Mike Norman Economics

US President Donald Trump wears his recent experience with COVID-19 infection as some perverse badge of courage, rather than as a warning of what may lie ahead. And the adverse economic consequences of his administration's approach to the pandemic could not contrast more sharply with the robust recovery in China.Project SyndicateChina Leads AgainStephen S. Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia

Sixteen Tons.The New Economics FoundationThis is your brain on neoliberalismAyeisha Thomas-Smith

The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics holds that reality is constantly splitting.Conventionally speaking, there is a single physicist named Sean Carroll at Caltech, busily puzzling over the nature of the quantum world. In the theoretical sense, though, he may be one of a multitude, each existing in its own world. And there’s nothing unique about him: Every person, rock, and particle in the universe participates in an endlessly branching reality, Carroll argues, splitting into...

Capitalist production, with the development of the credit system, Marx noted, “constantly strives to overcome this metallic barrier, which is both a material and imaginary barrier to wealth, while time and again breaking its head on it.” Money in the form of precious metal, he insisted, remains the foundation from which the credit system “can never break free.” [Marx, Capital Volume III, p. 708, p. 741]…It is said there is really nothing new under the sun, and MMT, as advanced by Kelton, is...

Maduro hopes that the World Health Organisation (WHO) will ratify the results obtained by the IVIC and Venezuela will be able to prepare the mass production of this molecule as a cure for COVID-19 and provide it worldwide with the necessary international collaboration....Sputnik InternationalMaduro Says Venezuela Found 100% Effective Medicine Against COVID-19See alsoRTMaduro says Venezuelan scientists developed medicine that ‘cancels 100% of Covid-19’ with no side-effects

Today, I celebrate – my home town of Melbourne has recorded zero new infections for the first time since June 9, 2020 and zero deaths. But things are not so hot elsewhere in the world. As the US labour market started to rebound over the summer, I stopped updating my analysis of the claimants data horror story that had earlier demonstrated how sharp the decline in March and April had been. But I have still been monitoring it on a weekly basis and the information we are now getting from the US...

The story of Russian Prince Peter Kropotkin, evolutionary biologist and revolutionary anarcho-socialist.Kropotkin was a forerunner of the theory of group selection based on group fitness as a necessary addition to individual selection based on individual selection in natural selection as the driver of biological evolution. A basis of this theory is synergy, that is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so groups that are capable of cooperating and organizing are more successful in...

Another conspiracist.  Vandana Shiva has made a lucrative business out of spreading conspiracy theories about agricultural technologies, sustainable farming, capitalism and industry. Her popularity has grown as she positions herself as a modern-day Gandhi, a social justice warrior, an ecological feminist and an agroecologist. The problem is that most everything that comes out of her much amplified mouth is complete nonsense: pure fabrications easily and often refuted.Which leads to the...

 Craig Murray is in the at-risk group as he is over 60, obese, and has chronic illnesses, but he thinks society needs to return to normal because the risk to most people is small and the economy cannot cope with more restrictions. He doesn't mention long-covid. He says the oligarchs are making a fortune out of the crisis. At the moment China’s spectacular economic recovery and its very low official coronavirus fatality rates is being questioned by the West. I am not a covid sceptic. But...

The Guardian casts doubts over the extent of China's economic recovery from covid, but the Chinese people don't. Over the weekend, crowds packed a former industrial warehouse in Beijing as the China Fashion Week got underway, with models strutting mask-less on a square runway and guests oblivious to social distancing norms.Similarly vibrant scenes are being seen elsewhere in China as consumers return to cinemas, live performances and restaurants.To many, they indicate a late-summer recovery...