China the Change Agent – Patreon Q&A #3

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Each quarter, Patreon Plus supporters can ask Michael questions. Here is a transcript of the most recent one, just in time for our next Q&A this Thursday. Please support Michael's work via his Patreon page. Karl Fitzgerald: Alright, let’s get into it. We’ve got lots of good questions. Welcome, everyone. My name is Karl Fitzgerald. I’ve been Michael’s webmaster for over a decade now and yes, we’re so lucky to have Michael Hudson with us today. We’ve all read his books. We’ve all seen his whirlwind approach to unveiling the reality of economics so yes, Michael, great to have you here. I wanted to start off with just a nice easy one. I’m sure you could answer this in your sleep but for you, what are some of the guiding ...

Michael Hudson’s Patreon Q&A

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It's time for our quarterly Q&A with Michael! Please support Michael's important work via his Patreon page. Theme: NATO's provocative role in Eastern Europe. If you are a Patron Plus supporter on Patreon, you will be able to register. Anyone upgrading to Patron Plus at least 24 hours prior to the event is invited. **Register for the Q&A with the name and email on the Patreon account**

Oligopoly Unchecked

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Platypus interview on The Destiny of Civilization The destiny of civilization: An interview with Michael Hudson On July 15, 2022, Platypus Affiliated Society member D. L. Jacobs interviewed Michael Hudson to discuss his new book, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism (2022). An edited transcript follows. D. L. Jacobs: Can tell us about your background regarding Marxism and how you came to political economy? Michael Hudson: Well, I grew up in a Marxist household. My father was a political prisoner, one of the Minneapolis 17. Carlos Hudson. See Michael Hudson, “Dad’s Many Proverbs” (June 17, 2017), available online at <https://michael-hudson.com/2017/06/dads-many-proverbs/>;. Minneapolis was the only city in the world that was a Trotskyist city, and my parents worked with Trotsky in Mexico. So, I grew up not having any intention of going into ...

EU Pressures – Al-akhbar Newspaper

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Questions from Al-akhbar Newspaper, Lebanon. Mohammad Itmaizeh 1 - In light of the conditions that Europe is experiencing, in terms of high energy prices and the repercussions on the industrial sector, like the closure of factories and the high cost of production. In your opinion do European countries have the capacity and resources to prevent industrial investments from "escaping"? Especially since the US plans in general to restore industry to its lands, thus, it may represent an opportunity to lure European industries to move to there and take advantage of cheap energy prices. This shift will have wide repercussions on Europe's productive capacities and competitiveness, as well as on its trade balance. So, what happens to the position of Europe in the global economic system? Will it remain part of the ...

War and Debt to Rule

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Cross posted from La Tribune Diplomatic International. French version Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Your analysis of Mesopotamian times and the wise rule of Emperors embodied by the practice of the Jubilee (compared to the predation of oligarchies) resonate with the Islamic economic theory which forbids riba (meaning usury) and imposes that banks and creditors share the risk of investment or debt. It also seems something deeply rooted in our Arabic and North African traditions of equality and justice where it is socially unacceptable to leave part of the community in dire poverty. As an anthropologist, have you related the success or failure of modern finance to anthropological factors like the structures of the rural families, theories developed by some like Emmanuel Todd? Michael Hudson: I have written a long article on Ibn Khaldun, ...

The Rentier Economy is a Free Lunch

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The Real Progressives Live with Michael Hudson on The Destiny of Civilization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD_UcRtljDU Luke Parcher: All right. For those who might not know me, I'm Luke Parcher, I'm a student and activist. I volunteer with Real Progressives. I'm on our leadership team and I also do a show on Sundays covering politics and current events, and I do some interviews throughout the week and things which you guys can find on Real Progress in Action. I want to quickly talk about Real Progressives. If you're interested in learning more about us, you can go to realprogressives.org. We have articles, content, podcasts, all sorts of things. And if you're interested in helping us out, we are a nonprofit. You can go to realprogressives.org/donate. I also want to plug our founder and ...

Germany’s position in America’s New World Order

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Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_zY44YClCY The article this talk was based on: Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies. President Biden has characterized this split as being between ...

Escaping the Western Rentier

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Cross-posted from Pepe Escobar's The Cradle. It is impossible to track the geoeconomic turbulence inherent to the “birth pangs” of the multipolar world without the insights of Professor Michael Hudson at the University of Missouri, and author of the already seminal The Destiny of Civilization. In his latest essay, Professor Hudson digs deeper into Germany’s suicidal economic/financial policies; their effect on the already falling euro – and hints at some possibilities for fast integrating Eurasia and the Global South as a whole to try to break the Hegemon’s stranglehold. That led to a series of email exchanges, especially about the future role of the yuan, where Hudson remarked: “The Chinese whom I’ve talked to for years and years did not expect the dollar to weaken. They’re not crying about its rise, but they are ...

The Euro Without German Industry

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The reaction to the sabotage of three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in four places on Monday, September 26, has focused on speculations about who did it and whether NATO will make a serious attempt to discover the answer. Yet instead of panic, there has been a great sigh of diplomatic relief, even calm. Disabling these pipelines ends the uncertainty and worries on the part of US/NATO diplomats that nearly reached a crisis proportion the previous week, when large demonstrations took place in Germany calling for the sanctions to end and to commission Nord Stream 2 to resolve the energy shortage.  The German public was coming to understand what it will mean if their steel companies, fertilizer companies, glass companies and toilet-paper companies were shutting down. These ...