Mike Norman Economics

Trump thinks he’s fighting a new Cold War against China but he’s really just fighting the next round in an old war on Asia that’s over 200 years old. And it’s a war he cannot win....  Gold, Goats 'N GunsIs Trump’s New Cold War Necessary? Tom LuongoSee alsoIndia PunchlineIran surges in Venezuela in defiance of US sanctionsM. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service

On Friday, we had the extraordinary admission from our Federal government that they had overestimated the injection required to fund their wage subsidy JobKeeper program by some $A60 billion. When the overall program was announced the Treasury allocated $A133 billion to it. So now they are admitting to a 45 per cent forecasting error, which sort of dwarfs the worst errors that the IMF makes, and they sure make some bad mistakes in their projections. Whatever the reason for the mistake, the...

Friendly reminder that we’ve invented weapons which can end all life on earth and we’re in steadily increasing danger of setting them all off because some guys in a think tank wrote some words.... Caitlin Johnstone — Rogue JournalistChina Derangement Syndrome: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative MatrixCaitlin Johnstone

Overnight, Goldman confirmed as much, writing that President Xi participated at group discussions at the Two Sessions on Friday, with some of his comments reported on Saturday. Notably he said if it were not because of the pandemic, the growth target would be set at around 6%. He added that a global recession is guaranteed, and given this, if a numerical target (implicitly at a relatively high level) was set, it would require a strong stimulus and the focus of the government would be on the...

Behavioral economics vindicated. This 1979 Kahneman-Tversky study and its contemporary replication is about loss aversion. There are many, many more cognitive-affective biases affecting rationality. There is also illogic, since most people are not trained in either critical thinking or rigorous scientific method, and mathematical innumeracy is high, especially when the long term is included, as it is in many economists' assumptions about rationality and maximization. Then there is...

Barkeley Rosser says to take Roubini with a grain of salt, but only a grain, since he makes some important points. I am in agreement with that. Both optimism and pessimism need to be tempered with realism, and reality is fraught with uncertainty owing to human decisions that affect conditions. And just as the weather is relatively uncertain other than short term, reality has a way of delivering "exogenous shocks." So the watchword should be "caution." That is not a meme or mantra of this...

Stock market declines are linked to early death, illness, and fatal accidents. Are you at risk? This is what bothers me about the Lockdown, could it kill more people than Covid-19 in the long run?Losing money in the stock market can cost you your life, and I'm not just talking about the old cliché of people jumping out of skyscraper windows when markets crash. In fact, people with as little as 10 percent of their wealth in the stock market who experience a 10 percent loss stand an...

Risk of debt-deflation taking hold?Zero HedgeBankruptcy Tsunami Begins: Thousands Of Default Notices Are "Flying Out The Door" Tyler DurdenSee alsoZero HedgeTracking The Recovery: What Real-Time Data Says About The State Of The Global EconomyTyler Durden

It’s absolutely essential to position the Two Sessions [of the 13th National People’s Congress] within the larger, incandescent geopolitical and geoeconomic context of the de facto new Cold War – hybrid war included – between the US and China.... The great game is still about who controls the Eurasian land mass as the center of the "world island," set forth by British strategist Halford Mackinder, and the "rimland," proposed by Nicholas J. Spykman. These doctrines were the basis of the...

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) urges Donald Trump to avoid the slippery slope toward armed conflict as an Iranian oil tanker nears Venezuela on Sunday.... Consortium NewsVIPS MEMO: To the President—Avoid Hostilities Over Iranian Fuel Shipment to VenezuelaMay 22, 2020