black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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
Europe is acting in a very self-destructive manner, but is doing so because it’s trying to be loyal to the United States.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Europe Self Trying
Inflation usually helps the economy at large, but not the 1% if wages rise. So the 1% says that it is terrible.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Economy Helping Wages
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
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

Actually Host Parasite Protected
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
Nobody prefers to earn income any more, because that’s taxable. Rich people prefer to make capital gains.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Gains Income People
That’s the “magic” of double-taxation treaties: you can shop around for the lowest taxer.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Magic Taxation Treaties
You have to pay medical care, you have to pay the banks for your credit card debt, student loans. Then you only have about twenty-five or thirty-five percent, maybe one-third of your salary to buy goods and services. That’s all.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Good Loans Percent Salary Student
You have to abolish pension plans. You have to abolish social spending. You have to raise taxes.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Pension Plans Simple Thinking
One basic myth is that rich people get wealthy by earning income. But that’s not how most get rich. Most of the gains of the rich people since 1945 have been “capital gains”.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Earning Income People
Seventy-eight percent of millennials are worried about not having enough good paying job opportunity to pay off their student loans. Seventy-four percent can’t pay the health care if they get sick.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Eight Jobs Opportunity
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

House Suffering Want
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
This is the sector that backs the political campaigns of senators, presidents and congressmen, and they use this leverage to make sure that their people dominate the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the federal housing agencies.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Conbgression Make Sure Treasury
When you say “bank,” a bank is a building, a set of computers and chairs and things.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Bankers People Running

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Michael Hudson Quotes