Mike Norman Economics

To hide this reality |fossil fuel subsidies], the fossil fuel industry has invested in a massive public relations scheme (read: propaganda campaign) to paint itself as the defender of the free market. In the US, the fossil fuel industry has even, quite successfully, duped Evangelicals into associating the fossil fuel industry with free markets, and free markets with God’s will. Thus, attacks on the fossil fuel industry become attacks on God’s will. But if God’s will was really aligned...

Russia’s new initiatives associated with sizeable increases in social spending and outlays on national projects as outlined by President Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly in the beginning of this year mark a new beginning in Russia’s economic policy. After extended periods of prioritizing the accumulation of savings and building of reserves, Russia’s economy is switching into spending mode, with greater weight accorded to economic growth compared to an overarching emphasis on...

Brexit has given the U.K’s self-seeking Prime Minister the opportunity to show he actually knows what he’s doing. An interesting look at Boris Johnson, a very liberal Conservative.  Andrew Sullivan - Boris’s Blundering Brilliance

What has confused economists for centuries is that they’ve focused on what’s inside the fence of property rights, not the fence itself. And who can blame them? Historically, the things that were owned were easy to see. In contrast, the act of ownership — the institutional fence of private property — was abstract. And so economists tied wealth to property, not the property-rights fence.… In reality, wealth had always been non-material — a social relation of exclusion. The digital revolution...

Quite a good piece that pushes the MMT view without naming it.Progressive Economy ForumThe Monetarist fantasy is overRobert Skidelsky | Crossbench peer and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University

Admittedly a promotion video, but interesting none-the-less. If CO2 can become a valuable commodity, then we won't be letting it escape into the atmosphere anymore.Climate change and its consequences is one of the biggest challenge of the 21st century. According to leading scientists, global CO2 emissions must be cut in half by 2030 to prevent serious climate impacts, such as severe weather conditions, long droughts or the melting of glaciers and icebergs. To avoid these impacts new...

Spoiler: MMT-informed fiscal policy. The WeekThe 1 economic experiment Shinzo Abe won't try Jeff Spross

One of the pieces of pseudo-science that floats around in popular discussion of bonds is the belief that bond investors are deadly afraid of inflation. In particular, bonds "lose money" every time the Consumer Price Index rises -- which is most months, in most developed countries. As far as I can tell, this is the legacy of some Economics 101 textbook story that has been passed on from "expert" to "expert" over the decades. The correct answer is that nominal yields largely reflect the...

It will be interesting to see what Boris Johnson does, he seems to be more pragmatic and less dogmatic than other Conservatives.I've read he wants to keep his new voters, so he has shifted slightly to the left.The forced resignation of the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, is the latest sign that macroeconomic policy is being upended, and not only in the UK. In addition to completing the ritual burial of the austerity policies pursued by UK governments since 2010,...

A growing number of Americans describe climate change as a crisis, and two-thirds say President Trump is doing too little to tackle the problem. The results, from a poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), point to a growing disconnect between Americans worried about the warming planet and Trump administration officials, who have aggressively scaled back Obama-era environmental regulations and relinquished the nation’s role as a global leader in...