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The Arc of Time: Pro-Creditor History

By Thursday, May 25, 2023 Articles, Interviews , Permalink

“Origins of debt: Michael Hudson reveals how financial oligarchies in Greece & Rome shaped our world,” Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report, May 25, 2023.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqe3IQQo_t4 BEN NORTON: Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Norton of Geopolitical Economy Report, and today I have the great pleasure of speaking with a friend of the show, the economist Michael Hudson, and I'm very excited to be discussing his newest book, The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization's Oligarchic Turning Point. This book is an absolute tour de force. It's an incredible work, not only of economic history, but simply, I would say, anthropology and economic archaeology. I think it really shows that many people know Michael Hudson for his work on economics and finance, but I would say that a book like this shows that he's ...

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Democratic Liberty Versus Oligarchic Liberty

By Friday, April 28, 2023 Interviews , Permalink

https://theanalysis.news/part-2-debt-and-the-collapse-of-antiquity-michael-hudson/?cmid=67292843-46e5-42f5-a070-0682d9ef6d57 Colin Bruce Anthes Welcome back to theAnalysis for part two of our conversation with Dr. Michael Hudson on The Collapse of Antiquity. Michael Hudson I think the character of early Christianity is what is in the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive them their debts as we forgive the debtors.” Christianity, especially Roman Christianity, made a travesty of this. They used the word sins. “Forgive us our sins as we forget the sins of the debtors.” What they meant was every kind of sin except economic. Colin Bruce Anthes A reminder, if you haven’t done so already, to like, subscribe, and ring that bell for notifications so you don’t miss our material. I want to do a little bit of name-dropping here. It’s a surprisingly fun book to read because of how culturally rich it is and how many of these references ...

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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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Up in Arms

By Friday, April 5, 2019 History of the Near East Permalink

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos: A Four-Part Interview With Michael Hudson: A New “Reality Economics” Curriculum Is Needed (Part 4) Cross-posted from Naked Capitalism By John Siman, who is also the author of Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 in this series John Siman: I want to spell out the implications of the points that Socrates brought up, and with which you and I agree. That leaves the question facing us today: Is the American oligarchy and state as rapacious as that of Rome? Or is it universally the nature of oligarchy in any historical setting to be rapacious? And if so, where is it all leading? Michael Hudson: If Antiquity had followed the “free market” policies of modern neoliberal economics, the Near East, Greece and Rome would never have ...

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The DNA of Western civilization is financially unstable

By Thursday, April 4, 2019 History of the Near East Permalink

The Delphic Oracle Was Their Davos: A Four-Part Interview With Michael Hudson: (Part 3) Cross-posted from Naked Capitalism By John Siman, who is also the author of Part 1 and Part 2 in this series John Siman: It seems that unless there’s a Hammurabi-style “divine king” or some elected civic regulatory authority, oligarchies will arise and exploit their societies as much as they can, while trying to prevent the victimized economy from defending itself. Michael Hudson: Near Eastern rulers kept credit and land ownership subordinate to the aim of maintaining overall growth and balance. They prevented creditors from turning citizens into indebted clients obliged to work off their debts instead of serving in the military, providing corvée labor and paying crop rents or other fees to the palatial sector. JS: So looking at history ...

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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 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. Most of ...

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EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS WRONG

By Friday, November 16, 2018 Articles , Permalink

A Review of Michael Hudson’s new book .... and Forgive Them Their Debts As published on Naked Capitalism by John Siman To say that Michael Hudson’s new book And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure, and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (ISLET 2018) is profound is an understatement on the order of saying that the Mariana Trench is deep. To grasp his central argument is so alien to our modern way of thinking about civilization and barbarism that Hudson quite matter-of-factly agreed with me that the book is, to the extent that it will be understood, “earth-shattering” in both intent and effect. Over the past three decades, gleaned (under the auspices of Harvard’s Peabody Museum) and then synthesized the scholarship of American and British and French and German and Soviet ...

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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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Could/Should Jubilee Debt Cancellations be Reintroduced Today?

By Wednesday, January 17, 2018 Articles, History of the Near East , Permalink

By M. Hudson (University of Missouri) and C. Goodhart (LSE) As published by the Center for Economic Policy Research. Abstract In this paper we recall the history of Jubilee debt cancellations, emphasizing what their social purpose was at that time. We note that it would not be possible to copy that procedure exactly nowadays, primarily because most debt/credit relationships are intermediated via financial institutions, such as banks, insurance companies, etc., rather than by governments or wealthy families directly. But we argue that the underlying social purpose of such Jubilees – to keep debt within the reasonable ability to be paid without social and economic polarisation – could be recreated via alternative mechanisms, and we discuss the politico-economic arguments for, and against, doing so. Keywords: Inequality; Debt-Canceling Jubilees; Babylonian and Byzantine Empires; Equity Participation; Student ...

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