Mike Norman Economics

MMT is not and has never been about getting central banks to "print money" for the governmentThe LensMMT ≠ QEStephanie Kelton | Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University, formerly Democrats' chief economist on the staff of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and an economic adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders

 Before vaccines were introduced in Iceland there were 30 deaths, but none since.[embedded content] Clarisa Diaz - What Iceland’s rising Covid-19 case count tells us about vaccine efficacyIceland provides a case study for how an effective vaccine rollout perhaps doesn’t guarantee herd immunity but prevents hospitalizations and deaths Quartz What Iceland’s rising Covid-19 case count tells us about vaccine efficacy

Antivaxxers are using similar techniques as climate change deniers to misrepresent data. I recently saw a misleading presentation of COVID data pertaining to Israel. In this post I’m sharing several graphs that I made to counter this misleading image.Israel is currently a popular object of those committed to an anti-vax narrative because a high proportion of the population is fully vaccinated and cases there are currently spiking. The situation is obviously concerning. However, it is being...

This video explains the probability of a Black Swan event, and how governments aren't preparing for the high probability a Carrington Event which could damage the national grid and telecoms systems. [embedded content]The Black Swan TheoryThe threat from the Sun: should we be worrying about coronal mass ejections?Scientists have real concerns that extreme weather on the Sun’s surface could unleash a catastrophe on humanity2019 study in the journal Scientific Reports found a 0.5-1.9% chance of...

AlterNetWhy ISIS and the Taliban really hate each otherAlex HendersonThe ConversationTaliban’s religious ideology – Deobandi Islam – has roots in colonial IndiaSohel Rana, PhD Student, Indiana University and Sumit Ganguly, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, Indiana UniversityWhat caused the Taliban to form in the 1990sAli A. Olomi, Assistant Professor of History, Penn State     Sixth ToneChina’s Stressed-Out Workers Are...

Backgrounder.What is the cost of extraction and associated transaction fees relative to other deposits?Zero HedgeTaliban Secures World's Largest Lithium Deposits After US Withdrawal From AfghanistanTyler Durden

A groundbreaking new model suggests that we've massively underestimated the social costs of carbon...What is the true cost of carbon, including externality?Canary MediaEconomists must grapple with climate tipping points before it's too lateDavid RobertsSee alsoWikipediaPrecautionary Principle

 A really interesting video showing how China found a way to type words four faster than us, despite the fact that their language has thousands of characters, where each character (drawing) represents a word, and so it was initially incredibly slow to type on a QWERTY keyboard. [embedded content]

Last year, the US Federal Reserve dropped a bombshell on mainstream macroeconomics by abandoning the consensus approach to monetary policy, which prioritised fighting inflation over maintaining low levels of unemployment, and, increasing interest rates well before any defined inflationary pressures were realised – the so-called forward guidance approach. It has also been buying massive quantities of US government debt and controlling bond yields in the markets as a result. Attention has been...

Bond yields rose today but this is not likely the start of a sustained rise.