Mike Norman Economics

Tradeoffs.Conversable EconomistA COVID-19 Two-Pronged Choice: Production Possiblity FrontiersTimothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Excellent summary of monetary operations and how they are conducted. The Bank of England has just announced it will now do exactly what I suggested above: type funds into the UK government’s account and give it a "ways and means" overdraft, just to keep the books in order. People are beginning to understand how the system works. They are beginning to understand that governments in monetary systems such as our own can never run out of their own currencies. They are beginning to get modern...

Regulators have given banks the green light to use stimulus funds to pay off debts that individuals owe them. Your money or your life! This week, the $1,200 CARES Act payments Congress approved in response to the coronavirus crisis will begin to appear in Americans’ bank accounts. The funds will be wired to eligible recipients who previously authorized the IRS to post their refunds (or Social Security payments) through direct deposit. This will speed relief far more quickly than...

So how does this end? Michael Hudson: Ha! The same way that Rome ended. In Rome the oligarchy always overreached itself, impoverishing the economy. In Rome that led to a Dark Age. We’re going to be entering something like that at the end of summer in this country, because you’re going to have many homeless pouring onto the street, many families losing their homes, small businesses who’ve had to go under, medium-sized businesses that have decided to sell out to the large private capital...

One frequently encounters variations of the phrase "unsustainable debt trajectory" (or similar) in statements by mainstream economists. The phrase is popular as it offers what appears to be a sophisticated criticism of some fiscal policy setting that is disapproved of, but without having any content that can be used to prove the speaker wrong. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) largely rejects that "debt sustainability" has theoretical validity for a floating currency sovereign. I will focus on...

I am monitoring the US Department of Labor’s weekly data releases for the unemployment insurance claimants account, that I reported in my last commentary on the US labour market – Tip of the iceberg – the US labour market catastrophe now playing out (April 6, 2020). Their latest release (April 9, 2020) – Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims – shows that in the prior week ending April 4, 2020, the initial claims rose by 6,606,000, but this was down on the increase the week before by 261,000....

hahahahahahha!!!I guess maybe one good thing out of all this is that these morons get to eat shit....Our new projections out today see budget deficits totaling more than $3.8 trillion (18.7 percent of GDP) this year under current law https://t.co/6P5oxdVxd5. pic.twitter.com/bs79QflHL0— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) April 14, 2020

Findings provide an opportunity to develop drugs and vaccines for coronaviruses before they emerges from animals to cause a human epidemic: Date: November 10, 2015 Margaret Thatcher said that the government budget was like a household budget, and it meant we were living beyond our means.  The Conservatives said that Austerity would bring about a thriving economy, so they would have to make the necessary cut backs.  The conservatives said that socialists like spending other people's...

A strain found in India showed changes in the mechanism used to bind the virus to human cells which could render current research futile Researchers are targeting the same process that allowed Sars to infect people, but the mutation could upend their assumptions The coronavirus mutation that threatens the race to develop vaccine

India PunchlineWhy the OPEC+ deal is a many-splendoured thing M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service Reminiscence of the FutureCognitive Dissonance. Andrei Martyanov OilPriceOPEC+ Deal Is “Too Little And Too Late” Nick CunninghamPeoples DispatchThe OPEC+ deal on oil production: what are the implications? Abdul Rahman SputnikUS Energy Department Estimates 2.1% Drop in Oil Production in May, 1% Drop in Natural GasThe Unz ReviewModels: the Logic of FailureJames...