Mike Norman Economics

My fundamental understanding of the world has been warped by a now challenged approach. I'm not alone.… In the end, the chief byproduct of my general education exposure was a kind of indoctrination into the centrality of markets to understanding human behavior and the apparent importance of economics professors. I’m not alone. Introductory economics could be one of the most widely received credits in all of higher education. And unlike other common courses (like say, first-year writing),...

A few lonely voices disputed this consensus. In their view, these two distinct mysteries weren’t actually distinct — or all that mysterious. The reason wage growth wasn’t rising as one would expect with the economy near full employment was that the economy wasn’t near full employment. And the reason the economy wasn’t near full employment was that all those prime-age workers who’d supposedly exited the labor force for reasons totally unrelated to the strength of the economy hadn’t actually...

The expansion of banks such as Citigroup into Cuba, Haiti, and beyond reveal a story of capitalism built on blood, labor, and racial lines.  Scrubbed from the pages of glossy coffeetable books, the history of U.S. imperialism can be found in the archives of Wall Street’s oldest, largest, and most powerful institutions. A deep dive into the vaults and ledgers of banking houses such as Citigroup, Inc., and J. P. Morgan Chase and Co. reveals a story of capitalism and empire whose narrative is...

After seven years of economic research and developing forecasting models that have outperformed the experts, author, blogger, and physicist Dr. Jason Smith offers his controversial insights about the major driving factors behind the economy derived from the data and it's not economics — it's social changes. These social changes are behind the questions of who gets to work, how those workers organize, and how workers identify politically — and it is through labor markets that these social...

Oh goodie... More reification error from the Liberal Art trained unqualified perhaps on the way... The world's most powerful central bankers are preparing to pump a whole lot of cash into the global economy https://t.co/qHfjTzilNP pic.twitter.com/Hv837xhXz9— Bloomberg Economics (@economics) June 24, 2019

And nothing has ever changed....I wonder what @BernieSanders and @ewarren think about @joebiden’s long-history of trying to cut social security benefits for elderly Americans? pic.twitter.com/eRkZwHQMmF— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 22, 2019

[embedded content] The people who think like this are dead! They are the most extreme people but it is they who are in power. Blowing the planet up its unthinkable, but not to these people. Billions dead, a nuclear winter - 'so be it', they say. I guess they will be sitting in their nuclear bunkers for ten years.

Robert Kaplan does geostrategy and does a credible job of it. In my view he sees the big picture  in outline pretty well, although I would quibble with some of the details. It is written from the US POV, of course, but he is able to stand back from it enough to make the article worth a read. Robert Kaplan and his spouse Victoria Nuland are mainstays of US foreign policy, so it is important for that reason alone.The National InterestAmerica Must Prepare for the Coming Chinese Empire Robert D....

Isn't new technology amazing? I remember reloading Windows 10 on my PC and then, without me doing a thing, icons started reappearing on my screen until my old Windows configuration and had been rebuilt with all my original software loaded back on.The modern technology may be crazy, like 3D printing, but it seems we are finding very smart ways to run our economies too.Those Minibots again! Unemployment Many observers will have forgotten that German unemployment was higher for 3 years from...

Italy's new Minibot currency sounds a bit like MMT to me. Intriguing! The Italians are proposing to use new printed notes (minibots) to pay back all the arrears the state has accumulated in the past. These unpaid bills from the Italian state to the private sector amount to Euro 53 billion, about 3% of GDP. Minibots will provide liquidity and alternative notes, but will not solve Italian unemployment (10.2%) unless the concept is expanded. Minibot means huge interest saving for Italian...