Michael Hudson argues that today’s crisis is not just economic but civilizational. He traces how classical political economy sought to minimise unearned income from landlords, monopolists and bankers, and contrasts this with modern finance capitalism, where rent-seeking dominates GDP, public infrastructure is privatised, and debt replaces production as the driver of growth. The result, he contends, is a widening divide between Western oligarchy and state-led industrial models in China and Russia, with energy, credit and economic rent at the centre of the struggle.

This transcript unpacks the split between production and FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate), arguing modern capitalism is driven by asset-price gains powered by credit, especially mortgages, rather than productive investment. It also critiques GDP accounting, explains why mainstream models omit debt, and links deregulation to recurrent bubbles, inequality, and a drift toward rentier “neo-feudal” structures.

Michael Hudson  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Brown. Now, today we have an interview I made with Michael Hudson late last year. Michael's a truly astounding economist and commentator. I've had the privilege of interviewing him a few times now, and it's always illuminating. Now, this interview was meant to be part of a celebration of the 17th anniversary of the publication of this book, which has been a quiet bestseller for the last 17 years, the Secret Life of Real Estate and Banking with Phil Anderson. It was meant to be about that, but the conversation very quickly went off on its own. So, I left the interview out of the podcast about Phil's work, and I just thought, well, it's such a good conversation. Let's release ...