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Removing The Debt Barrier To Economic Growth

By Monday, March 15, 2021 Articles, Debt No tags Permalink

Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts Cross posted from Paul's site. Out of habit, American economists worry about federal debt. But federal debt can be redeemed by the Federal Reserve printing the money with which to retire the bonds. The debt problem rests with individuals, companies, and state and local governments. They have no printing press. We have explained that the indebtedness of the population means there is little discretionary income with which to drive the economy. The offshoring of middle class jobs lowered incomes, and after paying debt service—mortgage interest, car payments, credit card interest, student loan debt—Americans’ pockets are empty. This situation has been worsened by Covid lockdowns. In the US the federal government has sent out a few Covid payments to ...

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Debt, Land and Money, From Polanyi to the New Economic Archaeology

By Friday, September 4, 2020 Debt Permalink

Inspiration for The Great Transformation in the postwar monetary breakdown Karl Polanyi’s formative years in the aftermath of World War I were a period of monetary turmoil. The United States became a creditor nation for the first time, and demanded payment of the war debts that Keynes warned were unpayable without wrecking Europe’s financial systems. (Hudson, Super Imperialism, 1972, summarizes this era.) France and Britain subjected Germany to unsustainably high reparations debts, while imposing austerity on their own economies by adhering to the gold standard. Jacques Rueff in France and Bertil Ohlin in the United States argued that Germany could pay any level of reparations in gold – and the Allies could pay their foreign-currency arms debts – by imposing unemployment high enough to make wages low enough to make its ...

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Vale David Graeber

By Friday, September 4, 2020 Debt No tags Permalink

I’ve known David Graeber for over 15 years. After I published my third Harvard colloquium on Debt and Economic Renewal in the Ancient Near East, he contacted me to discuss the views of Karl Polanyi, as my group was in many ways the successor group to Polanyi’s at Columbia University (where the colloquium was held). We talked sporadically, and he mentioned he was going to write on the history of debt as an anthropologist. My own view was that people would not be very interested in the idea of debt cancellation in antiquity until the way could be prepared for discussing it in today’s world, which is what most of my own journalistic and academic writing was all ...

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Front Running

By Friday, January 3, 2020 Debt, Interviews No tags Permalink

Transcript FRONT RUNNING: 2020 MAX KEISER: Front Running: 2020 with me, Max Keiser, and Stacy Herbert. As we look ahead to all the excitement of the 2020 elections, every episode we dig deep into something new. This time we're going to look at the wealth tax, Stacy. STACY HERBERT: That's right. We're looking at all the economic policies being presented by the Democratic candidates. Many of them are very radical. Bernie Sanders, says, "Billionaires should not exist." And to find out whether or not they should. We have guests with us. Dr. Michael Hudson, and Prof. Steve Keen. Steve, we'll start with you first. PROF STEVE KEEN: Well, I have a very complicated position on this because part of my research is into Minsky, what's called the Financial Instability Hypothesis, that explains ...

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Ellen Brown on peak debt, Jubilee

By Friday, August 30, 2019 Debt Permalink

Cross-posted from Ellen's regular blog on Truth Dig We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes in his provocative 2018 book, “…and forgive them their debts,” debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. The question, he says, is how they won’t be paid. Mainstream economic models leave this problem to “the invisible hand of the market,” assuming trends will self-correct over time. But while the market may indeed correct, it does so at the expense of the debtors, who become progressively poorer as the rich become ...

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The Delphic Oracle as their Davos

By Wednesday, April 3, 2019 Debt, History of the Near East Permalink

A Four-Part Interview With Michael Hudson About His Forthcoming Book The Collapse of Antiquity (Part 1) Cross-Posted from Naked Capitalism. By John Siman Note: Michael Hudson published … and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year in November of last year. It is the first volume in what will be a trilogy on the long history of the tyranny of debt. I have interviewed him extensively as he writes the second volume, The Collapse of Antiquity. John Siman: Michael, in the first volume of your history of debt — "… and forgive them their debts", dealing with the Bronze Age Near East, Judaism and early Christianity — you showed how over thousands of years, going back to the invention of interest-bearing loans in Mesopotamia in ...

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Mutual Aid vs Moral Hazard

By Tuesday, November 20, 2018 Debt, History of the Near East Permalink

How the Bronze Age saved itself from debt serfdom There has been an explosion of discussion about whether to cancel student debts. Critics of the idea point out that wealthy people would be the main gainers, posing moral hazard. The debate has  has quickly slipped into a discussion of modern economies and whether it was moral to cancel the debts of people who are in arrears, when some people have struggled to keep current on their payments.” Bankers and bondholders love this argument, because it says, “Don’t cancel debts. Make everyone pay, or someone will get a free ride.” Suppose Solon would have thought this in Athens in 594 BC. No banning of debt bondage. No Greek takeoff. More oligarchy Draco-style. Suppose Hammurabi, the Sumerians and other Near Eastern rulers would have thought this. ...

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Bronze Age Redux

By Friday, April 27, 2018 Debt, History of the Near East Permalink

A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES BRONZE AGE REDUX: On Debt, Clean Slates And What The Ancients Have To Teach Us The Michael Hudson Interview by Harold Crooks for A Gathering of The Tribes Magazine.         One of the most compelling sequences in the Oscar-winning Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s indictment of Wall Street’s role in the 2008 global financial meltdown, involved not the banker culprits but their supporting cast. These were the Ivy League accomplices. Ferguson mightily skewered these economists for the cover they gave the sub-prime Hamptons dwelling wise guys whose rescue turned out to be a pretext for one of the largest reverse-Robin Hood wealth transfers in history. Though for the foreseeable future they enjoy their tenured posts, control prestigious academic journals and continue to prey on the ...

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Jesus: the economic activist

By Friday, April 27, 2018 Debt, History of the Near East, Interviews , Permalink

Debt Jubilee, April 26, 2018 THE HUDSON REPORT: The history of debt cancellation and Jesus's economic justice activism   Here is the direct download link. Left Out, a podcast produced by Paul Sliker, Michael Palmieri, and Dante Dallavalle, creates in-depth conversations with the most interesting political thinkers, heterodox economists, and organizers on the Left.   The Hudson Report is a new weekly series produced by Left Out with the legendary economist Michael Hudson. Every episode we cover an economic or political issue that is either being ignored—or hotly debated—that week in the press. In this episode we discuss the ancient history of debt cancellation, the untold life of Jesus as an economic justice activist, and more largely Professor Hudson's forthcoming book, "...and forgive them their debts," out in summer 2018. Michael Palmieri: Professor Michael Hudson welcome back to another episode of ...

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Resisting Financial Conquest

By Tuesday, June 30, 2015 Debt , , Permalink

As published on Counterpunch Back in January upon coming into office, Syriza probably could not have won a referendum on whether to pay or not to pay. It didn’t have a full parliamentary majority, and had to rely on a nationalist party for Tsipras to become prime minister. (That party balked at cutting back Greek military spending, which was 3% of GDP, and which the troika had helpfully urged to be cut back in order to balance the government’s budget.) Seeing how unyielding the opposition was, Syriza’s stance was: “We would like to pay. But there’s no money.” This kept throwing the ball back into the troika’s court. The Institutions were so unyielding that Syriza’s approval rating in the polls rose by 13% by June. Greek voters became increasingly incensed at the Troika’s ...

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