Mike Norman Economics

China is breaking into Arctic transport through a joint venture between the country’s biggest ocean carrier, Cosco Shipping Holdings Co., and its Russian counterpart PAO Sovcomflot to move natural gas from Siberia to Western and Asian markets. The state-owned companies will operate a fleet of a dozen ice-breaking liquefied natural gas tankers from Russia’s massive Yamal LNG project along the northern coast of central Siberia to destinations in Northern Europe, Japan, South Korea and China....

If international diplomacy indulges in symbolism, this must be one of the most poignant ones in world politics in the recent times. The RIC has always been a red rag for the US — ever since the great Soviet strategic thinker and Kremlin statesman Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov first proposed the tantalising idea in 1999. The profound symbolism cannot be lost on Trump that India is consorting with the two “revisionist powers” on the planet (Russia and China) which, according to the US, are...

There were many British and American experts inside the Russian government at the time; they were either intelligent [sic] agents or Harry Lime types, usually both at the same time. Their orders were to demolish the Soviet system as swiftly as possible; their motive was to transfer the profits to their governments and themselves…. It is a virtue of Stephenson’s book that, as he says at the end, “I have avoided the temptation in this book to compare the old with the new.” Thus has he...

The parallel payment system that Greece's government proposed in 2015 would have bolstered the eurozone. By contrast, the Italian government's planned "mini-Treasury bills" would lead to the single currency's demise. Sounds like the Italian plan is far superior.Project SyndicateFiscal Money Can Make or Break the Euro Yanis Varoufakis

For decades, most of the major economies have relied on a form of capitalism that delivered considerable benefits. But systems do not work in isolation. Eventually, reality asserts itself: global trade tensions reemerge, populist nationalists win power, and natural disasters grow in frequency and intensity. "Capitalism" is the politico-economic system that favors capital (real and financial assets) over labor (workers) and land (environment, ecology) because it is assumed that growth is of...

The graph above shows the annual civilian unemployment rate from 1948 to 2018, and here are some highlights: Ten years ago, after the Great Recession, the U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 9.6%. (The only higher unemployment rate in this series was 9.7%, in 1982.) It gradually came down to 3.9% in 2018, the lowest in fifty years. (The rate in 1969 was 3.5%.) But these national unemployment numbers mask the variation that exists across different regions in the U.S. Fortunately, we have...

Our leaders never talk like this, they just pretend to be outraged by the people who they say are the bad guys, and then, because they are the 'good guys', will demand a war and more military spending to get the 'bad guys', and the electorate usually cheers them on.Here, Putin talks about his concern for environmental damage, global warming, and nuclear war. When do our leaders ever talk about these real issues that could destroy all life on earth? He is not bellicose, or pretending to be...

This is excellent, Jimmy Dore completely exposes the Western propaganda. Mike Pompeo is on record saying how in the CIA he lied, cheated, and stole, and in fact they run courses on how to do it, and yet, the MSM believe his lies.In the UK the newspapers and the Conservative Party are calling Jeremy Corbyn a traitor who is weak on Britain's defence, and Twitter was full of patriarchs soundboarding the same. Hey, what's wrong with having a thorough investigation, one that the UN recognises,...

The week before last, Thomas Fazi and I had a response to a recent British attack on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) published in The Tribune magazine (June 5, 2019) – For MMT. In effect, there were two quite separate topics that needed to be discussed: (a) the misrepresentation of MMT; and (b) the issues pertaining to British Labour Party policy proposals. The article we were responding to – Against MMT – written by a former Labour Party advisor, was not really about MMT at all, as you will...

In a video I put out here recently (embedded), General Roger Spalding said Huawei does not value privacy and their phones can be hacked, but Apple, he added, an American company, really values its customers privacy and so go to great lengths to ensure their data is secure and safe.So we have, 'us good, them bad' black and white mentality so typical of the right, except at night, when your asleep and Apple think you won't notice your phone slowing down, they download all for data to their HQ...