Mike Norman Economics

Short review of  The Business of Platforms by Michael Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer and Devid Yoffie. Digital platforms are now looming large in the globalized economy and policy reals. They are also generating a lot of questions, not the least of which concern natural monopoly and anti-trust, since in some cases the platform is becoming the market.The Enlightened EconomistThinking strategically about platformsDiane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a...

The Austrian theory of money virtually begins and ends with Ludwig von Mises's monumental Theory of Money and Credit, published in 1912.1 Mises's fundamental accomplishment was to take the theory of marginal utility, built up by Austrian economists and other marginalists as the explanation for consumer demand and market price, and apply it to the demand for and the value, or the price, of money. No longer did the theory of money need to be separated from the general economic theory of...

Neutral to slightly positive for MMT. NKH News (Japan)Is Japan a "model" for modern monetary theory?Shuji Noguchi | Senior Correspondent, NHK General Bureau for America

Together with Esteban Cruz and Pavlina Tcherneva I have written a chapter in a book on the Eurozone. It has been published by Revista Economica and is available for download here (PDF). This is the abstract…. econoblog 101New chapter on Euro Treasury and Job GuaranteeDirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin, research assistant at the Technical University of Chemnitz, and spokesperson of the board of Pufendorf-Gesellschaft eV in Berlin

It is Wednesday and so a less intensive blog post. Note how I no longer claim it will be shorter. The less intensive claim refers to how much research I have to put in to write the post. Apart from some beautiful music, the topic for today is yesterday’s RBA decision to cut interest rates to record low levels. The decision won’t save the economy from recession and highlights the sort of desperation that central bankers now face as governments shunt the responsibility of counterstabilisation...

They left out the biggest factor and I knew they wouldd.

Did you know that your favorite troll may be an intel agent? Craig Murray BlogHow To Spot A Twitter Troll Craig Murray, formerly British ambassador to Uzbekistan and Rector of the University of Dundee See alsoThe American CeonservativeThe Tulsi Effect: Forcing War Onto the Democratic Agenda Major Danny Sjursen, US Army (retired) For decades, freedom and democracy have been part of the U.S. brand. That doesn’t appear to hold true any longer, at least not in established democracies.A...

The trade imbalance part is relatively easy to tackle if China adopts an ‘open wallet’ approach to buy more from the US and resort to the ‘soybean strategy’ (commitment to purchase US agricultural products.) But then, how far this helps the US to tackle its multilateral trade problem is a different matter. (The US ran trade deficit with 102 countries in 2018.) Fundamentally, the problem lies in the US economy’s widening federal deficit over the next decade. In sum, tariff war with China can...

Andrei Martyanov looks at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft under the leadership of Col. Andrew Bacevich, US Army (retired), and Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies Looks highly positive to me, for reasons that Martyanov and also the significant development of left-right cooperation on the issue. Taken together with the success of anti- endless-war advocate and combat veteran Tusi...

Caitlin Johnstone is not too convinced by the new Soros / Koch Brothers anti-war think tank. The report claims that the new think tank seeks an end to America’s regime change agenda in Venezuela, for example, yet investigative journalist Greg Palast reports that the Koch brothers have been a major driving force behind that very agenda. The group claims to seek a de-escalation against Syria, yet investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley and alternative media outlet Mintpress News have...