Mike Norman Economics

 China joined the WTO in 2001 and has gained $13 trillion in GDP since then. America has gained $11 trillion during the same time period, has a quarter of the population of China, but most Americans have not seen any increase in their standard of living, and many have become a lot poorer. So China isn't making America poorer, as such, even though most Americans believe it has. The One Percent made all the gains. However in the past 20 years, almost 5 million manufacturing jobs in America...

 It promised to transform how Californians travel but is now seen as a “bullet train to nowhere.” This is why America's west coast megaproject has been far from high-speed.[embedded content]

 This is the story of the latest financial scandal to rock Wall Street and the global financial industry. It’s one of those stories that only happens in the United States. It’s the story of Bill Hwang, a South Korean immigrant who, after arriving in the United States with his father, learned to read and write English while working at McDonalds, later became a successful financier in the multi-billion dollar hedge fund industry and has now left several of the world's largest banks shaking in...

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Revealing. Demographic comparison of China, where those under 40 dominate luxury spending, with the US, where the bulk of luxury spending is done by the Boomer and above generations.HBRUnderstanding China’s Young ConsumersZak Dychtwald

Upping the ante. The global economy is fracturing as countries assert sovereignty, which was repressed during globalization. The reasons are many but one is clear. No one really thought it through in terms of pros and cons, and costs versus benefits. Now the historical dialectic has swung in the other way in correction.SCMPChina passes anti-sanctions law that ‘can target individuals, families, organisations’Sarah Zheng and Tony CheungAlsoNotice the different spin.Yahoo FinanceChina passes...

I said this back in April. Don't fight the monopolist--the Fed.

People are dying in their homes. So far Taiwan has registered 286 COVID deaths, for a mortality rate of 2.4%. That’s higher than the world average of 2.15%. Experts say old age and chronic illnesses are factors at play.Taiwan officially becomes an aged society with people over 65 years old breaking the 14% mark[embedded content]Taiwan’s COVID death rate climbs to 2.4%, higher than world average

This is Part 2 of a series that is developing here on the topic of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and power. I often read that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is defective because it has no theory of power relations. Some critics link this in their narrative to their claim that MMT also has no theory of inflation. They then proceed to attack concepts such as employment buffers, on the grounds, that MMT cannot propose a solution to inflation if it has no understanding of how power relations cause...

 Originally published by The Japanese Times but it was behind a paywall, so I searched for it and found it at Rense.com. It's a parallel to how the US is treating China today. Pearl Harbor didn't just fall out of the sky. It followed a long chain of events that had filled many Japanese minds with resentment and hostility against the Western powers in general and the U.S. in particular. The first came in 1853 when U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry confronted Japan with a squadron of gunboats --...