Jubilee | Michael Hudson

Jubillee Perspectives with Steve Keen

By Michael Monday, December 7, 2020 Interviews Jubilee Permalink

DEC 4, 2020 Is it time for a debt jubilee? Steve Keen and Michael Hudson have both been arguing for a debt jubilee for some time. Now, as COVID-19 hits the poorest hardest, and leaves those with money better off than before, is this the right time to write off debt? Can the economy recover without it? After all, its stagnated since the 2008 global financial crisis. If you were to have a debt jubilee, how would you do it. Steve and Michael have different ideas about how it should be implemented. They explain their thinking to Phil Dobbie on this week’s free edition of the Debunking Economics podcast. TRANSCRIPT PHIL: It is obvious COVID-19 and our response to it is having a devastating impact on the world economy. And perhaps the biggest impact ...

Corona Debt Jubilee

By Michael Sunday, March 22, 2020 Articles Jubilee Permalink

Cross posted from the Washington Post. Michael Hudson, author of “… and forgive them their debts” and “Killing the Host,” is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends and is distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Even before the novel coronavirus appeared, many American families were falling behind on student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other payments. America’s debt overhead was pricing its labor and industry out of world markets. A debt crisis was inevitable eventually, but covid-19 has made it immediate. Massive social distancing, with its accompanying job losses, stock dives and huge bailouts to corporations, raises the threat of a depression. But it doesn’t have to be this way. History offers us another alternative in such situations: a debt ...

The Delphic Oracle as their Davos

By Michael Wednesday, April 3, 2019 Debt, History of the Near East Jubilee 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 ...

Wiping the Debt Slate Clean

By Michael Thursday, September 13, 2018 Interviews Jubilee Permalink

With Max Keiser on the history of debt from the Bronze Age onwards. Max poses the question, has a historical precedent been set with the bailing out of creditors, not debtors in 2008?

Bronze Age Redux

By Michael Friday, April 27, 2018 Debt, History of the Near East Jubilee 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 ...

Jesus: the economic activist

By Michael Friday, April 27, 2018 Debt, History of the Near East, Interviews Ancient Near East, Jubilee 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 ...

Could/Should Jubilee Debt Cancellations be Reintroduced Today?

By Michael Wednesday, January 17, 2018 Articles, History of the Near East Ancient Near East, Jubilee 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 ...

He died for our debt, not our sins

By Michael Thursday, December 21, 2017 Interviews Jubilee Permalink

Cross posted from our friends at Renegade Inc. As many people turn towards their Christian and Jewish faiths this Christmas and Hanukkah in an attempt to make sense of the year that was, at least one economist says we have been reading the bible in an anachronistic way.  In fact he has written an entire book on the topic. In ‘...And Forgive them their Debts: Credit and Redemption’ (available this spring on Amazon), Professor Michael Hudson makes the argument that far from being about sex, the bible is actually about economics, and debt in particular.  "The Christianity we know today is not the Christianity of Jesus," says Professor Hudson. Indeed the Judaism that we know today is not the Judaism of Jesus either.  The economist told Renegade Inc the Lord's Prayer, 'forgive us our sins ...

Cancel Odious Greek Debts

By Michael Saturday, June 3, 2017 Speeches Debt, Greece, Jubilee Permalink

In May I presented at a SYMPOSIUM | Greece, Out of The Crisis: Debt-End or Dead-End. The presentation I gave (via Video Conference) was entitled “Why the Greek debt should be cancelled. It was odious in the first place.” It can be viewed via this link.

The Land Belongs to God

By Michael Wednesday, January 25, 2017 Articles Ancient Near East, Jubilee Permalink

Speech to the Union Theological Seminary, Columbia. The focus of my talk today will be Jesus' first sermon and the long background behind it that helps explain what he was talking about and what he sought to bring about. I've been associated with Harvard University's Peabody Museum for over thirty years in Babylonian economic archeology. And for more than twenty years I've headed a group out of Harvard, the International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economies (ISCANEE), writing a new economic history of the ancient Near East. The five colloquia volumes that we've published began in 1994. We decided we have to re-write the history to free it from the modern ideological preconceptions that have distorted much popular understanding. When I began to study Sumer and Babylonia in the 1980s, there ...