Mike Norman Economics

Every time Amazon expands by 1% 8,000 other companies go out of business. Jeff Bezos keeps expanding into new areas which now includes business with the Pentagon. I didn't know this, but Amazon uses 'personal pricing ' and my immediate thought was that this was a discount for regular customers, but it's the opposite, in fact. If you regularly buy a product, Amazon may increase the price by 3%, so the price you see is not the one everyone else sees. And they might increase it again sometime...

Finally, a positive article on the GND and MMT among a barrage of negative ones.The Berkshire EagleEdward Lane: GND and Modern Monetary Policy Edward Lane, ASA, CFP, is an adjunct professor of Finance and Economics, University at Albany (SUNY)

Craig Murray raises some good points here.I don't know what to make of Trump either, but underneath Craig article I left a comment saying Trump maybe be a narcissist, but he's not a psychopath. And he even seems to like being loved, especially by his base, which gives him a bit of a human quality.His base says that Trump hates war. Well, who knows, but let's hope so. Although he did want to start a war with Venezuela, but that may have been another bluff. I say that with apologies to all my...

On June 13, 2019, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) released its – Terms of Reference for the Evaluation of the Greek Programmes. At the same time, the head of the ESM (Klaus Regling) was lecturing Greece, which is approaching a national election next month, that it “risks missing its budget target” (Source). Apparently, as the failed Syriza government tries to gain electoral support after years of abusing the Greek people who put their faith in them, the bean counters are worried that...

Time domain graph (abstraction) below quantifying the policy of US banking system Reserve Asset levels as percent  of US GDP over time for about the last 100 years. Color lines added to identify periods of time between significant transitions of the policy.Starting from left, green line identifies a period of time post WW1 where the reduction caused economic out performance known figuratively as 'The Roaring Twenties!'.... Red line identifies a period of time when a large and fast increase...

Apple woes mount. Is the shine off?Zero HedgeiPhone X Sales Collapse Triggers Serious Breach Of Contract With SamsungTyler Durden

More geopolitics and geostrategy, and how it impacts finance and economics. The danger here is that POTUS and US hardliners see this as a zero-sum game. This greatly increases the chance that it will lead to kinetic warfare on a grander scale. The US is already deep into deploying economic, information, and cyberwarfare against a number of countries, and positioning for kinetic warfare. The situation now is increasingly hair-trigger.Zero HedgeRabobank: Trump-Xi Meeting Is Not About...

Grasping Reality Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (2002-2018): Income Inequality in the United StatesBrad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

I was quite surprised by this Telegraph article, where Jonathon Ford says that private companies are not anymore efficient than publicly run ones, and that there is no 'magic of the private sector'. He then adds that PPI was bad for tax payer.EDF, an energy company, want money up front to help pay for a new nuclear reactor, but Jonathon Ford says the government could fund it more cheaply and could even start up a national infrastructure fund to finance public projects at fine rates.Jonathon...

Does technology lead to technocracy and is technocracy a form of feudalism? Technocracy and its tendency toward neo-feudalism is based on ownership of natural monopolies. Natural monopolies are candidates for anti-trust action.The New GeographyWhat Do the Oligarchs Have in Mind for Us? Joel Koltin