Mike Norman Economics

The Bank of England is right to step in to fund the Treasury’s coronavirus stimulus package, because there are more important things to worry about than government debt The truth is that most of the state debt we owe to each other, and we have the capability to meet obligations denominated in pound sterling. Policymakers have long been concerned that if the public understood this then they might ask awkward questions such as: if we could do this to deal with the coronavirus crisis, why...

The recent death count reached six times the normal number of deaths for the city at this time of year, a surge in deaths much larger than what could be attributed to normal seasonal variations from influenza, heart disease or other more common causes. The city’s largest mass casualty event in recent memory, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, claimed only a small fraction as many lives. It is too soon to know the precise causes of death for New Yorkers in this period. Although many...

Turning into more than a trade war. Is a Thucydides Trap springing?Zero HedgeTrump Administration "Turbocharging" Efforts To Grapple Global Supply Chains From China Tyler Durden

Series of quotes.Fictional Reserve Barking The macroeconomics of Robert Solow: A partial viewby circuit

In the April edition of its magazine Proceedings, the US Naval Institute, a nonprofit group connected to the US Naval Academy, floated the idea of Congress issuing letters of marque to private ships, authorizing them to prey on Chinese maritime vessels in a bid to turn the tide against Beijing in the South China Sea. “Unleash the Privateers! The United States should issue letters of marque to fight Chinese aggression at sea,” write authors Brandon Schwartz and Mark Cancian, the latter...

We're in a real-time experiment where an unprecedented health crisis is being met with massive fiscal support. Will it work? Trade and invest using the concepts and understandings of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/mmt-trader/?s2-ssl=yes/

The Trump administration seems to be adopting the Steve Bannon analysis of China as a global threat that needs to be cut off and isolated to preserve Western US-led hegemony, already slipping away, along with American soft power, necessitating a gloves-off approach to "get the job done."This is leading to a new cold war that risks going kinetic as US strategist conclude that China must be stopped militarily if necessary before it becomes a peer competitor in the near future.The problem...

Efficiency versus resilience in effectiveness. For example, not all redundancy is inefficient. Think emergency brake. Maybe just-in-time delivery of inventory needs rethinking, especially in vital areas.Conversable EconomistPaul Romer: From Pin Factory to Chaos MonkeyTimothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Global crises are revealing. How different countries are responding to the Covid-19 pandemic can tell us a lot about how their systems function. One of the most interesting differences is in how governments are offsetting the economic damage caused by extended lockdowns. Unprecedented reductions in economic activity have led many countries to rapidly adopt unprecedented policies, such as direct relief payments to households, or government grants to companies to cover worker salaries. These...

With governments searching for ways to manage the unprecedented economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the policy agenda implied by Modern Monetary Theory has become all the more appealing. Yet, insofar as MMT ignores the demand for money, it is a risky guide for policymakers. Inflation down the road.  "They" need a new meme. The threat now is deflation.Project SyndicateThe Problem With MMTWillem H. Buiter, a former chief economist at Citigroup, is a visiting professor at Columbia...