Mike Norman Economics

Trade war escalating tit for tat. Who blinks first? And what happens if neither side blinks? ...with no trade deal in sight, at 12:00am on Sunday, the Trump administration slapped tariffs on $112 billion in Chinese imports, the latest escalation in a trade war that’s ground the global economy to a halt, sent Germany into a recession, and given the market an alibi to keep rising because, wait for it, "a trade deal is imminent." Only, it isn't, and 1 minute later, at 12:01am EDT, China...

Wallerstein lived a deep commitment to justice, scholarship and change. He has written dozens of remarkable and award-winning books, hundreds of influential papers, thousands of shrewd commentaries. His superb, eye-opening and insightful World‑Systems Analysis (culminated in four-volume masterpiece: 1974, 1980, 1989 and 2011) has transformed the way we understand history, capitalism, colonialism, social sciences, and the present turbulent times. Wallerstein was one of those rare academics...

Let’s hope we don’t go through the next recession debating in the same way whether fiscal policy can affect GDP, particularly during periods of economic slack and accommodative monetary policy (e.g., Fama, Mulligan, etc.).… If we do, I foresee social unrest.Menzie Chinn lays out an empirical case against neoclassical argument based on non-empirical assumptions like Ricardian equivalence, for example, that also turn out to be contradicted by data-based evidence.EconbrowserPrebuttal: Fiscal...

Review of Extreme Economies: from Akita in Japan to Santiago in Chile, from Glasgow to Kinshasa by Richard Davies. Davies picks this up in the conclusion: “The biggest gap in economics is the way it completely ignores social capital.” This is why our Bennett Institute Wealth Economy team is exploring the measurement of social capital. Economics doesn’t entirely ignore it – it gets lables such as ‘institutions’ or ‘goodwill’ – but is treated as a black box at best. So I agree with the...

Ricardo Hausmann slammed banks for doing business with Venezuela’s elected government. But financial disclosure forms filed with Harvard show the putsch-plotting economist earned fees from kings, dictators, and military occupiers. There is no democracy, the world is run by oligarchs. Behind the scenes this goes on.  Hausmann was compensated for speeches and consulting services he performed for governments around the globe, from Peru (2012) to Brazil (2015) to Kazakhstan (2014 and...

Review. Two-time Oscar nominee Keira Knightley is known for being in "period pieces" such as Pride and Prejudice, so her playing the lead in the new film Official Secrets, scheduled to be release in the U.S. this Friday, may seem odd at first. That is until one considers that the time span being depicted-- the early 2003 run-up to the invasion of Iraq-- is one of the most dramatic and consequential periods of modern human history. It is also one of the most poorly understood, in part...

Defend Democracy PressYellow Vests Gather for 42nd Week of Protests in Paris‘Stop the Coup, Defend Democracy’, Thousands Shout in the UKSecond ‘yellow vests’ protest in Geneva draws several hundred SI‘Stop the Coup Coup Kachoo!’: Glasgow Protesters Rally Against ProrogationProtests Over PM Johnson's Move to Suspend Parliament Take Place in Glasgow - Video Reuters Hong Kong commercial centers paralyzed as protesters, police exchange petrol bombs and tear gas TASSAbout 750 protesters...

Middle-class people in the U.S. are losing ground to their peers in other rich countries.  U.S capitalism is falling the middle and lower classes. Trickle down is not working. Our income estimates may actually underestimate the economic well-being of Canadians relative to Americans. Indeed, Canadians usually receive more in-kind benefits from their governments, including notably in health care (as noted also by Wolfson and Murphy, 1998). Had these benefits been included in the estimates,...

Must-read! Branko Milanovic sums up the fundamental issue affecting political economy as economics in relation to society. Neoclassical economic is like doing engineering with a total focus on efficiency and ignoring resilience. This approach views redundancy as inefficient. This is like eliminating the emergency brake on vehicles. An economy is the material life-support system for a society and its culture. It is the welfare and progress of the society that set the priorities....

Aaron Maté's round up of the Russia-gate nonsense, which has discredited mainstream journalism as well as distract it from analysing Trumps' terrible policies.Aaron Maté slams MSNBC's latest Russiagate dud, exposing how Lawrence O'Donnell's embarrassing retraction is part of a pattern of bogus conspiracy theories that push the limits of political self-satire. [embedded content]