Michael Hudson

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The Destiny of Civilization

By Michael Sunday, May 15, 2022 Books The Destiny of Civilization Permalink

“The decline of the West is not necessary or historically inevitable. It is the result of choosing policies dictated by its rentier interests. … The threat posed to society by rentier interests is the great challenge of every nation today: whether its government can restrict the dynamics of finance capitalism and prevent an oligarchy from dominating the state and enriching itself by imposing austerity on labor and industry. So far, the West has not risen to this challenge.” “There are essentially two types of society: mixed economies with public checks and balances, and oligarchies that dismantle and privatize the state, taking over its monetary and credit system, the land and basic infrastructure to enrich themselves but choking the economy, not helping it grow.” …………………………………………………………………………. The Destiny of Civilization is based on a lecture ...

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3rd Edition: Super-Imperialism

By Michael Friday, October 8, 2021 Articles No tags Permalink

The updated and expanded 3rd edition of Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire is now available. This highly respected study of U.S. financial diplomacy explores the faults built into the core of the World Bank and the IMF at their inception. Forensic detail reveals how the world's core economic functions were sculpted to preserve US financial hegemony. Difficult to detect at the time, these problems have since become explicit as the failure of the international economic order has become apparent; the IMF and World Bank were set up to give aid to developing countries, but instead many of the world’s poorest countries have been plunged into insurmountable debt crises. The book became famous for detailing how the removal of the gold standard left the world’s central banks with only ...

Moscow’s New Found Independence

By Michael Tuesday, August 9, 2022 Interviews No tags Permalink

RT, 8 Aug, 2022 05:05, HomeBusiness News Western sanctions are good for Moscow – US economist A former Wall Street analyst says the Russian economy is being made self-sufficient The economic war unleashed by the West against Russia has backfired and may bring the country much good, former Wall Street financier Michael Hudson has told the German news outlet Junge Welt. “The West's sanctions are great for Russia. Any country threatened by US sanctions is forced to become self-sufficient,” Hudson said in an interview published on Saturday. He said that sanctions have effectively pushed Russia toward import-substitution, and the country is on track to becoming completely free of reliance on Western goods. “Instead of importing German cars, Russia is turning to China to develop its own automotive industry. Russia is now moving very quickly to replace ...

The Big Context

By Michael Monday, August 8, 2022 Articles No tags Permalink

Interview of Michael Hudson by Andrei The Saker, August 2022 Russian transcript Transcript Key: ATS = Andrei The Saker; MH = Michael Hudson ATS Well first of all, Michael, a huge, huge thank you for agreeing to this conversation. It’s a big pleasure for me to have you here, it's a big honour too, and I really look forward to getting your insight as to what's happening, 'cause there's a lot happening right now. The first thing I want to ask you about is a current event then we can go into deeper things. What do you make of Pelosi landing in Taiwan and how do you see … what is this all about, what's happening here? MH Well I think in what you just wrote today you made it all clear. There's really no practical effect ...

Counterpunch to Economic History

By Michael Monday, August 8, 2022 Interviews No tags Permalink

CounterPunch Radio – _July 15, 2022 – Michael Hudson ERIC DRAITSER: Hello and welcome to CounterPunch Radio. My name is Eric Draitser, thanks so much for tuning in, and coming back to the show. First-time listeners finding the show, welcome aboard. Thank you so much, we really appreciate your support. If you want to support CounterPunch, the best way to do that is to get a subscription to CounterPunch Plus, that way you get access to all of our exclusive content. Remember folks, this is basically the print magazine, now online. We have discontinued the print magazine and taken even more content, but it behind a little paywall just like everybody else is doing these days and it's there for you. CounterPunch is unlike any other space on the left ...

American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama

By admin Thursday, July 28, 2022 Articles No tags Permalink

As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from ...

Finance Capitalism’s Self-Destructive Nature

By Michael Monday, July 18, 2022 Interviews Super Imperialism Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS1XQBB3YsQ Transcript of Interview on The Left Lens with Danny Haiphong May 25th, 2022 DANNY HAIPHONG: Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Wednesday, May 25th, welcome to the stream, to another left lens. Today we have a very special guest so as you're coming in make sure you are liking the stream sharing it, make sure that you are subscribing to the channel and hitting that notifications bell, and as always you know please do support this work here at this channel and all the work that I do at patreon.com/dannyhaiphong. But with that said I want to introduce our guests because we have a lot to talk about over the next hour and it is economist Michael Hudson. He is the author of the new book, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance capitalism, Industrial Capitalism ...

International Trade and MMT with Keen, Hudson

By Michael Thursday, July 14, 2022 Interviews MMT Permalink

Macro and Cheese pod, July 9 2022. Michael Hudson A central tenet of the World Bank from the beginning is to convince countries not to grow their own food, but to create plantation agriculture to prevent family-owned farming of food, to grow plantation export crops and they become dependent on the United States for their grain. Steve Keen If you look at just the shipping involved in international trade, it’s something of the order of 20%, I think, of our carbon production comes out of the entire mechanics of shipping goods around the planet. And we realize we’ve massively overshot the capacity of the biosphere to support our industrial sedentary civilization. So, one way to reduce that is by reducing international trade. Geoff Ginter Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse ...

The End of Western Civilization

By Michael Wednesday, July 13, 2022 Speeches No tags Permalink

Why it lacks resilience, and What will take its place Paper presented on July 11, 2022 to The Ninth South-South Forum on Sustainability. THE COLLAPSE OF MODERN CIVILIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY. The greatest challenge facing societies has always been how to conduct trade and credit without letting merchants and creditors make money by exploiting their customers and debtors. All antiquity recognized that the drive to acquire money is addictive and indeed tends to be exploitative and hence socially injurious. The moral values of most societies opposed selfishness, above all in the form of avarice and wealth addiction, which the Greeks called philarguria – love of money, silver-mania. Individuals and families indulging in conspicuous consumption tended to be ostracized, because it was recognized that wealth often was obtained at the expense of ...

From Junk Economics to a False View of History: Where Western Civilization Took a Wrong Turn

By Michael Thursday, July 7, 2022 History of the Near East, Speeches No tags Permalink

A presentation to the Building bridges around David Graeber's legacy conference, Paris, Friday July 7, 2022 It may seem strange to invite an economist to give a keynote speech to a conference of the social sciences. Economists have been characterized as autistic and anti-social in the popular press for good reason. They are trained to think abstractly and use a priori deduction – based on how they think societies should develop. Today’s mainstream economists look at neoliberal privatization and free-market ideals as leading society’s income and wealth to settle at an optimum equilibrium without any need for government regulation – especially not of credit and debt. The only role acknowledged for government is to enforce the “sanctity of contracts” and “security of property.” By this they mean the enforcement of debt ...

Mid 2022 Geo-Political Levers at Play

By Michael Friday, July 1, 2022 Globalism and its Institutions No tags Permalink

Economist Michael Hudson on inflation and Fed plan to cut wages: A depression is coming Economist Michael Hudson explains the inflation crisis and US Federal Reserve’s “austerity program to reduce wages” and boost unemployment. He warns a “long depression” is coming, due to the new cold war on Russia and China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AJwMvCxwm0 Economist Michael Hudson explains the inflation crisis and the US Federal Reserve’s “austerity program to reduce wages.” Western so-called economics experts are openly calling to boost unemployment. Hudson warns a “long depression” is coming, in which the poor will suffer so the rich can get richer, in order to advance Washington’s new cold war on Russia and China. BENJAMIN NORTON: Hey, everyone, this is Ben Norton, and you are watching or listening to the Multipolarista podcast. I am always privileged to be joined by ...

The Fed’s Austerity Program to Reduce Wages

By Michael Sunday, June 19, 2022 Articles No tags Permalink

To Wall Street and its backers, the solution to any price inflation is to reduce wages and public social spending. The orthodox way to do this is to push the economy into recession in order to reduce hiring. Rising unemployment will oblige labor to compete for jobs that pay less and less as the economy slows. This class-war doctrine is the prime directive of neoliberal economics. It is the tunnel vision of corporate managers and the One Percent. The Federal Reserve and IMF are its most prestigious lobbyists. Along with Janet Yellen at the Treasury, public discussion of today’s inflation is framed in a way that avoids blaming the 8.2 percent rise in consumer prices on the Biden Administration’s New Cold War sanctions on Russian oil, gas and agriculture, or on ...