October, 2023 | Michael Hudson

Multipolarity: China, Russia, Israel, India, and the difficult birth of a new world

By Michael Friday, October 20, 2023 Interviews Geopolitical Economy Hour Permalink

Geopolitical Hour, October 19, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHTmIt131P8 RADHIKA DESAI: Hello and welcome to the 17th Geopolitical Economy Hour, the show that examines the fast-changing political and geopolitical economy of our time. I’m Radhika Desai. MICHAEL HUDSON: And I’m Michael Hudson. RADHIKA DESAI: And today, once again, we are joined by the roving reporter extraordinaire, Pepe Escobar. Welcome again, Pepe. PEPE ESCOBAR: Thank you. Enormous pleasure. Great. Now, this show has been a little bit delayed because I, particularly, I have been traveling. RADHIKA DESAI: Of course, Pepe travels all the time. He’s always joining us from all sorts of extraordinary locations. Today, he’s in Bangkok. But I have particularly been traveling to conferences in China. And then I went to the Valdai Conference in Sochi, where Pepe was also there. And of course, I have returned, as ...

Twice as Important

By Michael Friday, October 13, 2023 Articles, Globalism and its Institutions IMF, Washington Consensus Permalink

IMF showdown with China in Morocco, October 12, 2023 This year’s annual IMF/World Bank meetings in Morocco are the most explicitly confrontational yet by US/NATO diplomacy toward China and its fellow BRICS+ allies. It is not really rivalry, because US neoliberal financial policy is so different from the aims that the BRICS+ countries have been developing at their own recent international meetings. At issue is not only what countries will be the major beneficiaries of future IMF and World Bank loan operations, but whether the world will back US unipolar dominance? Or will it start to move explicitly toward a multipolar philosophy of mutual support to increase living standards and prosperity? This is counter to the anti-labor austerity imposed by US demands, using these two organizations as arms of its New ...

A BRICS+ Bank: How would it really function?

By Michael Saturday, October 7, 2023 Articles BRICS Permalink

This first week of October has seen U.S. interest rates soar to the 5% level on long-term Treasury bonds. That has made long-term Treasuries one of most attractive investment vehicles in the world, or even the most attractive. One obvious result is that countries aiming to dedollarize their central-bank reserves would make an untimely decision move out of the dollar at this point. To avoid holding dollars in the form of US Treasury securities would mean holding foreign reserves denominated in a currency that is declining against the dollar. No other government is willing to make its currency so attractive to international investors (including central banks) by raising interest-rates so high. At 5%, US bonds are the most secure and best investment around. There is a huge move into the dollar – ...