Mike Norman Economics

I very much hope that this pessimistic forecast is wrong. It's bad but not horrible. The effect depends more on the response than to the disease. The effect of the disease will be minimal overall and most of the those that die were on the way out anyway (over 60).The demographic effect is not dire but the social effect could become dire since many of the issues leading to currency dysfunctionality may be amplified by the response. Cliodynamica — A Blog about the Evolution of...

The US is a global anomaly. This is the kind of "exceptionalism" one wants, other than those that are profiting from it.Conversable EconomistHealth Care Headed for One-Fifth of US EconomyTimothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

When we think of a "squeeze" we usually assume "short squeeze." However, the collapse in WTF price is apparently due to a long squeeze. The main lesson to be taken away is for financial speculators. If you are incapable of taking delivery of a futures contract, you should be asking yourself exactly why you are trading the product. One of the standard trade strategies I saw in sell side research back in the day was hedging breakeven trades with oil futures. Although that looked cute,...

Oil prices go negative for the first time in history. How can this happen? 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/

As the public scrutiny of the body of work we now refer to as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) widens there is a lot of misinformation abroad that distorts or otherwise undermines what has been done to date. Most, but not all the misinformation or emphasis comes from those who attack our work. Their criticisms usually disclose an incomplete understanding of where MMT came from and what the core propositions and logic are. They stylise, usually using terms and constructs that are present in...

New research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fuelling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared. Based on known cases, health officials have said the virus usually causes mild or moderate flu-like illness. The Canary - Reports suggest many have had coronavirus with no symptoms

In the early weeks when the virus emerged in Wuhan, the Chinese government neither suppressed evidence nor did their warning systems fail.  How China learned about SARS-CoV-2 in the weeks before the global pandemic

A balanced look at China and why the Chinese rejected liberalism, at least for now. It goes into all that is wrong with China, but explains why the Chinese people still prefer it to what they had before.After the British wrecked China, which left it run amok with warlords, causing great hardship and famines, the Chinese wanted law and order and a strong government. They are happy with the government because of the peace and prosperity it has brought so far.Why do so many people feel that the...

For a month I argued with the climate change deniers and I learnt an incredible amount about the subject. I lost interest in the climate change deniers when I realised they were sockpuppets who knew that climate change science was right, but they just loved being contrarians.Now it seems I'm at war with the anti-vaxxers, covid-19 conspiracy theorists, who say it's nothing, and the Bill Gates conspiracy theorists. Many of these people are on the left, like Whitney Webb, who has done a couple...

I’d still go with this article by Ed Yong, which covers biology, epidemiology, medicine, and politics. Here’s one bit: Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social ScienceThe best coronavirus summary so farAndrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University