Michael Hudson and Dennis Kucinich: The Anatomy of Bank Failures, the Financialized Economy and Collapse

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
March 23, 2023

Overview: This was an impromptu conversation precipitated by former Congressman Dennis Kucinich to have a deep dive discussion with a former economic advisor, Michael Hudson, on the shockingly large recent bank collapses. As the former chair of the powerful Government Oversight Subcommittee, Kucinich had a ringside seat in unraveling the bank collapses after the housing bubble burst. He confronted the players in the field with withering questions in Congressional hearings. Now Kucinich wanted important feedback from a banking insider on how this crisis was different than the one in 2008.

Society’s Collapse Has Already Begun, by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer’s Newsletter, Mar. 10, 2023
March 20, 2023

American workers are stuck in a prison, a prison that they’re kept in through the perpetual threat of homelessness. This isn’t truly a rhetorical point, it’s an empirically proven reality. Nearly two-thirds of the country’s workers are now living paycheck to paycheck, meaning this last year’s inflation has made them easier to coerce. That’s the directly stated goal of the capitalist ruling class at this stage. A Bank of America memo from last year said decreased worker living standards will represent greater leverage for employers. The consequences of this are the destruction of these people’s mental and physical wellbeing. They’re being strained, abused, and exploited while having to choose between this and living on the streets.

American Capitalism’s Growing Dysfunction, by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer’s Newsletter
February 21, 2023

The systemic breakdown that our socioeconomic system is creating has the potential to do more than worsen the suffering of the people. Capitalism has survived so long because it’s been able to exploit the crises it creates, to profit off of wars, depressions, pandemics, and environmental catastrophes. Yet in certain instances, these crises have instead produced victories for the working class. World War I made the Russian revolution possible, World War II made the Chinese revolution possible, the living standards crisis that the IMF engineered across the Global South made the formation of many anti-imperialist governments possible. When the capitalists disrupt society, they do so with the risk that the outcome will be not greater profits but an end to their rule.

Kill Capitalism Before It Kills Us, by Paul Street

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by Paul Street
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Paul Street Report, Jan. 24, 2023
January 26, 2023

“It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and then of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism.” — Fredric Jameson, The Seeds of Time, 1994

Collapse Isn’t A Politically Neutral Thing, by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer’s Newsletter, Oct. 31, 2022
November 2, 2022

When we analyze the collapse that our civilization is undergoing, we need to factor in the reality about collapse that our ruling class doesn’t want us to consider: collapse isn’t a politically neutral thing. It’s something that exists because capitalism has made the conditions for it possible.

The “American Experiment” Is Dying. What Will Replace It? by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea’s Newsletter, Sept. 18, 2022
September 19, 2022

The United States is considered the longest standing “democracy” by bourgeois thinkers because it’s never actually been a democracy, and has survived so long by undemocratically suppressing its proletariat. The jingoists who say it’s a republic and not a democracy are at least being honest about the nature of the social order they support. The USA was designed to be a modern version of Rome, an empire that only represented the interests of those who most directly benefit from the violence against the oppressed nations. Those being the rich, and the social base that’s bribed to align with the interests of the rich.

Capitalism Is Destroying Us

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Dandelion Salad

Second Thought on Aug 26, 2022

It’s never good to hear the words “total societal collapse” from a scholarly paper, but that’s exactly the phrasing used in the new UN climate report.

William I. Robinson: Capitalism’s Structural Crisis and the Global Revolt

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Dandelion Salad

theAnalysis-news on Aug 22, 2022

According to William I. Robinson, the COVID pandemic has further intensified the structural crisis of global capitalism and has caused numerous uprisings and revolts around the world, which global elites are trying to suppress via militarization, police repression, and surveillance.

American Diplomacy as a Tragic Drama, by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
August 1, 2022

As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.

The Chris Hedges Report: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the Soul of American Capitalism

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Jul 29, 2022

Moby Dick, which explores the self-destructive forces that define America and the collapse of a civilization, is our greatest and most prescient novel.

The End of Western Civilization, by Michael Hudson

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by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 16, 2022

Why it lacks resilience, and What will take its place

Paper presented on July 11, 2022 to The Ninth South-South Forum on Sustainability.

Must Collapse Be Inevitable? Imagining A “Half-Earth” Sustainable Economy, by Pete Dolack

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by Pete Dolack
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Systemic Disorder, July 6, 2022
July 9, 2022

It seems vastly easier to imagine the future as a dystopian nightmare than as a time when today’s problems are mostly behind humanity. For every work of optimism, such as Star Trek, there are dozens of works imagining a nightmare world of deprivation, environmental destruction and severe repression amidst a world of people scrambling to survive anyway they can in a war of all against all.

The Chris Hedges Report: Splinterlands’ Climate Dystopia, with John Feffer

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Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Jul 8, 2022

In his dystopian novel Splinterlands, John Feffer looks ahead to life on planet earth in the year 2050. The signs of societal breakdown in the not-so-distant future, if we look, are already apparent in our world today. Feffer follows them to their logical conclusion.

This Is What It Looks Like When An Empire Cannibalizes Itself, by Rainer Shea

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by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea’s Newsletter, June 30, 2022
July 2, 2022

In front of us, something is unfolding that we don’t want to properly see, but that we subconsciously recognize. The warning signs for a fascist crackdown in America have been here for years, if not decades. It’s now that they’ve become too big for much of this country’s complacent left to ignore. We’re accelerating towards a level of direness which people living under fascism so often can’t perceive at first, until the reality of their situation has finished creeping up onto them. By George Jackson’s definition of fascism, which is when capitalism forcibly maintains itself through reform, we’ve already been living under fascism for generations. With the Supreme Court’s decision and its ramifications, this is becoming more visible to more people.

Vijay Prashad: The Coming Food Crisis: Ukraine War Is Wake-Up Call for Global South

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Dandelion Salad

BreakThrough News on Apr 4, 2022

As the war continues in Ukraine, food prices are going up worldwide – because the world is interdependent on others for food and energy. Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine took place this week in Turkey. Is there hope for peace? What’s coming next?