Mike Norman Economics

The mainstream financial press has been remarkably quiet about the Federal Reserve’s appointment (March 24) of BlackRock to manage its massive corporate debt purchase program in response to the Covid-19 crisis. That silence might have a simple explanation: you don’t slag your boss if you know what’s good for you. BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink may now be the most powerful man in the world, overseeing not just the Fed’s new (potentially $4.5 trillion) corporate slush-fund, but also managing $27...

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Crude inventories built by a record amount in the latest week. What is the outlook? Invest and trade using the concepts of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/mmt-trader/?s2-ssl=yes/

Lockdown.Bill Totten's WeblogIf You Still Don’t Understand How China Succeeded Stopping the Virus, Mario Cavolo, Shenyanghttps://www.linkedin.com (April 04 2020)See alsoWho knew when?Econobrowser And Here It Comes: There’s an early January PDB on the Novel CoronavirusMenzie Chinn | Professor of Public Affairs and Economics, Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Madison, co-editor of the Journal of International Money and Finance, and a Research Associate...

This is a reprint from Nathan's freemium Substack. If you are at all interested the nitty gritty of these subjects, Nathan is one of the go-to guys. You can subscribe at this link. MR OnlineStanch the bleeding from local and state finances with local currenciesNathan Tankus

Experts say it means there are "fewer obstacles for the immune system to neutralise the virus with antibodies". The world's biggest pharmaceutical company, Johnson & Johnson, told Sky News last month it was confident it had formulated a COVID-19 vaccine and wanted to make available on a not-for-profit basis in 2021. The firm hopes to begin human trials in September, which could mean mass production by early next year. The HIV comparison is significant, as the research...

It is Wednesday and just a collection of snippets today. I am trying to finish a major piece of work and so that is what I am mostly doing today. And learning to program Geojson formats in R, so I can overcome the decision by Google to abandon their fusion table facility, which my research centre has relied on for some years to display map layers. And I have some press interviews to deal with. But today we consider the claim by the Financial Times editorial the other day that “Radical...

Some links you may not be aware of to pass on.Tax Research UKModern monetary theory resourcesRichard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

A national government with the authority to tax gets to nominate a money of account along with the ‘money things’ that will be accepted in fulfillment of the tax obligations it imposes. In doing so, the government creates a demand for a particular money – a ‘state money’. This motivates the formation of markets for goods and services whose prices are denominated specifically in the money of account. This is true whether the national government with the authority to tax is a monetary...

I'm not one for demonising China, but according to the virus expert in this video the Chinese Government suppressed the evidence about its outbreak? Trump gets just as much criticism as is seems both he and Xi cared more about the economy.The virus expert in this video says the worst is yet to come this summer, and then even more next winter, but it could have been prevented, she says. [embedded content]