Mike Norman Economics

Everything you wanted to know about Australia's external position.MacrocosmAustralia's Magical Balance of PaymentsPhilip Pilkingtonhttps://macrocosm.substack.com/p/australias-magical-balance-of-payments

What happens when you don't think things through and ask, what could go wrong? What is wrong with these people? What did they think was going to happen.Sputnik InternationalYou Snooze, You Lose: UK, US Media Fear Russia May ‘Outsmart’ EU With New Gas Mega Pipeline to Chinahttps://sputniknews.com/20220104/you-snooze-you-lose-uk-us-media-fear-russia-may-outsmart-eu-with-new-gas-mega-pipeline-to-china-1092014841.htmlSee alsoTASSUkraine may have to siphon off Russian gas from transit pipelines -...

Interest rate increases….Brazil Stocks Sink 12% in Year for First Annual Drop Since 2015#politics #brazil #BrazilianPolitics #economy https://t.co/FH6iDjidYU by @andradevini3 via @Bloomberg— All The Brazilian Politics (@AllBrPolitics) December 31, 2021

Imperialism as atavistic and imperialism as "normal capitalism"Global InequalitySchumpeter’s two theories of imperialismBranko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality, senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International...

Here is Part 2 of my analysis of the claim that Japan is not a good demonstration of what happens when macroeconomic policies are pushed beyond their usual limits. I have long argued that trying to apply a mainstream macroeconomics (New Keynesian) framework to the Japanese situation yields nonsensical predictions about rising interest rates, accelerating inflation, rising bond yields and government insolvency. Nothing like that scenario has emerged since Japan has introduced economic...

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter believed that the triumph of socialism was inevitable, but he rejected the Marxist view of how capitalism works. His ideas are a stimulating challenge for those seeking an alternative to capitalism today....Schumpeter was Austrian by birth and associated with members of what became the Austrian School as a student of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk at the University of Vienna, but he did not identify himself with any school of economics and considered himself...

A plunge in gov't spending y-o-y, but that doesn't tell the whole story.

Projection.China do not seek world hegemony since the Chinese are aware that their civilization is not exportable. It is uniquely Chinese.In a sense, China’s strategic use of infrastructure, physical as well as digital, bespeaks a certain continuity from the Qin era. Massive investment in flood control, river transport and irrigation created China, and the export of Chinese infrastructure well may hard-wire a great deal of the world into China’s economy.But China is indifferent to how we...

Convergence economics.Global InequalityShould some countries cease to exist? Globalization, migration & the fate of nationsBranko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality, senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceBranko...

Let’s stir things up for the New Year by continuing with one of my recent themes. A quote from an opinion piece in the NYT this morning [January 3rd]: “James Madison boasted that the Constitution achieved “the total exclusion of the people, in their collective capacity....This post shows what MMT is up against as an institutionalist macroeconomic theory that is embedded in political economy, that is, the approach to economics as a policy science. As a policy science, MMT assumes a democratic...