Michael Hudson: What is Debt Deflation?

with Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
May 18, 2013

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RussiaToday May 18, 2013

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert examine stories about those who, using spoof trades, bogus securities and fictitious capital, steal real wealth and income. They discuss how it is that every benchmark index is rigged and introduce the concept of the ‘bonus benchmark.’ In the second half, Max talks to Dr. Michael Hudson, author of The Bubble and Beyond, about debt and wage deflation and about the intersection of interest rates and wages going back to David Ricardo when wages were measured against the price of bread to today when they are measured against the price of debt.

Michael Hudson: Obama’s “Cat Food” Social Security Reform

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
Apr 11, 2013

Michael Hudson: Obama’s “bargain” on social security reform will push more retirees into poverty in exchange for a minor increase in high end income tax – a class that receives most revenue from capital gains.

Failed Privatizations — The Thatcher Legacy by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
April 8, 2013

This is from my book on privatization, written some 15 years ago, never published.

As in Chile, privatization in Britain was a victory for Chicago monetarism. This time it was implemented democratically. In fact, voters endorsed Margaret Thatcher’s selloff of public industries so strongly that by 1991, when she was replaced as prime minister by her own party’s John Major, only 35 percent of Britain’s voters supported the Labour Party – half the proportion registered in 1945. The Conservatives sold off public monopolies, used the proceeds to cut taxes, and put the privatized firms on a profit-making basis.

Mrs. Thatcher’s Mean Legacy by Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers + Thatcher Gave More Power to Finance

by Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
April 8, 2013

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We typically honor the convention to refrain from to speak ill of the recently departed. But Margaret Thatcher probably would not object to an epitaph focusing on how her political legacy was to achieve her professed aim of “irreversibly” dismantling Britain’s public sector. Attacking central planning by government, she shifted it into much more centralized financial hands – the City of London, unopposed by any economic back bench of financial regulation and “free” of meaningful anti-monopoly price regulation.

Michael Hudson: Public Banking Needed to Stop “Cannibalization” of the Economy + Transcript

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
March 29, 2013

TheRealNews·Mar 29, 2013

Michael Hudson: As long as finance is left in private hands, you’re going to have austerity and America ending up looking like Greece and Ireland.

Michael Hudson: Solution to Student Debt is to Get the Banks Out of the Education Business

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
March 21, 2013

TheRealNews·Mar 20, 2013

Michael Hudson: Crippling student debt, which is also a drag on the whole economy, developed as governments pushed the burden of higher education costs onto students and pushed them into the arms of the banks.

Government Debt and Deficits Are Not the Problem. Private Debt Is. by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
March 14, 2013

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.

Michael Hudson: Economic Policy Deception

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
March 7, 2013

Another in the series of interviews on the Renegade Economists radio show (Australia), a wide ranging analysis of the advantages to wealth that money printing and poor tax policy produce. Topics include land and housing policy, German gold repatriation, Occupy, Bradley Manning, Iran, Obama and Kruegar.

The Delicious Irony of Morris Greenberg’s AIG Suit Against the US Treasury by Michael Hudson

by Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
January 12, 2013

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When the financial bubble burst in September 2008, U.S. and European governments responded by shifting bank losses onto their own balance sheets. The pretense is that real growth cannot resume until the banks and speculators are “made whole.” To cover the cost of bailing out the banks, governments now are trying to run budget surpluses. This adds fiscal deflation to the debt deflation left in the bubble’s wake, shrinking the economy at large. Governments are to raise taxes (or simply print new debt to swap for the financial sector’s bad loans and gambles) to reimburse financial institutions whose lending and outright gambling (not to mention the excursion into financial fraud) caused the crisis.

Michael Hudson: 2013 – the stage is set

with Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
January 11, 2013

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TheBigPictureRT·Jan 11, 2013

Dr. Michael Hudson, Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, joins Thom Hartmann. The United States is the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid holidays, paid annual leave, or paid maternity leave. They’ve taken away our sense of safety in the workplace – as safety laws and regulations are continually getting watered down.

Latvia’s Economic Disaster as a Neoliberal Success Story: A Model for Europe and the US? by Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson

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by Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
January 3, 2013

A generation ago the Chicago Boys and their financial supporters applauded General Pinochet’s anti-labor Chile as a success story, thanks mainly to its transformation of their Social Security into Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) that almost universally were looted by the employer grupos by the end of the 1970s. In the last decade, the Bush Administration, seeking a Trojan Horse to privatize Social Security in the United States, applauded Chile’s disastrous privatization of pension accounts (turning many over to US financial institutions) even as that nation’s voters rejected the Pinochetistas largely out of anger at the vast pension rip-off by high finance.

America’s Deceptive 2012 Fiscal Cliff by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad

http://michael-hudson.com

December 28, 2012

How today’s fiscal austerity is reminiscent of World War I’s economic misunderstandings

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.

How Neoliberal Tax and Financial Policy Impoverishes Russia – Needlessly by Michael Hudson

by Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad

http://michael-hudson.com

November 23, 2012

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* A shorter version of this paper has been published in the Russian Academy of Sciences journal, Mir Peremen (The World of Transformations), 2012 (3):49-64 (in Russian). An earlier version was posted by the Global Policy Forum meeting in Yaroslavl, Russia, September 7-8, 2011, on its website.

Russian poverty is unnecessary. Like all poverty in today’s high-productivity age, it is the result of bad policy. There is no technological need for it, nor is Russia lacking in a full spectrum of natural resources and economic potential.

Michael Hudson: Fiscal Cliff An Artificial Crisis

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Updated: added the transcript

with Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad

http://michael-hudson.com

November 24, 2012

TheRealNews

Michael Hudson: Fiscal cliff was manufactured to shift more of the burden of the crisis onto ordinary people.

Michael Hudson: Lower wages and Grab-it-a-zation

with Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad

http://michael-hudson.com

November 9, 2012

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Michael Hudson’s talk at the joint seminar on “Modern Monetary Theory” and “Monetary Circuit Theory” held at the Fields Institute on Tuesday July 3rd.

Outlining his model at Canada’s Fields Institute, the world’s leading mathematical institute. At the meeting with Steve Keen, Stephanie Kelton,Nathan Tankus et al.

Jul 9, 2012 by ProfSteveKeen

Michael Hudson’s talk at the joint seminar on “Modern Monetary Theory” and “Monetary Circuit Theory” held at the Fields Institute on Tuesday July 3rd.