Mike Norman Economics

Former anti-neoliberal president of Brazil is now in jail for corruption while in office. Rafael Correa, former anti-neoliberal president of Ecuador is under indictment for corruption while in office. Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro is under attack for imposing socialist dictatorship and corruption. Same with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Anti-globalist president of...

For the nerds. Not wonkish (no actual math).QuantaWith Category Theory, Mathematics Escapes From Equality Kenneth Hartnett

Perseverance Porn is a term invented by the people in this podcast to describe the idea of 'rugged individualism', which was invented in the 1980's and came from the American Dream myth.This 'perseverance' narrative has been used by the right to counter all collectivism or socialist thought; the idea being that no one needs to be poor because all they have to do is work very hard and then they can make it, which throws all the failure to succeed back on the individual. In this way, the right...

Good backgrounder. Not just about "interference."The Vineyard of the SakerTracking foreign interference in Hong Kong Pepe Escobar

Last week, I posted a graph in this blog post – RBA cuts rates as a futile exercise as Dr Schwarze Null demands fiscal action (October 2, 2019) that showed that over the 12 months to August 2019, 312 thousand jobs have been created (net) in Australia. The stunning result is that 301 thousand (96.5 per cent) of those net jobs have been in the public sector. The private labour market is thus stagnating. I was interested to delve further into that result to see if I could bring more detail to...

Econo-physicist Jason Smith demonstrates how to deal with a failed model forecast — acknowledge it, explain it, learn from it, and move on to improving the process. Information Transfer EconomicsCalling a recession too early (and incorrectly)Jason Smith

Angry BearMind F*K, Cambridge AnalyticaDaniel Becker The GuardianNeoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problemsThe big polluters’ masterstroke was to blame the climate crisis on you and meGeorge Monbiot Project SyndicateDemocracy on a Knife-EdgeDani Rodrik | Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Vox.euFrom workers to capitalists in less than two generations: Chinese urban elite...

Which is where financialization comes in. The defining event on the road to financialization in the 80s was not big bang: at the time, this was seen as merely the ending of a restrictive practice rather than the start of the creation of global investment banks. Instead, it was the credit liberalization of the early 80s, which made mortgages and consumer credit much easier to get. This did not merely increase the activity and hence profits of lenders: note the big rise in financial profits...

MMT is gaining traction among progressives as an option for paying for massive government spending projects such as the Green New Deal. Even if it is useful for countries such as the U.S., can it be applied in developing countries? PERI's Matías Vernengo says only to a limited extent. [embedded content]

A short blog post today – being Wednesday. I am still catching up on things after being away for a few weeks. The British Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) offered its latest contribution to Project Fear this week with their claim that the fiscal response to a no-deal Brexit would “would send government debt to its highest level in more than half a century”. Sounds scary. Which, of course, was the intention. That is what Project Fear is about. Creating illusions of disaster to discipline...