By Michael Hudson, with Dirk Bezemer, Steve Keen and T.Sabri Öncü Michael Hudson is a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “and forgive them their debts”: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year Dirk Bezemer is a Professor of Economics at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands.. Steve Keen is a Professor and  Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security of University College London (www.isrs.org.uk). He blogs at www.patreon.com/profstevekeen Sabri Öncü (sabri.oncu@gmail.com) is an economist based in İstanbul, Turkey Summary After being attacked by monetarists and others for many decades, MMT and the idea that running government budget deficit is stabilizing instead of destabilizing are suddenly gaining applause ...

Radio interview, NPR, April 2, 2020 What is the next step to prop up the virus-battered United States economy, even as the $2 trillion stimulus package only begins to percolate out? Well, Republicans and Democrats have returned to talking about a massive infrastructure building program that would employ lots of people. That would be a post-COVID-19 intervention. More immediately, some economists want more done to ease the debt owed by individuals, small businesses, cities, towns and states. Michael Hudson, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, is one of those economists. “Right now, America’s economy is strapped,” said Hudson, author of “…and forgive them their debts.” “America could have another economic miracle by writing down the ...

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 ...

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 ...