Taken from Super Imperialism, 2nd Edition, p213 (1972) For instance, the World Bank is essentially an American instrument, and the United States is a food-surplus nation threatened with loss of foreign markets for farm products as modernization of European agriculture proceeds. For the World Bank to finance such institutional reforms in developing nations as would lead them toward self-sufficiency on food account would run counter to American interests. U.S. farm surpluses would become unmanageable as the overseas market for U.S. farm products dwindled. Hence, the World Bank prefers perpetuation of world poverty to the development of adequate overseas capacity to feed the peoples of developing countries. There is a yet more subtle point to be considered. Mineral resources represent diminishing assets. It is in the interest of developing peoples to conserve such ...
From WikiLeaks to 21st Century Potato Famines
Professor Hudson appeared on the Renegade Economists radio show in Melbourne, Australia last Wednesday. Listen
Duck, Duck, Goose: Financing the War, Financing the World
By STANDARD SHAEFER (Interview with Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism, Pluto Press, 2003) Now that even the LA Times has begun to show a modicum of willingness to discuss US foreign policy in terms of a potential imperialism, it has become clear that those on the right have avoided this debate so far only by sticking to the strictest, most out-dated notion of empire. The left, however, for too long has been satisfied with talking about cultural imperialism and corporate exploitation, both of which are serious problems. Recently, however, the left has often clumsily explained the economic motives for the war in terms of big oil, sheer greed and more ephemerally as a desire to weaken the euro. This is all likely, but it also reveals the degree to which the ...
