We Make the Rules

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Economist Michael Hudson discusses the update of his book “Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire” and the financial motivations behind the US new cold war on China and Russia. Hudson has published a new, third edition of his book Super Imperialism that updates his analysis for the 21st century, discussing the new cold war on China and Russia and the ongoing transition from a US dollar-dominated financialized system to a “multipolar de-dollarized economy.” Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of Moderate Rebels spoke with Hudson about the book and how the strategy of US economic hegemony has evolved since World War One. Transcript BEN NORTON: Hello, everyone, this is Moderate Rebels live. I’m Ben Norton. As always, I’m joined by my co-host, Max Blumenthal. And today we have back one of our most popular guests, ...

3rd Edition: Super-Imperialism

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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 ...

Piketty vs Hudson

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWT0uvBLDbo If you like the depth of this discussion, please support my new Patreon page! This debate between Michael Hudson and Thomas Piketty was held on September 23, 2021. The debate was monitored by Lynn Parramore, and introduced by David Graeber’s widow, Nika. This debate between Michael Hudson and Thomas Piketty on September 23, 2021, is available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWT0uvBLDbo The debate was monitored by Lynn Parramore, and introduced by David Graeber’s widow, Nika. Nika: Hi, I'm Nika. I'm David's wife. This is an event in the honor of the first anniversary of David Graeber's passing, and then the spirits of his rejection of academic arrogance, and our urgent need to get out of the crisis we are in. We set up the Art Project, so welcome to the first one of the series. Today, we ...

The Affront of Chinese Sovereignty

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Cross-posted from Renegade Inc Ross: Welcome to Renegade Inc. With China's increasing wealth, Western investors want some of the action. One of those investors is a bullish gentleman called George Soros. However, the Chinese are acutely aware that with Western investment comes inequality. So as Beijing begins to rethink how to do proper economic growth, we ask, will China learn from Western mistakes? Ross: Michael Hudson, always great to have you back on Renegade Inc. Michael Hudson: It's good to be back here. Thanks for having me. Ross: Michael, we join you at a time where a lot of people think the unipolar world could have maintained its supremacy. Turns out it hasn't. Multipolar world is here to stay. You of late have been quite vocal about George Soros, no less. ...

The Vocabulary of Neoliberal Diplomacy in Today’s New Cold War

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Mr. Soros has expressed his ideological fury at the prospect of not being able to make the kind of easy money off China that he was able to siphon off when the Soviet Union was carved up and privatized. On September 7, 2021, in his second mainstream editorial in a week, George Soros expressed his horror at the recommendation by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, that financial managers should triple their investment in China. Claiming that such investment would imperil U.S. national security by helping China, Mr. Soros stepped up his advocacy of U.S. financial and trade sanctions. China’s policy of shaping markets to promote overall prosperity, instead of letting the economic surplus be concentrated in the hands of corporate and foreign investors, is an existential threat to America’s neoliberal ...

George Soros’s dream: To turn China into a neoliberal grabitization opportunity

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In a Financial Times op-ed, “Investors in Xi’s China face a rude awakening” (August 30, 2021), George Soros writes that Xi’s “crackdown on private enterprise shows he does not understand the market economy. … Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has collided with economic reality. His crackdown on private enterprise has been a significant drag on the economy.” Translated out of Orwellian Doublethink, the “crackdown on private enterprise” means cutting back on what the classical economists called rent-seeking and unearned income. As for its supposed “drag on the economy,” Mr. Soros means the economy’s polarization concentrating wealth and income in the hands of the richest One Percent. Soros lays out his plan for how U.S. retaliation may punish China by withholding U.S. funding of its companies (as if China cannot create its own credit) ...

Biden forfeits his Afghan victory by defending his Deep State advisors

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President Biden put a popular flag-waving wrapping for America’s forced withdrawal from Afghanistan in his 4 PM speech on Monday. It was as if all this was following Biden’s own intentions, not a demonstration of the totally incompetent assurances by the CIA and State Department as recently as last Friday that the Taliban was over a month away from being able to enter Kabul. Instead of saying that the massive public support for the Taliban replacing the United States showed the incompetent hubris of U.S. intelligence agencies – which itself would have justified Biden’s agreement to complete the withdrawal with all haste – he doubled down on his defense of the Deep State and its mythology. The effect was to show how drastic his own misconceptions are, and how he ...