Mike Norman Economics

 China is cracking down on Big Tech.Sputnik InternationalChinese Tech Regulator Clamps Down on Anticompetitive Practices, Breaks Tencent’s Music Deals

Fed meeting concludes Wednesday and many are expecting the Fed to announce cuts to its asset purchases (taper). Will that crash the market?

Most discussion of the Treasury market coming from people who are not rates strategists involves hoping for or predicting the collapse of the bond market. Nobody likes rates to be this low, and they are an insult to those people who studied Economics 101 and are certain that bond investors have the constitutional right to demand a particular real rate of return.It may very well be that the bond bears will be ultimately vindicated. However, the rule of thumb from previous cycles is that you...

You can't tell the players without a scorecard.The Unz ReviewBRI vs New Quad for Afghanistan’s Coming BoomPepe Escobar

A big reason that economics is not like a natural science. It's the subject matter, stupid. Economics is a social science, with all the limitations that come with it. Lars P. Syll’s BlogCherry-picking economic modelsLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

The BBC in Britain carried a story yesterday (July 25, 2021) – UK will be paying for Covid for decades, say MPs – that began with the assertion that “Taxpayers will bear the costs of Covid ‘for decades'”. I guess there is some truth in that statement – families will remember their loved ones that died from the virus and those who are stricken with Long COVID will probably endure the negative effects for the rest of their lives. In that sense, if they are also ‘taxpayers’ they will be...

 It might be the caffeine that causes it, and in that case, then too much tea is not good too. I drink mugs of tea and I was fine after two of them yesterday, but then I had a third one about an hour later and I felt the caffeine, which I didn't like. I was surprised as it's rare for me to notice the caffeine because the very light teas I drink are low in it. In the early afternoon I had two cups of green tea and I felt fine. Mid afternoon onwards I always drink decaf green tea or redbush...

Video and transcript. A good follow up to J. W. Mason's recent post.Age of Economics — InterviewBranko Milanović, Professor of economics at CUNY, LSE and IBEI (Barcelona)

Thorium.Chinese government scientists have unveiled plans for a first-of-its-kind, experimental nuclear reactor that does not need water for cooling.The molten-salt nuclear reactor, which runs on liquid thorium rather than uranium, is expected to be safer than traditional reactors because the molten salt cools and solidifies quickly when exposed to the air, insulating the thorium, so that any potential leak would spill much less radiation into the surrounding environment compared with leaks...

 To much of the world America looks like a declining power, precisely because it is a declining powerThe people with big jobs in Washington came of age in the 1980s and 1990s, when America was the technological marvel of the world, and American inventions created the digital age. We haven’t done a lot lately except code some complicated software.China has installed about 80% of the world’s 5G mobile broadband capacity, the carrier for the Fourth Industrial Revolution as much as railroads...