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If you look at payments to labor as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, you find profits going way up, investment and savings going up.

Michael Hudson

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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Country Moving People United States
If you look at payments to labor as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, you find profits going way up, investment and savings going up.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Income Investment Looks National Savings
Mr. 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 HUDSON

Kind People Real
To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Deficit Problem Solution
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Homeowner Money Okay People Sheets
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.”
MICHAEL HUDSON

Circulate Drinking Like Somebody Wine Years
The aim of promoting low down payments is to push prices back up so that fewer houses are going to be in negative equity and fewer people are going to walk away from the mortgages. That will save the from taking a loss on their junk mortgage loans.
MICHAEL HUDSON

House Loss Payments People Promoting
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Party Protect Wall War
When economists speak of money, they neglect that all money and credit is debt. That is the essence of bookkeeping and accounting. There are always two sides to the balance sheet. And one party’s money or savings is another party
MICHAEL HUDSON

Accounting Balance Bookkeeping Party Speak
Nobody prefers to earn income any more, because that’s taxable. Rich people prefer to make capital gains.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Gains Income People
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Cutting Illusion Junk
Small banks that lend to consumers are fine.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Banks Consumers Fine Small
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
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

Enable Evil Lesser
One of the big problems in America’s economic polarization and shrinkage is that pensions can’t be paid. So there are going to be defaults on pensions here, just like Europeans are insisting in rolling back pensions. You can look at Greece and Argentina as the future of America.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Country Pension People Rolling
When you say “paying the banks,” what they really mean is paying the bank bondholders. They are basically the One Percent.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Mean Percent Really
Much higher cost for all the infrastructure that he’s proposing. You could call Trump’s plan “public investment to create private profit”. That’s really his plan in a summary.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Investment Plan Proposing Summary
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
Economists often define their discipline as “the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends.” But when resources or money really become scarce, economists call it a crisis and say that it’s a question for politicians, not their own department.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Crisis Discipline Politician
The United States Government has fought against creation of an international court to adjudicate the ability of national economies to pay debts.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Ability Creation Economy
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Blue Mean Nine Ninety
“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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Arrange Education Guaranteed Student
Deflation is a leakage from this circular flow, to pay banks and the real estate, called the FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate. These transfer payments leave less and less of the paycheck to be spent on goods and services, so markets shrink.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Estate Fire Pay Real Train
These $100 bills aren’t meant to circulate. They’re not to spend on goods and services. They’re a store of value. They’re a form of saving.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Circulate Saving Services Spending
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
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Bank Cheaper Cushion House Risky
The United States and Europe are in a state of debt deflation, where people and businesses have to pay banks instead of spending their income on goods and services. So markets shrink, sales and profits fall, and the stock market turns down.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Country Deflation Fall People

If you look at payments to labor as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, you find profits going way up, investment and savings going up.

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If you look at payments to labor as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, you find profits going way up, investment and savings going up.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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