Austerity for Prosperity
by ilene - July 4th, 2010 1:07 pm
Austerity for Prosperity
Courtesy of Michael Hudson
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Trouble in Europe, China
by ilene - June 20th, 2010 8:58 am
Terrific weekend reading with Eric at iTulip interviewing Michael Hudson.
Michael Hudson is Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), a Wall Street Analyst, consultant, and president of The Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET). He is also Chief Economic Advisor to the Reform Task Force Latvia (RTFL) and author of America’s Protectionist Takeoff and Super Imperialism – New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
Trouble in Europe, China
Based on an interview with Eric Janszen of iTulip
Courtesy of Michael Hudson
On April 10, 2010 I caught up with Michael Hudson and he was in rare form. Readers know that my personal view is that much of the right wing of the political spectrum doesn’t know what the problem is and all of the left wing, while nailing the problem, doesn’t know how to solve it. No one is too left wing or too right wing to get an interview here.
Interviewer (EJ): Thank you for your time this morning.
Hudson (MH): Glad to be here.
EJ: It’s been a while since I’ve interviewed you so let’s have a wide-ranging discussion today. I want to include your Thursday Financial Times article on the fate of the ex-Soviet debtor nations, the Bank of International Settlement report I sent you on New Europe and other industrialized debtors, and China, and see where it goes. Let’s start with the BIS report.
MH: I skimmed through it quickly, and it’s the same class war junk economics that the Peterson Institute for International Economics (the lobbyist for international banks) and other neoliberal (that is, anti-labor and pro-financial) lobbying organizations have mounted against public obligations to any parties but the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector. The aim is to prepare the ground for President Obama’s recently appointed “bipartisan” commission to scale back Social Security and Medicare.
The argument is that these two programs need to be pre-funded, with savings levied regressively in advance, to promote a balanced federal budget. The effect would be to prevent fiscal policy from providing the growth in money and credit that economies need. This would all be provided by private-sector banks – at interest. So recent focus…
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Iceland Voters Reject Bank Bailouts in Crushing Electoral Defeat; Neo-Liberalism In Context
by ilene - March 8th, 2010 4:30 pm
Iceland Voters Reject Bank Bailouts in Crushing Electoral Defeat; Neo-Liberalism In Context
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
"Voters rejected the bill because ordinary people, farmers and fishermen, taxpayers, doctors, nurses, teachers, are being asked to shoulder through their taxes a burden that was created by irresponsible greedy bankers."
"Is there any reason why the American people should be taxed to guarantee the debts of banks, any more than they should be taxed to guarantee the debts of other institutions, including merchants, the industries, and the mills of the country?" Senator Carter Glass (D-Va), author of the Banking Act of 1933 and of Glass-Steagall
It is interesting that the government of Iceland had already declared the vote of the people as ‘obsolete.’ One has to wonder when the voters will declare their current government and their representatives as obsolete. One would give the government credit for at least allowing a vote on a referendum, but to then disregard and circumvent it through political devices is seems like a base hypocrisy.
Iceland is a victim of the neo-liberal economic deregulation of the 1990′s, in which a few bankers can buy the government, and rack up enormous profits for themselves in Ponzi like leverage, and then attempt to socialize the debt back to the people when their schemes collapse.
Neo-Liberalism is a system of economic thought embracing the efficient markets hypothesis, the inherent good of deregulation and the natural impediment of government regulation, the necessity of free trade and globalization, the supremacy of the corporation over the individual person in the social economy, and supply side economics. It most likely favors a one world currency and consolidation of production into large corporate combinations or ‘trusts’ under the principle of laissez-faire.
Neo-liberalism may degenerate into crony capitalism, or even corporatism, as its theoretical idealism of perfect rationalism and virtue falters against the reality of human behaviour. In times of financial crisis, for example, neo-liberalism ironically turns to centralized economic planning by allegedly private banks which appropriate public funds and the power of the monetary license to socialize private debts, and, in a strikingly Orwellian twist, eviscerate the discipline of the markets and the individual to preserve their freedom, and the well being of the private corporations. Although now largely repudiated, neo-liberalism has strong roots in the public consciousness, and its adherents hold considerable power in Western governments and among the…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.