March, 2020 | Michael Hudson

Radical imagination and the intellectual edifice

By Michael Monday, March 30, 2020 Interviews No tags Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHJBUczgE0 Radical Imagination | Imagining How the World of Finance Really Works Host Jim Vrettos interviews Professor Michael Hudson, Economist, Wall St. Analyst, Political Consultant, Commentator and Journalist; who offers his views in the way finance works and Welcome, welcome once again to the Radical imagination. I'm your host, Jim Vrettos. I'm a sociologist who's talked at John Jay College of Criminal justice and Yeshiva university here in New York. Our guest today, on the Radical Imagination, is one of only eight economists named by the financial times who foresaw the credit crisis and ensuing great recession erupting in 2008. It was conventional wisdom at the time to say that no one saw the gravity of the crisis coming, including almost every leading economist and financier in the world. In fact, many had ...

People’s Forum: Economic Lessons for 2020

By Michael Thursday, March 26, 2020 Interviews Marx Permalink

Economic Lessons for 2020: A Conversation with Dr. Michael Hudson Peoples Forum, December 12, 2019. https://youtu.be/nluLNA30e8k We are facing a crisis of poverty and economic precarity, where 140 million people are poor or low-income, the costs of living are going up and the chances of living are going down. What condition is our economy in today, more than ten years after the Great Recession of 2008, to withstand another economic downturn? What lessons have we learned – or failed to learn – over this past decade? What lessons can we draw from history to guide us in the months and years to come? On December 12, 2019, the Kairos Center hosted a talk at The People’s Forum in New York City with economist Dr. Michael Hudson on the 2008 economic crisis, what’s happened ...

Unpayable Corporate Debt: A Brady Bond Solution for America’s Economic Crisis

By Michael Wednesday, March 25, 2020 Articles No tags Permalink

Even before the Covid-19 crisis had slashed stock prices nearly in half since it erupted in January, financial markets were in an inherently unstable condition. Years of quantitative easing had loaded so much money into stock and bond prices that stock price/earnings multiples and bond prices were far too high by any normal and reasonable historical standards. Risk premiums have disappeared, with only a few basis points separating U.S. Treasury bills and corporate bonds. The Fed’s Quantitative Easing since 2008 plus large companies using their earnings for stock buybacks drove the prices of financial assets into a realm of unreality. The result was that markets already were teetering on the brink of fragility. Any rise of normal interest to more normal conditions, or any external shock, was bound to crash the ...

Debt and Power

By Michael Monday, March 23, 2020 Articles No tags Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJBi7sfTZuY&feature=youtu.be Transcript, recorded 20th Match 2020 Martin: Today Debt and Power. I’m Martin North from Digital Finance Analytics. Welcome to our latest post covering finance and property news with a distinctively Australian flavour. Today it is my pleasure to introduce Michael Hudson, American Economist, Professor of Economics and author of “Killing the Host” and “and Forgive Them Their Debts”. In the current environment I think those are great titles. Michael welcome. You have been following the economy and the question of debt for quite some time and I’d like to start the discussion with a simple question: How much debt is too much debt? Michael: Too much debt is when it's beyond the ability to be paid. At a certain point every debt grows beyond the ability to be paid because of the magic of ...

Corona Debt Jubilee

By Michael Sunday, March 22, 2020 Articles Jubilee Permalink

Cross posted from the Washington Post. Michael Hudson, author of “… and forgive them their debts” and “Killing the Host,” is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends and is distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Even before the novel coronavirus appeared, many American families were falling behind on student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other payments. America’s debt overhead was pricing its labor and industry out of world markets. A debt crisis was inevitable eventually, but covid-19 has made it immediate. Massive social distancing, with its accompanying job losses, stock dives and huge bailouts to corporations, raises the threat of a depression. But it doesn’t have to be this way. History offers us another alternative in such situations: a debt ...

The Importance of Neighborhood Banks

By Michael Thursday, March 12, 2020 Interviews No tags Permalink

An interview with Ellen Brown on Its Our Money, Show #124 Michael Hudson: There's recognition that commercial banking has become dysfunctional and that most loans by commercial banks are either against assets – in which case the lending inflates the prices of real estate, stocks and bonds – or for corporate takeover loans. The economy’s low-income brackets have not been helped by today’s financial system. Here in New York City, red lining and a visceral class hatred by high finance toward the poor characterized the major banks. From the very top to the bottom, they were very clear they were not going to lend to places with racial minorities like the Lower East Side. The Chase Manhattan Bank told me that the reason was explicitly ethnic, and they didn't ...

Kindergarten debts

By Michael Tuesday, March 3, 2020 Interviews Max Keiser, student debt Permalink

FRONT RUNNING: Student Debt, March 2, 2020 Topic: Student Debt || Guests: Steve Keen, Michael Hudson, Randy Voller MAX KEISER: Welcome to Front Running 2020 with Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert and a bevy of special guests right here in fabulous, hipster Brooklyn. I'm feeling it. So Stacy, this episode is all about student debt. STACY HERBERT: And the students, of course, are the Millennials and Generation Z. They like the candidates promising to get rid of all the student debts. There's $1.6 trillion in outstanding debt today in America. That is up from $363 billion in just 2005. Joining us to discuss this, Dr. Michael Hudson, Professor Steve Keen and Randy Voller. Professor Steve Keen, of course, you talk a lot about debt and in fact the rate of increase of ...