Mike Norman Economics

The Powell Manifesto aka the – Attack on American Free Enterprise System – was a memo sent on August 23, 1971 to the US Chamber of Commerce by lawyer, Lewis Powell, who had been hired by the Chamber to craft a strategy to restore the dominant position of corporate America, which had felt diminished by the gains made by workers and citizens from social democratic policies. The dominant narrative in the late 1960s was focused on the so-called ‘profit squeeze’, which related to the...

I loved Lindy Hop, Rock n' Roll never came close. Some great jazz here too. [embedded content]

What happens if you turn space-time upside-down? A parallel universe going in reverse.  This universe that’s inside the “second cone” is too far down space-time for us to see. Time might seem to run backward there from our reference frame, Learned said. But beings in that universe would still see cause coming before effect, just like we do in ours. Time runs away from the Big Bang in that universe, just like it does in ours. "Away from the Big Bang" in that universe is the...

The Destruction of War  You can only watch it on YouTube, click on the link in the box.  [embedded content] That's how it looked like just after the German surrender! Fascinating moving pictures in color show the situation of the city in summer 1945 and daily life in the ruins.

Recent shows including ‘The Romance of Tiger and Rose’ and ‘We Are All Alone’ advocating women’s empowerment are finding large audiences in China Postmodernism takes China with a storm.In the recent Chinese fantasy period drama series The Romance of Tiger and Rose, women are the stronger sex. They scold men for courting attention by showing off their legs, and male children are looked down upon and considered useless. In this ancient matriarchal society, men are not allowed to study or...

The oil wars continue. Oilprice.comWho Will Win The Ultimate War For Libya’s Oil? Jen AlicSee alsoRT Macron accuses Turkey of playing ‘dangerous game’ in Libya, calls its standoff with French ship example of NATO ‘brain death’

SummaryPrimer on Modern Monetary Theory. Useful to understand Modern Monetary Theory and economics in general. Concept leans to the Socialist and Utopian side of the ledger. Not yet convinced but interested. Sees difficulty in passing policy based on use of policy space chiefly because the electorate is deficit and debt adverse (after years of being exposed to the conventional wisdom and fear-mongering).The post is interesting, too, in that it is the first I have encountered that is...

People getting all worked up about "yield curve control." Relax. Nothing new or ground breaking.

The MMT meme again. Macro BusinessKohler hearts MMT David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super.

We need a government-funded program to guarantee a job to anyone who wants one. The wage level of these "job guarantee" jobs should be set at a genuinely liveable wage. This would provide an effective minimum wage, but one enforced through workers themselves rejecting offers below the job guarantee level rather than through porous legal mechanisms.How could we possibly afford this? If we drop misleading mainstream economics frames and use a modern monetary theory (MMT) lens, then it...