Driving down the interest rates creates a boom in the stock market, and also the real estate market. The resulting capital gains not treated as income.
MICHAEL HUDSONThe only way people can repay the debt is by cutting their living standards very drastically. It means agreeing to shift their pension plans from defined benefit plans.
More Michael Hudson Quotes
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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
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The economy is being run primarily by the banks for their own interest.
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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 -
The parasite can’t simply come in and take something. First of all, it needs to numb the host. It has an enzyme so that the host doesn’t realize the parasite’s there.
MICHAEL HUDSON -
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.
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Money is not a factor of production. But in order to have access to credit, in order to get money, in order to get an education, you have to pay the banks.
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Mathematically, debts grow exponentially at compound interest. Banks recycle the interest into new loans, so debts grow exponentially, faster than the economy can afford to pay.
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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.”
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You get a constituency; you make them believe your promises, and then you turn them over to your financial campaign backers. That’s what politics has become and that’s as much an art of deception as economics is.
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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.
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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.
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It’s amazing that Europe says, “What are we going to do with these refugees?” It’s as if it doesn’t realize that being part of NATO and bombing these countries forces them to choose to live by fleeing, or to stay and get bombed.
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The companies aren’t hiring, because consumers don’t have enough money to buy the goods and services.
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To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.
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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