Democracy Now, in debate with Lori Wallach. The discussion starts at the 20 minute mark.
European Care for the Elderly 2016
Michael Hudson, Speech to SANICADEMIA, May 10, 2016 in Villach, Austria for the 5th International Congress on Geriatrics and Gerontology = 59th Austrian Convention for Hospital Management, “We’re Living Longer: The healthcare challenges for today and tomorrow.” The most obvious approach to look at how European care for the elderly will evolve is to project technological trends and the costs of people living longer as diagnostic equipment, drug treatments and other medical science continues to improve. This kind of projection shows a rising cost to society of pensions and health care, because a rising proportion of the aging population is retiring. How will economies pay for it? I want to point to some special problems that are looming on the political front. I assume that the reason you have invited me from ...
Inside the World Bank's Population Policy
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 ...
How Brazil Can Defend Against Financialization
and Keep Its Economic Surplus for Itself CDES Conference, Brasilia, September 17, 2010 I would like to place this seminar's topic, 'Global Governance,'in the context of global control, which is what 'governance' is mainly about. The word (from Latin gubernari, cognate to the Greek root kyber) means 'steering'. The question is, toward what goal is the world economy steering? That obviously depends on who is doing the steering. It almost always has been the most powerful nations that organize the world in ways that transfer income and property to themselves. From the Roman Empire through modern Europe such transfers took mainly the form of military seizure and tribute. The Norman conquerors endowed themselves as a landed aristocracy extracting rent from the populace, as did the Nordic conquerors of France and other countries. ...
Dollar Hegemony and the Rise of China
Hudson to Premier Wen Jaibao, March 15, 2010 Dear Premier Wen Jiabao, I write this letter to counteract some of the solutions that Western politicians are recommending for China to cope with its buildup of excess foreign-exchange reserves. Raising the renminbi’s exchange rate against the dollar will not cure the China-US payments imbalance. The dollar glut will continue, and so will the currency fluctuation among the dollar, euro and sterling, leaving no stable store of value. The cause of this instability is that each of these three currency areas has grown top-heavy with by debts in excess of the ability to pay. What then should China should it do with its buildup of excess reserves, if not recycle its inflows into their bonds? Four possibilities have been suggested: (1) to revalue the renminbi, ...
America's Free Lunch is Over: How Should the Middle East invest its Rising Trade Surplus?
Published in the June 2008 issue of The Gulf, a weekly business news magazine published in Bahrain, and in Counterpunch Every week Mid Eastern countries acquire more dollars in payment for their oil and other exports, and also for rising U.S. investment in their stock markets and other property. This confronts them with a problem: What can they do with these dollars? Traditionally, exporters have saved their export earnings by building up their assets. But is it still realistic for them to acquire more dollarized assets? Central banks throughout the world presently hold some $2.5 trillion of U.S. Treasury bonds, and another trillion dollars in private-sector U.S. dollar debt. As the dollar’s exchange rate falls, these banks suffer losses when their holdings are denominated in their own currencies. Even more serious, the principal ...
