Mike Norman Economics

My Wednesday blog post with a few snippets. Don’t forget to enrol in our MOOC which begins next week. Also, some news from Britain that shows once again the British Labour Party has the gun aimed straight at its foot. And some comments on yesterday’s Australian government decision to increase the unemployment benefit by $25 per week and claiming this was appropriate – when it still means the recipients are $163 per week below the accepted poverty line. Enforced poverty by a government that...

We are likely to need National Savings annuities, where an individual can build up an annual additional pension by purchasing ‘Granny Bonds’ directly. They would have limited residual capital value and no capital uplift, but they would give a secure additional income in retirement for ordinary people who decide to be thrifty and save. The precise level and nature of the instruments is open to debate....Lots of other interesting MMT-related stuff.New WaylandThe Only Bonds We Need Are Granny...

 “Our economic system is not designed to meet human needs; it is designed to facilitate capital accumulation.”No surprise, since capitalism is an economic system —socioeconomic system, actually — that favors capital (ownership) over labor (workers) and land (the environment) because capital formation and accumulation lead to growth and therefore lift all boats through trickledown. Neither distribution nor social concerns are material to capitalism. It is only about accumulation on the...

The question is why? To answer, FS rely on a textbook-standard theory of interest rates, known as the “loanable funds” theory….No surprise. Jason Furman and Larry Summers are New Keynesians. NK economist Paul Krugman holds a loanable funds theory, too.INETReconsideration of Fiscal Policy: A CommentJames K. Galbraith | Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at...

Down market days get me excited. I'm like a kid in a toy store. I can't buy enough! Trade and invest using the concepts of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/mmt-trader/?s2-ssl=yes/ Download my podcasts! New one every week. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1105286 Mike Norman Twitter https://twitter.com/mikenorman

An implementation of MMT’s proposed job guarantee would, in effect, formalize a ‘labor-power standard’ in which labor-power serves as the ‘money commodity’. The policy-administered job-guarantee wage would define a fixed (though policy-adjustable) rate at which simple labor-power is convertible into the currency, on demand. In the absence of a job guarantee – the norm today – the currency lacks a nominal anchor, as Modern Monetary Theorists repeatedly emphasize. This leads to the highly...

Pilot. Automatic vending machines in some metro stations in Shanghai can now accept digital renminbi, as part of the offline application scenarios for digital currency being promoted across the city. As a critical link in the pilot use of digital currency, offline application scenarios for digital renminbi have been piloted in a variety of situations including in shops and at hospitals across the city, according to media reports. Users can pay through mobile phones apps or bank cards at...

The first China-Europe freight train from Chengdu in Sichuan Province to Russia's St. Petersburg started off on Sunday.This is the 59th overseas destination of Chengdu's international freight trains....ECNSFirst China-Europe freight train from Chengdu to St. Petersburg starts off

 Mostly without icebreaker assist. Video clip of the ship cutting through the thin ice easily.Sputnik InternationalClimate Change’s Latest Warning Sign: A Cargo Ship Just Used Russia’s Northern Sea Route in February

Capital inflow up, outflow down.The capital outflows from China that prompted the country to engage in a shock devaluation are a distant memory, at least according to Goldman's preferred gauge of FX flows....Yet for all the FX inflows, perhaps the real story is what that "other" currency is doing. As Bloomberg Ye Xie notes, the latest yuan settlement data showed that China’s efforts to push for more use of yuan in cross-border trade and services -- and reduce its reliance on the dollar --has...