Mike Norman Economics

I have just finished reading the excellent new book by Branko Milanovic. It’s called “Visions of Inequality” and is a tour through the history of economics since the days of Quesnay. More specifically it takes a look at how a handful of prominent economists have treated the topic of inequality. Most of you will have covered this territory before, but examining how people such as Quesnay, Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Pareto and Kuznets discussed the problem of distribution is not only an...

NEARLY 30 YEARS AGO, a New York fund manager named Warren Mosler noticed a discrepancy between what he saw day-to-day in his interactions with the Federal Reserve and the way almost all academic economists write about money. The way they write, you would think currency-issuing governments need to tax before they can spend — Mosler noticed it is the other way around.Getting this wrong is not trivial. It biases policy narratives. It misleads politicians into thinking that there is something...

It’s Wednesday, and today I discuss the latest US inflation data, which shows a significant annual decline in the inflation rate with housing still prominent. But for reasons I discuss, we can expect the housing inflation to fall in the coming months. I also discuss how on-going fiscal ignorance allows the Australian government to avoid investing in much-needed fast rail infrastructure which would solve many problems that are now reducing societal well-being. And then some of the best guitar...

I can’t say I was surprised.

November has been exceedingly strong for flows. This may carry the market through until mid December. 

The resurgence of economic orthodoxy is a great example of how declining schools of thought can maintain dominance in the narrative for extended periods of time if the vested interests are powerful enough. In the case of the economics profession, mainstream New Keynesian theory persists because it serves the interests of capital. Recently, the IMF urged the Australian government to engage in ‘fiscal consolidation’ in order to support further interest rate hikes by the RBA aimed at reducing...

Fade the monetarist zombies every time.

Given yesterday’s detailed monetary policy analysis, I am using today to present an array of news items and some brief analytical thoughts on central bank monetary policy. The latter is based on a very interesting speech that the governor of the Bank of Japan gave in Nagoya earlier this week. The juxtaposition with the way the Western central banks are behaving at present is stunning. There is also some self promotion and some announcements. Then we get to listen to Ron Carter. A good day...

Episode 4 in our new weekly Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money – is now available. Have a bit of fun with it and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryThe Smith Family manga continues – Episode 4 is now availableBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Historic changes in sentiment, only to turn around and go the other way on powell’s comments.