Mike Norman Economics

“Bashar Assad’s government has won the war militarily,” said Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Damascus who witnessed the uprising’s earliest days. “And I can’t see any prospect of the Syrian opposition being able to compel him to make dramatic concessions in a peace negotiation.” Sic Semper Tyrannis It seems that a military solution in Syria was possible after all... Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency...

This DACA showdown, which one has the feeling will not end well, has in it all the big questions which bedevil old fashioned, tired conservatism. Namely, we have to ask ourselves if “illegal immigration” is a question of legality or a question of culture. Are we annoyed at people not having their papers in order, or are we trying to preserve the European character of the country? If the issue is one of mere paperwork, why Paul Ryan has a fix for that.… Republicans don’t seem to...

Krieger is correct here. Peaceful protest and nonviolent resistance are one thing, while violence and rebellion are another. Governments lawfully suppress the later.  But in present conditions, using violence to express resistance just feeds the ramping up of restrictions on civil liberties "in extremis" and growing the police/surveillance state. It's a strategic blunder unless one thinks that further imposition of a policy state will result in the public rising up to resist. That is...

If mainstream economists had thought and behaved differently after 1980, then arguably the world would not be in its current state of disarray, and much of the social and environmental dislocation that we have witnessed over that time-span would not have occurred. In a nutshell, these economists uncritically accepted as true the false analyses, promises and prescriptions of neoliberal ideology. The destructive outcomes of their attempts to implement those prescriptions were greatly...

Some history if you have time this long Labor Day weekend in the US marking the end of summer and vacation season and the return to business as usual on Tuesday. So expect light posting over the weekend. Video series. Galbraith fully acknowledged the successes of the market system in economics but associated it with instability, inefficiency and social inequity. He advocated government policies and interventions to remedy these perceived faults. In his book Economics and the Public...

A new explanation of the financial crisis arguing that the proximate cause was not sub-prime but flippers that caught when the music stopped, and the lenders that were funding them. The sub-prime borrowers were a knock-on effect of loose lending. The grim tale of America’s “subprime mortgage crisis” delivers one of those stinging moral slaps that Americans seem to favor in their histories. Poor people were reckless and stupid, banks got greedy. Layer in some Wall Street dark arts, and...

I watched this video yesterday but didn't have time to post it as I'm still repairing my PC. This is by the Chemtrails folk who have a theory I find quite barmy, but still Kevin Shipp, an ex CIA anti-terrorism specialist, is right on the ball about the Deep State and the Shadow government. These people might be on the right but they seem more organised than the left in exposing the shadow government and its crimes. Kevin Ship talks about how Wall Street is totally enmeshed in the...

We have seen that the ‘income-expenditure model’ combines key macro identities (introduced in parts 7 and 15) with particular behavioral assumptions to provide a theory of income determination (considered in parts 16 and 18). The behavioral assumptions relate to causation. The causation envisaged in the income-expenditure model has implications for the sectoral balances, some of which are the focus of the present post.... heteconomistShort & Simple 19 – Sectoral Balances in a Closed,...

An organization led by former U.S. intelligence officials has selected legendary journalist Seymour Hersh to be the recipient of an annual award for integrity and truth-telling, named for the late CIA analyst Sam Adams. Congratulations to Mr. Hersh. A well-deserved honor. Consortium NewsSeymour Hersh Honored for Integrity Ray McGovern

Numbers going in the right direction.AwaraLabor Market Of Moscow & Saint Petersburg: Summer 2017