Michael Hudson: 95% Income Growth Goes to the 1%

Image by KeizerStreetArt via Flickr

by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
January 16, 2014

Boom Bust on Jan 15, 2014

Michael Hudson, a professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, is a sharp critic of what he considers the “rent seeking” behavior which has come to dominate the world of global finance. Once upon a time, governments regularly expunged debts to prevent the crises and turmoil that overindebtedness caused. But then came the Romans. For the Romans, “a debt was a debt was a debt”. And since then, it has become standard fare to enforce debt contracts even when they are unpayable. Hudson now sees a parasitic financial industry that looks only to determine how much wealth it can extract via fees, interest income, and tax breaks, rather than providing capital to increase.

[Hudson begins at 5 minutes into the video.]

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Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) and Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: A History of Theories of Polarization v. Convergence in the World Economy. His book summarizing his economic theories, The Bubble and Beyond, is now available. His latest book is Finance Capitalism and Its Discontents. He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com.

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