Most people think of the economy as producing goods and services and paying labor to buy what it produces.
MICHAEL HUDSONMost people think of the economy as producing goods and services and paying labor to buy what it produces.
MICHAEL HUDSONDebt deflation is when there’s less money that people have to spend out of their paychecks on goods and services, because they’re paying the FIRE sector. Oil going down is a function of the supply and demand of oil in the market. It’s a separate phenomenon.
MICHAEL HUDSONI don’t think that governments should permit speculation in raw materials, because they’re what the economy basically needs.
MICHAEL HUDSONThe 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 HUDSONThe price decline is a result of having to pay debts. That drains income from the circular flow between production and consumption – that is, between what people are paid when they go to work, and the things that they buy.
MICHAEL HUDSONEvery government, from the Obama administration right through to Angela Merkel, the Eurozone and the IMF, promise to save the banks, not the economy.
MICHAEL HUDSONWhile escalating war in Afghanistan and maintaining over 850 military bases around the world, the administration has run up the national debt that Smith decried.
MICHAEL HUDSONThe financial time frame always has been short-term. Projects with long-term paybacks are cut back, because CEOs and financial managers simply want to take their money and run. That is the financial mentality.
MICHAEL HUDSONMr. Trump wants to turn the U.S. economy into the kind of real estate development that has made him so rich in New York.
MICHAEL HUDSONWhen people are running up more and more debt for housing, they call that “real wealth.” It exposes what’s wrong in the mainstream economics and why most of the economics that justifies austerity programs and economic shrinkage is in the textbooks is not scientific.
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.
MICHAEL HUDSONThe one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.
MICHAEL HUDSONWages 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 HUDSONyou’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.
MICHAEL HUDSONI think we’re in the take-the-money-and-run stage of the economy. So the banks may go under, but the bankers, who make the policy, clean up.
MICHAEL HUDSONWe’re still in the collapse that began after 2008. There’s not a new collapse, there hasn’t been a recovery.
MICHAEL HUDSON