On finance, real estate and the powers of neoliberalism
PLAY 3 TIMES: US military budget financed by ... by Renegade Economists on Mixcloud Taken from the Renegade Economists radio interview Financing Our Own Oppression, where discussions on the IMF-Ukraine-Russia showdown are highlighted. Financing Our Own Oppression by Renegade Economists on Mixcloud
Michael Hudson A nightmare scenario of U.S. geopolitical strategists is coming true: foreign independence from U.S.-centered financial and diplomatic control. China and Russia are investing in neighboring economies on terms that cement Eurasian integration on the basis of financing in their own currencies and favoring their own exports. They also have created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative military alliance to NATO. And the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank tandem in which the United States holds unique veto power. More than just a disparity of voting rights in the IMF and World Bank is at stake. At issue is a philosophy of development. U.S. and other foreign investment in infrastructure (or buyouts and takeovers on credit) adds interest rates and other financial ...
UNsplash.com On December 8, the IMF’s Chief Spokesman Gerry Rice sent a note saying: “The IMF's Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors. We will provide details on the scope and rationale for this policy change in the next day or so.” Since 1947 when it really started operations, the World Bank has acted as a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, from its first major chairman John J. McCloy through Robert McNamara to Robert Zoellick and neocon Paul Wolfowitz. From the outset, it has promoted U.S. exports – especially farm exports – by steering Third World countries to produce plantation crops rather than feeding their own populations. (They are to import U.S. grain.) But it has felt obliged to wrap ...
As published in the Social Sciences Research Network Michael Hudson University of Missouri, Economics Department, 211 Haig Hall, 5120 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA and Peking University, No.5 Yiheruan Road, Haidan District, P.O. Box 1008/71m, Beijing, P.R. China The Eurozone today is going into the same deflationary situation that the U.S. did under Jackson’s destruction of the Second Bank, and the post-Civil War budget surpluses that deflated the economy. But whereas the Fed’s creation was designed to inflate the U.S. economy, Europe’s European Central Bank is designed to deflate it — in the interest of commercial banks in both cases. 1. Introduction Deflation was the main U.S. financial problem prior to 1913. To replace the Treasury conducting its fiscal operations independently from the banking system, New York banks urged more power over public finances and ...
These remarks were made at the World Congress on Marxism, 2015, at the School of Marxism, Peking University, October 10, 2015. The presentation was part of a debate with Bertell Ollman (NYU). I was honored to be made a permanent Guest Professor at China’s most prestigious university. When I lectured here at the Marxist School six years ago, someone asked me whether Marx was right or wrong. I didn’t know how to answer this question at the time, because the answer is so complex. But at least today I can focus on his view of crises. More than any other economist of his century, Marx tied together the three major kinds of crisis that were occurring. His Theories of Surplus Value explained the two main forms of crises his classical predecessors had ...
The following is a transcript of CounterPunch Radio – Episode 19 (originally aired September 21, 2015). Eric Draitser interviews Michael Hudson. Eric Draitser: Today I have the privilege of introducing Michael Hudson to the program. Doctor Hudson is the author of the new book Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy, available in print on Amazon and an e-version on CounterPunch. Michael Hudson, welcome to CounterPunch Radio. Michael Hudson: It’s good to be here. ED: Thanks so much for coming on. As I mentioned already, the title of your book – Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy – is an apt metaphor. So parasitic finance capital is really what you’re writing about. You explain that it essentially survives by feeding ...
As published on Counterpunch. In his Orwellian September 28, 2015 speech to the United Nations, President Obama said that if democracy had existed in Syria, there never would have been a revolt against Assad. By that, he meant ISIL. Where there is democracy, he said, there is no violence or revolution. This was his threat to promote revolution, coups and violence against any country not deemed a “democracy.” In making this hardly-veiled threat, he redefined the word in the vocabulary of international politics. Democracy is the CIA’s overthrow of Mossedegh in Iran to install the Shah. Democracy is the overthrow of Afghanistan’s secular government by the Taliban against Russia. Democracy is the Ukrainian coup behind Yats and Poroshenko. Democracy is Pinochet. It is “our bastards,” as Lyndon Johnson said, with regard to ...
My friends at Counterpunch interviewed me on the book that is Killing the Host. Another good interview. Listen here Read the transcript
An interview on Uprising with Sonali Listen by clicking here The Federal Reserve this week is considering raising interest rates above levels that have hovered at zero since 2008. News media are characterizing the debate over whether or not to increase rates, as “Should we be more concerned about the pace of job growth or the threat of inflation?” But the question often left unasked is, “why are most Americans still struggling in this economy?” The bottom lines of corporations are taken to be a measure of economic health. But if the economy is ostensibly designed so that all can benefit, why is it that only a few benefit?
[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/223685976" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /] Today's interview on the highly regarded This Is Hell! show: Economist Michael Hudson explains how finance became capitalism's driving force and why an increasing amount of American life is being dedicated to sustaining unsustainable debt values, then gives a radical history lesson in debt economics - from ancient Sumer to the University of Chicago - that suggests the only way to end a debt crisis is to end the debt itself. Michael is author of the new book "Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy."
