Mike Norman Economics

"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...

The reported US supplies of Soviet-era munitions to Syrian rebels not only "openly violates" legal norms against financing terrorism, but also risks igniting a greater conflict across the Middle East, Scott Bennett, former US Army psychological operations officer and State Department counterterrorism contractor, told Sputnik. Untraceable Weapons  Earlier, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) revealed in a report...

Link to report. The Case for Concerted Action UNCTAD On The Case For A Global New Deal V. Ramaman

This made me laugh, Sir Michael Fallon, the British Defence Secretary, told the BBC: “The US is fully entitled to defend its own territory, to defend its bases and to look after its people, but this involves us, London is closer to North Korea and its missiles than Los Angeles.”  But US bases are all over the world in far off lands pointing missiles at any country that is not a vassal state of the US, so who's the threat to world peace? Paul Craig Roberts had this to say:Behold a Pale Horse,...

Fast forward to today, when according to a statement on the Venezuela oil ministry, the country's weekly crude oil and petroleum basket "will be published in Chinese Yuan" - oddly, not in Euros as the WSJ hinted - going forward. We can only assume that Venezuela avoided the European currency on concerns that Brussels may follow in D.C.'s footsteps and impose financial sanctions on the Maduro regime next. Which meant that the only "safe" currency to transact in, was that of the country's two...

This is about the Russian economy, not just the rate reduction. Significant for those following Russia, the Russian economic outlook, and the RUB. Russia FeedRussia’s Central Bank cuts key rate to 8.5% AlexanderAlsoRussia’s Central Bank says oil price could sink in 2018