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There are two definitions of deflation. Most people think of it simply as prices going down. But debt deflation is what happens when people have to spend more and more of their income to carry the debts that they’ve run up – to pay their mortgage debt, to pay the credit card debt, to pay student loans.

Michael Hudson

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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Cards Credit Fall Loan Mean People
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Gone People Shrinking
Now, suppose that a homeowner puts down only 3% of their own money or 3.5% for the FHA. That means if prices go down by only 3%, the house will be in negative equity and it would pay the homeowner just to walk away and say, “The house now is worth less than the mortgage I owe.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Mean Mortgage Moving Thinking
Somehow most people believed they could get rich by going into debt to borrow assets that were going to rise in price. But you can’t get rich, ultimately, by going into debt. In the end the creditors always win.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Country Debt People Some Somehow
Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Debts Goods Income Paying Services
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 HUDSON

Fairytale Order Rich
More and more money is being extracted from of the production and consumption economy to pay the FIRE sector. That’s what causes debt deflation and shrinks markets. If you pay the banks, you have less to spend on goods and services.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Debt Deflation Fire Pay
To save the banks, you would have to turn the entire Eurozone into Greece.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Country Eurozone Greece People Turns
Small banks that lend to consumers are fine.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Banks Consumers Fine Small
If the economy is growing, people want to employ more workers. If you hire more labor, wages go up.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Growing People Wages
There are two definitions of deflation. Most people think of it simply as prices going down. But debt deflation is what happens when people have to spend more and more of their income to carry the debts that they’ve run up – to pay their mortgage debt, to pay the credit card debt, to pay student loans.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Running Thinking Two
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

Credit Gamble Hands World
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Correct Feelings Reformable Taken Thinking
You’re having government spending on the economy being cut almost everywhere. That means that the only source of spending for growth has to come from borrowing from the banking system.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Cutting Government Mean
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Flat Income Pyramids Tax
While 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 HUDSON

Around Country Decorated Escalating Maintain

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