Mike Norman Economics

 Doctors, economists, lawmakers, and civil society groups fighting the WTO waiver are funded by the pharmaceutical lobby.JUST BEFORE GOING live on Al Jazeera last week, Achal Prabhala, an activist for equitable access to medicine, performed a quick internet search on his sparring partner in a debate on the proposal to share vaccine technology with low-income countries.It didn’t take long before Prabhala found that his opponent, an academic who favors pharmaceutical monopoly rights, leads an...

Only the money counts in Washington. Phoenix Media Co-op asked nuclear policy specialist Joe Cirincione about the power of the arms lobby in US politics. And he explained how treating China and Russia as enemies helps to justify massive spending on weapons, especially considering that “the defence-industrial complex has got such a hold over Congress”.Cirincione said:I worked in Congress for 10 years. I’m telling you – it’s money that matters when it comes to Congress. … They listen a lot...

Does Palestine belong to the Palestinians?The genetic data is totally consistent with the idea that Palestinians are direct descendants of ancient Jews who never left ancestral lands and later converted to Christianity and Islam. Science Shows that Jews and Palestinians are Siblings!

Reading between the lines, Germany (the people that run the place) said no, and Angela Merkel would not backdown in the face of threats. This was not a gift to Russia by Biden, as some make it out to be. It's about knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.Germany is pivotal in the global system as presently configured. The US was trying desperately to prevent Germany from swinging east through energy dependence. But the threat of sanctions against a top-level ally just resulted in a...

And the "inflation" impulse has passed, as I also predicted. Trade and invest using the concepts of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/ Download my podcasts! New one every week. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1105286 Mike Norman Twitter https://twitter.com/mikenorman Mike Norman Economics: https://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/

AbstractMinority views on technical issues are largely absent from the public arena. Increasingly corporate organization of science has led to knowledge monopolies, which, with the unwitting help of uncritical mass media, effect a kind of censorship. Since corporate scientific organizations also control the funding of research, by denying funds for unorthodox work they function as research cartels as well as knowledge monopolies. A related aspect of contemporary science is commercialization....

Institutional arrangements are complex systems, shaped by history, geography, and culture. The objective should not be to identify a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather to devise the combination of characteristics that would deliver the greatest good for the greatest number of people, with the right checks and balances.Should-read. Adopts the world system POV without calling it that. This approach emphasizes unity in diversity. This requires a multilateral approach rather than a unipolar...

Abba Lerner and John Maynard Keynes against Robert Barro. Who wins?Some keeper quotes.Lars P. Syll’s BlogFunctional finance and Ricardian equivalenceLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Paul Jay interviews Michael Hudson.Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of NeoliberalismSurprise: Corporate Junk Before Students?Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Don’t say its over until its over. There has been progress in the macroeconomics narrative since the GFC, which accelerated during the pandemic. Governments have certainly expanded fiscal deficits and taken on more debt and the usual hysteria, which many of those same governments helped to ferment in the public debate, has fallen away. Obviously, for political reasons, a government that has previously been terrorising the population about the dangers of deficits and rising debt as a cover...