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The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.

Michael Hudson

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
You have to abolish pension plans. You have to abolish social spending. You have to raise taxes.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Pension Plans Simple Thinking
That’s the “magic” of double-taxation treaties: you can shop around for the lowest taxer.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Magic Taxation Treaties
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
you’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 HUDSON

Company Liability Over Pay Profit Tax
Elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called “unproductive activity.”
MICHAEL HUDSON

Financial Support Today
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
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
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
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
Small banks that lend to consumers are fine.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Banks Consumers Fine Small
Europe 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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Country Creating Party People
A bubble is only called that after it bursts, after the insiders get out, leaving the pension funds and small investors, Canadians and other naïve investors holding the bag.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Bags Fund Leaving
The result of this anti-classical revolution you had just before World War I was that today, almost all the economic growth in the last decade has gone to the One Percent. It’s gone to Wall Street, to real estate.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Decade Economic Real Wall War
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
If you have to pay about forty to forty-three percent of your income for housing, you also have to pay fifteen percent of your paycheck for the FICA for Social Security wage withholding.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Cards Income Three

The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.

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The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.

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