In order to be an economist these days, you have to participate in this fairytale that somehow we can recover and still make the banks rich. And it is a fairytale.
MICHAEL HUDSONI think I’m just going to move out and buy a cheaper house.” So it’s very risky when you have only a 3% or 3.5% equity for the loan. The bank really isn’t left with much cushion as collateral.
More Michael Hudson Quotes
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When you say “bank,” a bank is a building, a set of computers and chairs and things.
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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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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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If you want to see where Trump is moving, look at what the United States neoliberals advised Russia to do after 1991, when they promised to create an ideal economy.
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It thought that if it could subsidize banks lending homeowners enough money to buy houses from people who are defaulting, then the bank balance sheets would end up okay.
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I think the less fracking there is, the better it is for the economy and society.
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you’ll load the company you take over with debt. But you don’t have to pay taxes on the profits that you pay out in this way. You can deduct the interest from your tax liability.
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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.
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This is not really currency that circulates. It’s like the old joke about expensive vintage wine. Wine prices will go up and once in a while somebody will buy a 50-year-old bottle of wine and say, “Wait a minute. This has gone bad.” The answer is, “Well, that wine isn’t for drinking; that’s for trading.”
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The myth is that if housing prices go up, Americans will be richer. What banks – and behind them, the Federal Reserve – really want is for new buyers to be able to borrow enough money to buy the houses from mortgage defaulters, and thus save the banks from suffering from more mortgage defaults.
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The ideological foundation of today’s business schools is that economic control should be shifted out of government hands into those of financial managers – that is, Wall Street.
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If bankers can push the loans and make more profits for the bank, they get paid higher bonuses. They often also get stock options.
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“We’ll help you get a better job. We’ll arrange a loan so that you don’t have to pay a penny for this education.” Their pet bank gets them the government-guaranteed loan, and the student may get the junk degree, but doesn’t get a job, so they don’t pay the loan.
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The 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.
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The seeming irony is that it’s so bad that it enables the Democratic Party to think, “A-ha, all we have to do is be the lesser evil.
MICHAEL HUDSON