Germany’s position in America’s New World Order

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Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_zY44YClCY The article this talk was based on: Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies. President Biden has characterized this split as being between ...

Clearing the Fog

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March 29, 2022. Margaret Flowers: You're listening to Clearing the FOG, speaking truth to expose the forces of greed, with Margaret Flowers. And now I turn to my guest, Michael Hudson. Michael is the president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term, Economic Trends, ISLET. He's a Wall Street financial analyst and a distinguished research professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, in Kansas City. He's also the author of numerous books and recently updated his book, “Super Imperialism: The economic strategy of American Empire.” Thank you for taking time to speak with me today, Michael. Michael Hudson: Well, thanks for having me on Margaret. MF: You've talked a lot and written a lot about dollar hegemony and what's happening now with de-dollarization. Can you start out by ...

Accidental Crisis?

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NATO-Russia Proxy War: Revealing Signs of a Fading America: Scott Ritter, Michael Hudson - Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization. GR (Michael Welch): Great privilege to speak with you again Mr. Hudson. Welcome! Michael Hudson: Thanks for having me on! GR: Now, We're seeing NATO unifying together behind the US call to sanction Russia, including removal from the SWIFT system. They're being hit with sanctions to hurt, sanctions from hell as President Biden would say, and it doesn't look as if it's working. But the sanctions are boomeranging, and hitting the EU and the US pretty hard with soaring rates for food, fertilizer, oil and gas. They seem to provoke Russian aggression. He's kind of compelled them to do that. We know it wasn't the response, I mean it’s something they ...

Putin’s Rubles

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Cross-posted from The Saker. Following Putin’s announcement about selling gas for Rubles only to hostile nations, I decided to reach out to Michael Hudson and ask him (my level, primitive) questions. Here is our full email exchange: Andrei: Russia has declared that she will only sell gas to “hostile countries” for Rubles. Which means that to non-hostile countries she will continue to sell in Dollars/Euros. Can these hostile countries still purchase gas from Russia but via third countries? Michael Hudson: There seem to be two ways for hostile countries to buy Russian gas. One seems to be to use Russian banks that are not banned from SWIFT. The other way would indeed seem to be to go through what looks to develop as a formal or informal third-country ...

Ukraine falters as per plan

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With military stalemate in the east of the country and the economy in serious depression, the regime in Kiev has had to face some very hard realities. And its very survival is in doubt. Losing on the battlefield and the economic front, the Kiev regime is turning in on itself. CrossTalking with Mark Sleboda, Michael Hudson and Rodney Shakespeare. Audio version:

Global Financialization 2015 – The state of play

Cross-posted from The Saker The Saker: We hear that the Ukraine will have to declare a default, but that it will probably be a "technical" default as opposed to an official one. Some say that the decision of the Rada to allow Iatseniuk to chose whom to pay is already such a "technical default". Is there such thing as a "technical default" and, if yes, how would it be different in terms of consequences for the Ukraine for a "regular" default? Michael Hudson: A default is a default. The attempted euphemism of “technical” default came up with regard to the Greek debt in 2012 at the G8 meetings. Geithner and Obama lobbied the IMF and ECB shamelessly to bail out Greece, simply so that it could pay bondholders, because U.S. banks had ...

Pawns for Pickings

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cross posted from The Nation Ukraine Is In Crisis. Here’s Why the West Can’t Save It. A video roundtable explains why the IMF, Europe, and Western corporations don’t have the country’s best interests at heart. Alexander Reed Kelly June 9, 2015 A Ukrainian national flag flutters in the wind at a position held by the Ukrainian armed forces near the town of Maryinka in eastern Ukraine. (Reuters/Gleb Garanich) Nearly a year and a half after the Euromaidan protests ushered a new government into power in Kiev, Ukraine is still in trouble. Some 6,200 people have been killed, more than 15,000 wounded, and 1.2 million internally displaced in a civil war that had by mid-March, according to the new president, Petro Poroshenko, destroyed “around 25 percent of the country’s industrial potential.” The country’s economy is out of control: ...

Ukraine Labor Dares Operation Vulture

Ukraine’s collapse since the February 2014 coup has become an umbrella for grabitization. Collateral damage in this free-for-all has been labor. Many workers are simply not getting paid, and what they actually are being paid is often illegally low. Employers are taking whatever money is in their business accounts and squirreling it away – preferably abroad, or at least in foreign currency. Wage arrears are getting worse, because as Ukraine approaches the eve of defaulting on its €10+ billion London debt, kleptocrats and business owners are jumping ship. They see that foreign lending has dried up and the exchange rate will plunge further. The Rada’s announcement last week that it shifted €8 billion from debt service to spend on a  new military attack on the country’s eastern export region was the ...