Mike Norman Economics

The Bank of England has agreed temporarily to finance government borrowing in response to COVID-19 if funds cannot immediately be raised from debt markets, reviving a measure last used to any large degree during the 2008 financial crisis. Britain's government typically borrows money direct from markets through bond issuance, and this week financial markets showed a strong appetite to fund more than 10 billion pounds of government bonds, some at record-low yields. Bank of England to...

The IFS says hundreds of thousands of people may develop chronic health conditions or mental health problems in the coming years. The full effect of the coronavirus pandemic on people's long-term and mental health will not be felt for two years, experts have predicted. Coronavirus: Health effects of a COVID-19 recession 'could be worse than the pandemic'

What we knew already. The perps accuse others of doing what they themselves are doing or have done. The power game. When I was a young man, one of my mentors told me, "You need to study power." He went on to say that power is endemic, and the only ones that actually understand it are those that use it. It's sort of like playing poker. If you don't know who the mark is, you are. IrrussianalityExposing the disinformation industry Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public...

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...