If you’re a wealthy heir with a trust fund, and you sell stocks, make your 10% gains since Donald Trump, and then you buy other stocks, you can avoid paying taxes. And if your accountant registers your wealth offshore in a Panamanian fund, like Russian kleptocrats do – and as more and more Americans do.
MICHAEL HUDSONThe only way people can repay the debt is by cutting their living standards very drastically. It means agreeing to shift their pension plans from defined benefit plans.
More Michael Hudson Quotes
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Deflation is a leakage from this circular flow, to pay banks and the real estate, called the FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate. These transfer payments leave less and less of the paycheck to be spent on goods and services, so markets shrink.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
Europe is sort of like the Soviet Union in the ’30s and ’40s. There was an argument, is it reformable or not? There is a feeling, and I think it’s correct, that the European Union, the eurozone, and the euro, is not reformable, as a result of the Lisbon treaties and the other treaties that have created the euro.
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To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.
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Since 2008 you’ve had the largest bond market rally in history, as the Federal Reserve flooded the economy with quantitative easing to drive down interest rates.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
America needs an ineffective president. That’s much better than an effective president that’s going to go to war with Russia, that’s going to push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that’s going to protect Wall Street, and that’s going to oppose neoliberal austerity.
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And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes over the host’s brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually part of itself and hence to be protected. That’s basically what Wall Street has done.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
What’s the best gamble in the world, right now? Its betting that Deutsche Bank stock is going to go down. Short sellers borrowed money from their banks to place bets that Deutsche Bank stock is going to go down.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
Today, people are having to spend so much of their money, to acquire a house and to get an education that they don’t have enough to spend on goods and services, except by running into yet more debt on their credit cards and other borrowings.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
Normally, if someone goes bankrupt, you wipe out the debt and get a fresh start. But that’s not permitted with student loans. So the effect is to impoverish many graduates with very high debts.
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Mathematically, debts grow exponentially at compound interest. Banks recycle the interest into new loans, so debts grow exponentially, faster than the economy can afford to pay.
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Wages for the ninety-nine percent have gone down, steadily, since 2008. They’ve gone down especially for the bottom twenty-five percent of the population.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
Russia was under the impression that the neoliberal advisors were going to make Russia as rich as the United States. What they really did was create a kleptocracy that was virtually tax-free.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
Driving down the interest rates creates a boom in the stock market, and also the real estate market. The resulting capital gains not treated as income.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
The Eurozone die is cast. Countries must withdraw from the euro so that governments can create their own money once again, and resist creditor demands to carve up and privatize their public domain.
MICHAEL HUDSON