Mr. Obama’s scare tactics to get Democrats to vote for his Republican Wall Street plan The Wall Street bailout melodrama should be viewed as a dress rehearsal for today’s debt-ceiling non-crisis. You know that the debt kerfuffle is as melodramatically staged as a World Wrestling Federation exhibition when Mr. Obama makes the blatantly empty threat that if Congress does not “tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform,” there won’t be money to pay Social Security checks next month. In his debt speech last night (July 25), he threatened that if “we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills – bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.” This is not remotely ...
Save the Gambling Bankers
Democracy Now interview: “if they can create a $13 trillion on a computer keyboard, taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve can simply give this money, why can’t they, over 50 years, pay the trillion dollars for the Medicare and the Social Security? It’s—obviously, it’s a charade.”
Real Estate 4 Ransom trailer
Real Estate 4 Ransom is a new documentary on the role economic policy plays in influencing property prices. The resultant busts that have followed the speculative frenzy are a scary reminder that systematic reforms are essential. Michael Hudson features. www.realestate4ransom.com
Wall Street's Euthanasia of Industry
Michael interviewed on Guns N Butter with Bonnie Faulkner Listen here Transcription “When I was in Norway one of the Norwegian politicians sat next to me at a dinner and said, “You know, there’s one good thing that President Obama has done that we never anticipated in Europe. He’s shown the Europeans that we can never depend upon America again. There’s no president, no matter how good he sounds, no matter what he promises, we’re never again going to believe the patter talk of an American President. Mr. Obama has cured us. He has turned out to be our nightmare. Our problem is what to do about the American people that don’t realize this nightmare that they’ve created, this smooth-talking American Tony Blair in the White House.” ...
Obama's Debt Ceiling Doublespeak
Mr. Obama has always known who has been contributing primarily to his political campaigns. We know where his loyalties lie now. And, basically, he promised change because that’s what people would vote for, and he delivered the change constituency to the campaign contributors.
Greece now, US soon
Geithner says, wait a minute, American banks have made huge billion-dollar–maybe, for all we know, a trillion-dollar bet that the Greeks will repay. They’ve made derivative plays, they’ve made cross-party insurance, and American banks would lose money. Now, if there’s a choice between American banks losing $1 and Europe going into neo-feudalism for a generation, Geithner will support the $1.
IMF the Economic Hangman
Michael on the Keiser Report, discussing the role of finance in the EU debt crisis. How does Wall St and the IMF fit into the picture? Michael comes on at the 14 minute mark. Download the Hudson only portion of the interview
Privatizing Will Make Life Worse
November 12, 1989, New York Times PERESTROIKA GOES SOUTH This article was published in the NYT more than 20 years ago, forecasting precisely what has happened. I attended the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington last month. When the meetings ended, I was left with the impression that no further writedowns would be forthcoming for Latin America's debtor countries unless they followed the lead of Mexico. To do this, countries like Brazil and Argentina would have to sell off their public utilities, some potentially profitable industrial corporations and some service industries like airlines. In the past, one met mostly bankers at these big international meetings. Now there are a lot of lawyers. For Latin America the foreclosure process has begun, but for the time being it is called privatization or debt-for-equity swaps. Countries hoping to ...
