written, we are told, by the victors and stories that do not fit the pattern narrative are rejected. This is especially the case, I have come to believe, in the United States that has created during the Cold War a formidable machinery of open and concealed propaganda. That machinery cannot be easily turned off. It cannot produce narratives that do not agree with the dominant one because no one would believe them or buy such...

Assisting Tehran with sidestepping an ongoing Washington sanctions regime against the country, China has opened a $10 billion line of credit intended to finance energy, transportation, water and other key Iranian infrastructure projects.… The significant credit line will primarily use euros and yuan to bypass the US sanctions.... Sputnik InternationalUS Sanctions Continue to Backfire: China Opens $10 Billion Credit Line for Iran

This is an illustration of the political cost of Bernie not understanding and embracing MMT. He should have paid closer attention to MMT economist Stephanie Kelton when she was his economic adviser. 1. A currency sovereign cannot "go bankrupt." A currency issuer can always issue currency to cover its obligations in the currency of issue. In this case, default is a political choice rather than a financial necessity. 2. The only actual constraint on a currency soveriegn is the...

Just why is anyone still going to these people for policy advice, let alone putting some of them in charge of setting policy? The power of elite discourse to persuade is dangerous when an elite controls the frame and there is no accountability for results. Lars P. Syll’s Blog Stiglitz and the full force of Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Definitely moving this way as we head into Q4; you just knew this was going to happen. GOP starting to salivate over the tax cuts; the appeal of this USD windfall is starting to overcome the "debt!" phobia. GOP libertarian "Freedom!" Caucus (35 members max) still will be somewhat of an obstacle Ryan/Trump have to get around.GOP does not care about fiscal discipline or a balanced budget https://t.co/QUOFHkgL2s— Trade Report (@Trade_report) September 16, 2017

"Learning the core values can make the younger generation better understand their responsibilities. It is a moral impetus to make students become better people," Li Shenghui, a middle school math teacher in Guangzong, North China's Hebei Province told the Global Times. The ethical codes were first defined at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012. There are 12 in all, which are written in 24 Chinese characters. According to the People's Daily, the values...

Backgrounder. "You can't tell the players without a scorecard."EconospeakOn The Relationship Between Wahhabism And Salafism J. Barkley Rosser | Professor of Economics and Business Administration James Madison University See also An account by an orthodox Sunni. As-Sunnah Foundation of America Wahhabism: Understanding The Roots And Role Models Of Islamic Extremism  Zubair Qamar, condensed and edited by ASFA staff Then there is the Sunni-Shi'a divide. Al-Islam.org  — Shiite...

A new poll from Gallup shows that a majority of Americans, 58%, are in favor of attacking North Korea militarily if the US “cannot accomplish its goals by more peaceful means first.” Americans were split more or less evenly on whether sanctions and diplomacy could work.This is the first time Gallup has asked about attacking North Korea since 2003. At the time, only 47% favored an attack. The shift in the last 14 years appears to have been greatly along political lines, with an overwhelming...

But the Times’ behavior over the past several years suggests something even more sinister than biased reporting. The “newspaper of record” has slid into yellow journalism, the practice of two earlier New York newspapers – William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World – that in the 1890s manipulated facts about the crisis in Cuba to push the United States into war with Spain, a conflict that many historians say marked the beginning of America’s global...

Today, we have empirics, and what we know can best be found in John Zaller’s The Nature & Origins of Mass Opinion. In brief, Zaller summarizes the academic literature on public opinion: There is a high variance in political awareness around a very low mean. Public opinion is extremely unstable on matters large and small. Wildly different findings can result from the same survey sample by simply ordering or framing questions differently. There are numerous examples of dramatic shifts in...