with Thom Hartmann from RT's The Big Picture.
Crimea: Geo-Political Gas
More at The Real News Who In Ukraine Will Benefit From An IMF Bailout? Economists Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers discuss how provisions in an IMF deal like cuts to gas subsidies and pensions will hurt the average Ukrainian citizens and benefit kleptocrats - March 21, 14 Bio JEFFREY SOMMERS is an associate professor and Senior Fellow of the Institute of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is also visiting faculty at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. He is co-editor of the forthcoming book The Contradictions of Austerity. In addition to CounterPunch he also publishes in The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Guardian, TruthOut and regularly appears as an expert on global television. Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the ...
Russia, Crimea and the Consequences of NATO Policy
Ukrainian Hangovers AS first published on Counterpunch by JEFFREY SOMMERS and MICHAEL HUDSON Russia’s incursion (invasion if you prefer) into Crimea, with prospects for movement into Eastern Ukraine, is the culmination of US/NATO policy since 1991. The unraveling of the USSR and its Soviet bloc (the Warsaw Pact) dismantled the largest empire in modern history. Even more striking, it was the most peaceful dissolution of a major empire in history. The fact that an empire stretching over a dozen time zones that included hundreds of ethnic groups with concrete historical and contemporary grievances with each other broke up without a bloodbath is nothing short of a miraculous – and a reflection of the destruction of spirit and even of economic understanding that marked the distortions of Stalinism, neither capitalist nor socialist but a bureaucratic ...
Ukraine, Austerity….Again?
An interview with WBEZ on the one-sided view of economic reform. WBEZ writes: Both the U.S. and the E.U. have pledged aid packages to help Ukraine's new government stabilize the country's economy. The IMF also has a team on the ground in Ukraine, currently analyzing the country's debt crisis. They expect to make recommendations for reforms that are required for Ukraine to secure an IMF loan. But, not everyone agrees that austerity and cuts in wages and government subsidies are good for Ukraine. Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of The Bubble and Beyond, weighs in on the debate.
Ukraine: “Go West, Young Man”
By Jeffrey Sommers & Michael Hudson As first published on Truth Out "Let them loot." That is the demand of the West when its NGO subsidiaries firebomb government buildings, murder policemen and loot the arms depots of military forts. Kiev is the equivalent of Kosovo as a Slavic city-of-origin. Are we seeing a replay? What would Dick Cheney (or President Obama for that matter) have done if Russian NGOs sponsored separatist movements in Texas, California or New England? How would US police have reacted against armed revolutionaries seizing the armory and throwing Molotov cocktails and bombs at public buildings, killing police, painting swastikas on Jewish houses and claiming vigilante justice? While this does not characterize all of the Ukrainian protesters, it does reflect a fair number of them. If this is ...
