Mike Norman Economics

The European project has always made life easier for capital. That’s why multinationals like it so much I was once so passionate about Europe that I wanted the UK to join the Euro. It was all passion and no thought. Larry Elliott always argued against the Euro, and it turns out he was right. He is one of the better journalists at the Guardian.I'm still passionate about Europe, but a future more social democratic one. The truth is that social Europe never delivered all that much, even in...

Immigration with Chinese characteristics:Breaking News: The 39 bodies found in a truck near London on Wednesday were believed to be those of Chinese citizens, the British police say https://t.co/Ss5kDc2xNT— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 24, 2019

Many in the West and Hong Kong mistakenly believe that mainland Chinese are unthinking and uncritical. On the contrary, one consequence of life behind China’s Great Firewall is a hypersensitivity to the veracity of information The Chinese people are aware of the censorship and in many ways are less gullible than the unsuspecting Western public who believe our media is fair and free.  There isn't a lot of censorship in China, in fact, most of the Western MSM is allowed, but I know the...

So-called digital currency (it's not currency–yet) is about a type of payments system that functions on the basis of blockchain transactions. If a central bank issues currency using blockchain it will be a genuine digital currency. It looks like it is coming, and at least one country is already doing it (Venezuela).The take-away is that blockchain payment is highly efficient and will eventually drive out less efficient systems. China apparently gets this, and China is already way ahead in...

Backgrounder. Beyond neoliberalism. Straight up neo-feudalism.NEOBeirut is Burning: Rebellion Against the Elites has Commenced Andre VitchekSee alsoStrategic Culture FoundationWest Can’t Wash Its Hands of Lebanon’s Meltdown Now, Given That It Supported the Corrupt System for Decades Martin Jay

Whenever I write about oil as a primary motive for US imperialism, I always get a bunch of right-wingers objecting that that makes no sense because the US has plenty of oil, and that it’s really about freedom and democracy or communism or Zionism or pedovore cults or Illuminati or whatever. What they miss, in their squirming attempts to avoid cognitive dissonance, is that it’s not about having and consuming oil, it’s about controlling oil. Control what governments can and cannot access...

FAKE NEWS. ABC shows Turks slaughtering Kurds – actually a mad minute at a US gun range. But, whatever, an honest mistake that anyone could make.... Russia ObserverRUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 24 OCTOBER 2019Patrick Armstrong

Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft has already completed the switch away from the U.S. dollar to euros in its export contracts to minimize risks from potential new U.S. sanctions, Rosneft’s chief executive Igor Sechin said on Thursday.... Russia is looking at ways to settle its energy transactions in euros and/or rubles in order to avoid dealing with dollars, Russian Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin told the Financial Times in an interview earlier this month. OilpriceOne Of The World’s...

A little bit of a different blog post format today. I mentioned in this blog post – Apparently core MMT idea is now supported by the mainstream (October 16, 2019) – that the Japanese government had taken issued a statement, by way of a formal answer to a series of questions from Japanese CDR politician Kazuma Nakatani on the opening day of the new Parliament (October 4, 2019). The Japanese government reply was not available in full at the time I wrote that but it was reported in the Japanese...

Despite all the "pumping" reserves went down. Lira is bullish.