The reason is that every recovery since 1945 has begun with a higher, and higher level of debt. The debt is so high now, that since 2008 we’ve been in what I call, debt deflation.
MICHAEL HUDSONEurope is creating the flight of refugees that’s tearing it apart politically, and leading rightwing nationalist parties to gain power to withdraw from the Eurozone.
More Michael Hudson Quotes
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I 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.
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Europe is acting in a very self-destructive manner, but is doing so because it’s trying to be loyal to the United States.
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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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On the flat tax, the more you compress the tax rates, the more you untax where the income is really made, at the top of the pyramid.
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New investment and employment fall off, and the economy is falls into a downward spiral.
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The problem is indeed that one party’s debt finds its counterpart in some other party’s savings. Not paying debts therefore involves annulling some other party’s financial claims on the debtor.
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Trump’s junk economics is the illusion that if we cut the taxes on the wealthiest brackets, it’ll all trickle down. But it doesn’t trickle down.
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When I say the economy is shrinking, it’s the economy of the 99%, the people who have to work for a living and depend on earning money for what they can spend.
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The bankers are the people running these banks. They’re the chief officers, and they push the loans because they don’t care if they go bad. For one thing, they may package these bad loans and sell them off to gullible institutional investors.
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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.
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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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.
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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.
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So we are in for years of debt deflation. That means that people have to pay so much debt service for mortgages, credit cards, student loans, bank loans and other obligations that they have less to spend on goods and services. So markets shrink.
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Every government, from the Obama administration right through to Angela Merkel, the Eurozone and the IMF, promise to save the banks, not the economy.
MICHAEL HUDSON