Mike Norman Economics

Another expensive and potentially dangerous boondoggle aimed at world domination? What is wrong with these people.Tom DispatchAlfred McCoy, How the Pentagon Snatched Innovation From the Jaws of DefeatAlfred McCoy | Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of the The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, and In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power (Dispatch Books) from which this piece is...

In the past, we've witnessed Fox News take an editorial position against basic facts, but has it really influenced anyone's vote/ While it has presented itself as "balanced" over the years, there's little doubt that Fox News has consistently supported Republican candidates and positions even when that required taking an editorial position against basic facts. On some level, this has worked, as surveys have indicated Fox viewers are more likely to get those same facts wrong. But is it...

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has 25,000 members. Its growth over the past year has been massive — tripling in size — and no doubt a product of the increasing rejection of a bipartisan neoliberal consensus that has visited severe economic insecurity on the vast majority, particularly among young workers.No socialist organization has been this large in decades. The possibilities for transforming American politics are exhilarating.... Here’s a sketch of a practical approach...

Here’s a conjecture: the rise of “post-truth” politics (defined by the OED as a process whereby “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals”) is in part the product of deindustrialization. What I mean is that in manufacturing, facts defeat emotions and opinions. If your steel cracks, or your bottles leak or your cars won’t start, all your hopes and fancy beliefs are wrong. Truth trumps opinion. Contrast this with sales occupations. In these,...

Comments on the 200 year world GDP chart linked to here at MNE previously.Naked KeynesianismReOrientMatias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

An inconvenient truth — history. However, capitalism, alone or chiefly, cannot be blamed. Historical development is a dialectical process with many inputs and a variety of factors that "could have been different." But they weren't different for a variety of reasons, some economic, some social, and some political , that occurred with bourgeois liberalization. The transition away from monarchy and feudalism influenced historical events not only through individual choices but also shaped it...

It just doesn’t let up with these banks. The timing could not have been worse: just as Spain faces its biggest constitutional crisis in over 40 years with Catalonia’s independence vote, another bank has begun to wobble.Liberbank, Spain’s eighth largest lender, was spawned in 2011 from the shotgun marriage of three failed cajas (savings banks), Cajastur, Caja de Extremadura and Caja Cantabria. The new bank’s shares were sold to the public in May 2013 at an IPO price of €0.40. By April 2014,...

They may get it wrong about the national debt, but interesting (and disturbing) none the less. Author of "Planet Ponzi" and fund manager Mitch Feierstein.on market manipulation by the terrorist central banks - buying "assets" - what it really is nationalisation by the back door. It is impossible for countries like the USA to pay back the debt they have racked up - so who loses? Why are the criminal bankers exempt for the rule of law, with all the criminal activity the banks and central...

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog – Reflections on a visit to New Zealand – which began by summarising some research I am working on which will be presented (with Dr Louisa Connors) at the upcoming MMT conference in Kansas City. This specific paper will be examining the role that fictional literature plays in framing false economic concepts and, thus, promoting neo-liberal biases among the readership, even when the plot of the narrative is ostensibly about something other than economics. We...

MMT itself is just a description of how the monetary system works in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, the EMU – everywhere there is a monetary economy. I dislike quibbling, but MMT is prefaced by an operational description of how monetary systems work, paying particular attention to the existing monetary system. This analysis reveals the policy space associated with policy choice regarding the monetary system and monetary operations. MMT is based on this analysis of policy space....