Mike Norman Economics

Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary" candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy - a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.... The soft...

Another backgrounder on Korea.Strategic Culture FoundationFormer Diplomat Fears War on Horizon Gregory ClarkSee also The US successfully dealt with rising nuclear powers China and Russia using diplomacy under the umbrella of deterrence. No reason that this would not work with Korea, too. The US media pictures Kim Jong Un as a madman on one hand and as evil personified on the other. This makes it difficult for the US leadership to use diplomacy.  The reality is that like all other...

It seems Americans can’t rally support for something without declaring a “war” on it. The war on poverty. On drugs. On gangs and crime. On terror. And these wars have become open-ended, or “generational” in Pentagon-speak, with a dynamic of crisis-surge-“progress”-new crisis-new surge-repeat that sustains large bureaucracies and huge government spending. To these “wars” we must add a new one, notes Michael Klare at TomDispatch.com: the climate change war.... So, two things are most...

Interesting article by a American economist on the Chinese economy, showing how most US economists misread events there. Goldman is on the side of the US maintaining hegemony but his analysis shows how and why this is just wishful thinking if the current trend persists, and there is not much the US can do about it without confronting the Thyudicides trap.Asia TimesWestern contempt for China turns to panic Spengler (David P. Goldman) Poking sticks into the dragon's liar is a dumb move...

Why is this important in economics? First, women now control a signficant slice of the pie, and secondly, women have an increasingly strong political voice to match their growing economic power.This is chiefly a political battle between liberals and traditionalists. Identity politics is here to stay.Economics is strong influenced by policy. On the programme, scientists argue there is no obvious neurological explanation for the gender divide, with no significant difference between male and...

Last week (September 13, 2017), the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, presented his State of the Union Address 2017 in Strasbourg before the European Parliament. My only query arising from the speech was which Member State has left, given that the President began his speech by thanking “the 27 leaders of our Member States” (joke). He opened by saying how unity among the Member States had “showed that Europe can deliver for its citizens when and where it matters”. I...

Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a pioneer in the field of grief counselling, identified the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This extract from Economyths draws on her model of grief as inspiration to chart the long, arduous, but ultimately healthy and healing (we hope, it’s not over yet) process as the economics profession slowly comes to terms with its role in the Great Financial Crisis.... EvonomicsEconomyths: The Five Stages of...

There are several forms of socialism, just there there are of capitalism. One form of socialism is public ownership of the means of production, and another is worker-owned ("cooperatively owned") means of production. Consider some of the most intractable problems we face in contemporary society: rising inequalities between rich and poor, rapid degradation of the environment, loss of control of their lives by the majority of citizens. It might be observed that these problems are the result...

Sen. Bernie Sanders has unveiled a new single-payer healthcare plan which would provide all Americans with government-sponsored health coverage. Sanders’s plan, supported by some 16 Democrats in the Senate, calls for an overhaul of the healthcare system with what would essentially be a tweaked and revitalized version of Medicare-for-all. “Today we say that a function of a rational healthcare system is to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way,” declared Sanders, an independent...

The "art" of war. On the eve of the UN resolution on the introduction of a peacekeeping contingent into the Donbass, the Ukrainian side plans to commit provocation in order to discredit Russia. Thus, according to the intelligence of the DPR, the Ukrainian special forces have received the Russian military uniform models. It is planned to carry out a provocation in the Mariupol direction with subsequent recording of this 'fact' by the OSCE Mission.This is reported by the correspondent of...