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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

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
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.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Campaign
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
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
Every government, from the Obama administration right through to Angela Merkel, the Eurozone and the IMF, promise to save the banks, not the economy.
MICHAEL HUDSON

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

Pension Plans Simple Thinking
“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
Small banks that lend to consumers are fine.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Banks Consumers Fine Small
I guess the main thing that came out of the Panama Papers was that Ukrainian President Poroshenko had promised to divest of his chocolate company and instead, he simply moved it into an offshore account.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Chocolate Country Guess People Promised
To save the banks, you would have to turn the entire Eurozone into Greece.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Country Eurozone Greece People Turns
To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Deficit Problem Solution
We’re still in the collapse that began after 2008. There’s not a new collapse, there hasn’t been a recovery.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Collapse Recovery Stills
If the economy is growing, people want to employ more workers. If you hire more labor, wages go up.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Growing People Wages
Most of these charges that people pay are economically unnecessary. There’s no real cost behind them. There’s no real value behind them. So, they’re what the classical economist called empty pricing. Prices with no real cost value.
MICHAEL HUDSON

People Real Unnecessarily Wall
You could say that the vote to withdraw from Europe is, it’s really a vote of the British middle class, the working class, to withdraw from the U.S. neoliberalism that has been running Europe for the last ten years.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Middle Class Running Vote
New investment and employment fall off, and the economy is falls into a downward spiral.
MICHAEL HUDSON

Downward Economic Employment New Spiral

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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