Mike Norman Economics

The – RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) – technology marks best-practice in data storage and backup systems. It replaced SLED (single large expensive disk) to improve performance and insure against data loss from hardware failures. I have a series of RAID disks backing up the IT systems that I manage within my research centre. But when it comes to humanity, we do not follow this practice. Neoliberalism clearly subjugates human development and opportunity to the interests of...

Capitalism, imperialism and colonialism were joined at the hip at the birth of capitalism as an iteration of feudalism in which landlords had to admit industrialists and financiers to the club. Neoliberalism is an iteration of this arrangement that is joined to the hip of neo-imperialism and neocolonialism.The political arrangement that corresponds to this economic arrangement is oligarchy.The Case for Concerted ActionThe Purpose Of Economics Is To Camouflage Imperialism V. Ramanan

In order to understand better how the unfolding economic crisis is likely to affect U.S. households, this Chicago Fed Letter looks at what happens when borrowers miss debt payments and how long it takes for them to face a severe adverse consequence, such as foreclosure, wage garnishment, or repossession. FRB ChicagoWhat Are the Consequences of Missed Payments on Consumer Debts? Jonathan Lanning, Senior Policy Economist, and Jonathan Rose, Policy Advisor

Longish but one of the best I have encountered about what needs to be done to get past this event in a scientifically informed way as possible. I have chosen not to post much on the pandemic since the there is just so much material. To keep up, I recommend the daily Links post at Naked Capitalism.IEEE SpectrumHow Control Theory Can Help Us Control COVID-19 Greg Stewart is vice president of data science for the agriculture technology startup Ecoation and an adjunct professor at the...

Fed loan programs may now start to increase; Mnuching here saying he transferred balances to the Fed for financial guarantees for the corporate bond ETF lending program: Mnuchin says he sent the Fed money from a $454 billion coronavirus rescue package to begin lending to U.S. corporations https://t.co/aN8DYrAKPG — Bloomberg (@business) May 11, 2020 “I can tell you I’m authorizing a wire this morning going into the secondary corporate facility. It’s on it’s way out,” Mnuchin said in a CNBC...

I really liked this article, which is from 2007. Depending on how fast you read, the population of the planet is growing with every word that skitters beneath your eyeball. There are more than 211,000 people being added every day, and a population the size of Germany every year. As someone who has now been travelling around the world for decades, I see this change, and I feel it. You can smell it in the traffic jams of the Middle East. You can see it as you fly over Africa at night, and you...

Analysts forecast that growth will contract at a similar rate to rest of Europe Sweden's controversial approach doesn't seem to have worked.The Financial TimesSweden unlikely to feel economic benefit of no-lockdown approach

Our brains don’t let piddling little facts get in the way of a good story, allowing lies to infect the mind with surprising ease. I read many years ago that Isreali soldiers were once made to read a book that e written by psychologist, who wrote people tend not to like the middle ground much, prefering instead to be either on the left or right, as it was more exciting. He also said that countries sometimes get into war because people get seduced by the excitement of it all, along with...

With all the public discussion of MMT nowadays, and given the fact that gov't can just print trillions at will, it's time to stop with the ignorant, "we're out of money" comments. 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/

We are in new territory and sailing in uncharted waters. Be there dragons on the way. or submerged reefs ahead? Oh, and did a mention that the guide is blind and senile, and the captain and senior officers have no idea what a compass is? Last month’s analysis of the US labour force data – Tip of the iceberg – the US labour market catastrophe now playing out (April 6, 2020) – presaged what was to come. We now know more about the size of the iceberg. It is unimaginably large. Words fail...