Super-Imperialism
Posted: Thursday, March 14, 2013 - 09:15
There are two quite different perspectives in the set of speeches at this conference. Many on our morning panels – Steve Keen, William Greider, and earlier Yves Smith and Robert Kuttner – have warned about the economy being strapped by debt. The debt we are talking about is private-sector debt. But most officials this afternoon focus on government debt and budget deficits as the problem – especially social spending such as Social Security, not bailouts to the banks and Federal Reserve credit to re-inflate prices for real estate, stocks and bonds.
To us this morning, government deficit spending into the economy is the solution. The problem is private debt. And in contrast to Federal Reserve and Treasury bailout policy, we view the...
Posted: Thursday, January 10, 2013 - 08:49
When World War I broke out in August 1914, economists on both sides forecast that hostilities could not last more than about six months. Wars had grown so expensive that governments quickly would run out of money. It seemed that if Germany could not defeat France by springtime, the Allied and Central Powers would run out of savings and reach what today is called a fiscal cliff and be forced to negotiate a peace agreement.
But the Great War dragged on for four destructive years. European governments did what the United States had done after the Civil War broke out in 1861 when the Treasury printed greenbacks. They paid for more fighting simply by printing their own money. Their economies did not buckle and there was no major inflation....
Posted: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - 14:46
Paul Krugman is widely appreciated for his New York Times columns criticizing Republican demands for fiscal austerity. He rightly argues that cutting back public spending will worsen the economic depression into which we are sinking. And despite his partisan Democratic Party politicking, he warned from the outset in 2009 that President Obama’s modest counter-cyclical spending program was not sufficiently bold to spur recovery.
These are the themes of his new book, End This Depression Now. In old-fashioned Keynesian style he believes that the solution to insufficient market demand is for the government to run larger budget deficits. It should start by giving revenue-sharing grants of $300 billion annually to states and localities whose...
Posted: Monday, March 12, 2012 - 08:29
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington. Concentration of ownership leads to concentration of political power. It’s rather obvious. It’s practically a truism. But it’s not something you will hear said very often on mainstream media. But it certainly goes to the core of what’s happening in Europe, Greece, and in United States and Canada and many—most other countries, if not all. Now joining us to talk about the relationship of banks, big banks, financial power, and public policy is Michael Hudson. Michael was a former Wall Street financial analyst. He’s now a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. And you can find his work at...
Posted: Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - 13:00
I have just returned from Rimini, Italy, where I experienced one of the most amazing spectacles of my academic life. Four of us associated with the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC) were invited to lecture for three days on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and explain why Europe is in such monetary trouble today – and to show that there is an alternative, that the enforced austerity for the 99% and vast wealth grab by the 1% is not a force of nature.
Stephanie Kelton (incoming UMKC Economics Dept. chair and editor of its economic blog, New Economic Perspectives), criminologist and law professor Bill Black, investment banker Marshall Auerback and me (along with a French economist, Alain Parquez) stepped into the basketball...
Posted: Thursday, February 16, 2012 - 08:03
"Finance today achieves what military invasion used to do in times past so the new mode of warfare is financial not military"
Posted: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 - 10:18
The inherently symbiotic relationship between banks and governments recently has been reversed. In medieval times, wealthy bankers lent to kings and princes as their major customers. But now it is the banks that are needy, relying on governments for funding – capped by the post-2008 bailouts to save them from going bankrupt from their bad private-sector loans and gambles.
Yet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States. Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “...
Posted: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - 10:57
On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed me on KPFK’s program, “Building a Powerful Movement in the United States” in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in. Listen to the interview. To clarify my points I have edited and expanded my answers from the interview transcript.
Alan Minsky: I am joined now by Michael Hudson. He is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and also is president of the Institute for the Study of Long Term Economic Trends. Welcome to the show, Michael.
Michael Hudson: Thank you very much.
Alan Minsky: Michael Hudson is scheduled to address Occupy L.A. as part of a teach-in that includes William Black and Robert Scheer, who will be moderating the panel that...