Mike Norman Economics

There is no substitute for the ‘big picture’. Economists should not be doctors but social scientists, or more accurately they should develop an economics that recognises the wider social forces that drive economic models, in particular, the social mode of production that is capitalism. That is political economy, mostly not taught in universities and certainly not practised in international agencies.... Michael Roberts Blog — blogging from a marxist economistEconomics as a social...

Peter Hadfield on conspiracy theories. [embedded content]

Britain at a crossroads.Boris wants to turn Britain into a low wage ecomomy, despite neoliberalisn consistently failing for forty years. Given the dismal empirical record of forty years of pro-market reforms, the only way this Conservative Government can create the low tax, low regulation, law and order state of Neoliberal fever dreams is under the cover of other projects. Brexit offers a unique opportunity: it allows a government of economic extremists to manipulate our cultural identity to...

I don't know if this is a good thing or bad thing. Quantum computers seemed to be so powerful I thought they mignt be dangerous, on the other hand, they may have saved a lot of power - which would have be great for cryptocurrencies.  Because they work on quantum probability, it seems you can never be sure how it's going to go.  Google announced this fall to much fanfare that it had demonstrated "quantum supremacy" — that is, it performed a specific quantum computation far faster than...

Donald Trump has got away with his many trade wars over the last eighteen monthts because the US economy has been on steroids, a form of macroeconomic cheating that briefly steals growth from the future but catches up with you. The rest of the world has been struggling with an auto-led manufacturing slump. This came close to recession conditions earlier this year and touched bottom in August. The Telegraph  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Donald Trump is losing his trade war with China,...

Ukrainian fascists who previously fought in a US-backed neo-Nazi militia joined the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, sharing their tactics and showing off their tattoos. Neo-Nazis from Ukraine have flown to Hong Kong to participate in the anti-Chinese insurgency, which has been widely praised by Western corporate media and portrayed as a peaceful pro-democracy movement. The Greyzone  Ben Norton - Ukrainian neo-Nazis flock to the Hong Kong protest movement

“We said that this gathering [the summit] should be seen as a threat to global humanity. It’s quite clear from its history - that is NATO’s history - that it is a structure that is used to maintain and advance Western global capitalist interest, and for that it should be seen as a threat. Most of the interventions by NATO have been beyond the pale of legality,” [Ajamu] Baraka, [national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace,] told hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon. “The very fact...

Healthcare corporations are spending millions of dollars on astroturfed attack ads against Medicare for All. The Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future, for example, a coalition of hospitals and insurance companies, has spent $1 million on a television campaign against changes to the current healthcare system they profit from. The commercial presents the Partnership as a grassroots organization of concerned citizens, rather than that corporate front group exposed by The Intercept that...

Defend Democracy PressArmy and Secret Services are threatening Corbyn with coup d’ etatBritish Secret Services attack Jeremy Corbyn British Generals: They like crimes like the Iraq War and Libya bombing, they hate Corbyn! A real threat: A very British coup The Independent British Army 'could stage mutiny under Corbyn', says senior serving generalCaroline Mortimer

The diplomat then proceeded to tell me who was and who was NOT Latin American, and pointing to the photo of a needy child which graced every table, he said: “For instance, that child there is not Latin American”. Astonished I asked how can you say that? She is Peruvian! “No, she is Indian. Latin Americans are those of us who stem from Spain and Portugal.” He was not kidding nor making some sort of epistemological statement on the origin of Latin languages. He was unashamedly, sneeringly ,...