Mike Norman Economics

Online sales continue to benefit and offline sales lag, as would be expected. Probably too early to tell whether and how much this will persist.McKinseyHow Chinese consumers are changing shopping habits in response to COVID-19 Xin Huang is a partner in McKinsey’s Hong Kong office, where Sha Sha is a senior partner; Dymfke Kuijpers is a senior partner in the Singapore office; Lavonda Li is a consultant in the Shanghai office, where Chenan Xia is a partner.See also at McKinseyFast-forward...

What a shame! Warren Mosler said in a recent tweet that if money is created at the central bank to pay for a Basic Income it could work, but your playing with fire. With MMT, he says, money creation is tied to the Job Guarantee.An experiment with 'free money' in Finland made people happier but did not improve employment levels and would be 'unsustainable', a study has found.  Participants in the Finnish study 'were more satisfied with their lives and experienced less mental strain,...

Only proof of concept at this stage, but promising if/when it scales.RTChinese scientists harness fourth state of matter to create ‘air plasma’ jet engine that runs on electricity aloneSee alsoRTGame changer: German scientists find antibodies that BLOCK coronavirus from spreading further

Russian demographics based on recent polling. Russia is a pretty conservative country.IrrussianalityRussia’s not so radical youthPaul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Could be any of the MMT economists talking.Yahoo FinanceWarren Buffett explains the simple reason why the US will never default on its debtEthan Wolff-Mann, Senior Writer

More public spending money and a high deficit is not the problem if countries issue their own currency, he added, before conceding that “the market can’t solve the three great market failures of our time – a downturn, climate charge and a health crisis.” “Since 2008 we’ve had the GFC, the European crisis and now we have COVID 19,” the CIO said. “We are now entering a period of new international economics.”... Investment MagazineStatewide’s Michalakis: No choice but MMTElizabeth Fry...

Another good one from PCR.Those who are insisting that it is their right to go about as they please without a mask or any precaution are demonstrating their complete lack of social responsibility. Their behavior affects other people, and they most certainly have no more right to infect others than they do to go around with a gun shooting people. No one has a Constitutional right to infect other people. PCR Craig Roberts - Ignorance Is Brewing a Second Wave of Covid-19

PCR is taking a sensible position on Covid-19. Reprinted in full. There is a lot of conflicting information about Sweden.  Some claim that “open” Sweden has no higher infection and death rates than its neighbors, a claim contradicted by this report:  https://www.zerohedge.com/health/swedens-covid-19-handling-failure-or-success  Others tauting the “open” Swedish model ignore that according to the Swedish Riksbank de facto the Swedish economy is closed. Sweden has experienced a sharper...

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, much like policy responses to the global financial crisis and Great Recession of a decade ago, carry a couple of clear macroeconomic lessons for anyone who cares to learn them: 1. A currency-issuing government faces no revenue constraint.2. A currency-issuing government dictates the terms on which it issues debt. It is not only electorates that, understandably, have been slow to appreciate these aspects of reality. Plenty of economists, perhaps...

It is Wednesday and I have a lot of commitments and deadlines hanging over me today. But I thought I would briefly comment on the yesterday’s – Decision – by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (German Federal Constitutional Court) (May 5, 2020) on the legality of the ECB’s Public Sector Purchase Programme. The BVerfG concluded that the ECB has been operating ultra vires and made orders as appropriate, which bind the German government and the Bundesbank and demonstrate once again the myth of...