Mike Norman Economics

Stocks at record highs, but there are things coming up that you need to know.

No housing bubble 2.0 and no recession on the 12-month horizon. Calculated RiskMy Slide Deck: "2020 Economic Forecast featuring the UCI Paul Merage School of Business"Bill McBride

Review of  Stuart Russell’s Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control. A major problem is programming AI lies in choosing criteria. Should criteria be based on what people do (behavior, homo economicus) or what people should do (rules, homo socialis). The Enlightened EconomistThe gorilla problemDiane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the...

By the time the inaugural Russia-Africa Summit closed on Thursday afternoon in Sochi, Russia, president Vladimir Putin and his administration had signed dozens of memorandums of understanding (MOU) and other agreements with the African countries that attended. The agreements include military cooperation, agricultural development, biotechnology, and oil and gas. They range from the minor, like Democratic Republic of Congo’s deal to sign data storage software, to more ambitious, like...

The bottom line is that we have become a nation of haves and have-nots. Of people who are falling behind economically, and people who are moving ahead. The Democratic Party represents the economic winners; the Republican Party, the economic losers. This graphic shows how much things have changed in a decade. The Democratic districts got richer, and the Republican districts got poorer…. The final slide says:Why does this matter? “When folks have less in common with one another, it’s hard to...

Resource scarcity developing which will affect war-fighting as well as domestic economies. But don't worry, climate change is just a hoax, you see. (snark)Naked CapitalismDire Climate Change Warning in Report for Pentagon: US Military Could Collapse in 20 Years; Lack of Water, Domestic Disasters, Disease, Mass Migrations as Threats to OperationsYves Smith

More than 46 years of initially military imposed neoliberalism has finally exploded into widespread frustration, protest and violence. This neoliberalism culminated in 2017 with twelve businessmen, among them Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, monopolizing at least 17% of the national GDP, demonstrating the huge gap in wealth equity. There is little doubt why the latest protests have exploded violently, with 18 dead so far – Piñera had declared war on his own people to protect his...

The real problem with the phase one accord announced on October 11 is the basic structure of the deal into which it presumably fits. From trade to currency, the approach is the same – prescribing bilateral remedies for multilateral problems. Project SyndicateNo Art to the US-China Trade Deal Stephen S. Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia See also Off-GuardianCan the US beat China in a “trade war”? Or will this be the end of...

In their most recent 10-year budget and economic forecast, the CBO made a big change, reducing their long-run forecast of the interest rate on government bonds by almost a full percentage point, from 3.7 to 2.9.  Most directly, the new, lower interest rate reduces expected debt payments over the next decade by $2.2 trillion. It also significantly reduces the expected debt-GDP ratio. Under the assumptions the CBO was using at the start of this year, the debt ratio under existing policy...

Short review of Richard J. Shiller's Narrative Economics. (The links are important.) How narratives shape presumptions as hidden assumptions, expectations and confidence that affect risk appetite, and behavior, including economic behavior, questioning how "rational" homo economicus actually is.  The post suggests the importance to TPTB of maintaining narrative control. Stumbling and MumblingNarrative Economics: a reviewChris Dillow | Investors Chronicle