Mike Norman Economics

Middle East Eye (non-starter)UK's Boris Johnson suggests swapping Iran nuclear deal for 'Trump deal' People's Dispatch (that would be opposition legislators, not "regime" legislators)US issues unilateral coercive measures against Venezuelan legislators Venezuelanalysis  US Sanctions Venezuela’s New Parliament Leader, Senior Opposition Lawmakers Lucas Koerner The Vineyard of the SakerThe West Will Try Again to Blow Up Russia From Within – Year Results Ruslan Ostashko Translated by Sasha...

Wednesday blog post – so only a few snippets including some discussion about Germany’s latest extreme outcome – a record fiscal surplus, which the Ministry of Finance is claiming is responsible. Judged by the fact that the economy has ground to a halt and there is a massive infrastructure deficit in the country as a result of a systematic starving of capital expenditure by the government, one has to ask: are they joking! The surplus was, in part, the result of the German government not...

What I refer to as the Monetary Monopoly Model is the simplest possible mathematical model that captures basic concepts from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Despite its simplicity, it gives a good feeling of how a sovereign could pin down the value of a brand new currency (relative to existing currencies, or the value of real goods or services). However, the model makes almost no assumptions about private sector behaviour, and such assumptions would be needed to simulate an existing...

The deniers were telling me that the sea level in New York Harbour hasn't risen, so climate change is not happening. So I put out lots of scientific articles saying that it was. They seem to have some contrary data but didn't present it. After I put out all my articles, a denier tweeted - Now climate hoaxers would have you believe that water levels are different in different parts of the world.  OMG how can anybody take you seriously? Here's my reply, which is an excerpt from a scientific...

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (important in that Pinker is a public intellectual)Steven Pinker on torture Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia UniversityBill Totten's Weblog (I am old enough to remember this)Why does China not make quality products like Japan and Korea do?Answered by John Ohkuma Thiel on August 21 2017 EPI (capital flows were expenses are least and the labor bill is...

Minsky’s journey from socialism to stability for capitalist profitability comes about because he and the post-Keynesians deny and/or ignore Marx’s law of value, just as the ‘market socialists’, Lange and Lerner, did. The post-Keynesians and MMTers deny/ignore that profit comes from surplus value extracted by exploitation in the capitalist production process and it is this that is the driving force for investment and employment. They ignore the origin and role of profit, except as a residual...

The numbers.The Unz ReviewChina, Number One Economic Power for Half Decade, Dashes OnJohn V. Walsh

Part 1. This series looks interesting. During my wonderful trip to the island of Taiwan, or the Republic of China, I decided to put some youtube "work" in well because I might never return. I spend one day of my trip wandering around looking for people to talk to. This Part 1 video shows a very long conversation I had with a University couple. They were super nice and agreed to the interview. [embedded content]

Democrats are gonna bash Trump on this...US budget deficit topped $1 trillion in 2019 for the first time in seven years https://t.co/S9fV34Mpuj— CNBC (@CNBC) January 13, 2020

A new International Monetary Fund (IMF) study shows that USD$5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. The equivalent of over 6.5% of global GDP of that year, it also represented a half-trillion dollar increase since 2015 when China ($1.4 trillion), the United States ($649 billion) and Russia ($551 billion) were the largest subsidizers Forbes James Ellsmoor - United States Spend Ten Times More On Fossil Fuel Subsidies Than Education