Michael Hudson is, IMHO, the most important economist of our time. I’m basing this assessment on the past two years of listening to 100s of hours of economics lectures and podcasts on RUclips against the backdrop of Covid, lockdowns, stock market inflation and brief crashes, as well as having lived and worked in New York City from before 9/11 until well after the finance and housing collapse of 2008. Michael is describing the reality of the system as it actually functions, not the lies we’ve been sold or the fairy tales we were taught. Thank you for interviewing him!
What's so strange is going back to the Mainstream News and realizing how much they say without explaining anything. How can lies become the prevailing notion? How does the truth get so repressed?
I am an avid Micheal Hudson enthusiast. I watch all his videos. This was an excellent and thorough interview. Well done to the interviewer. Thank you for framing this in a way that is easily digestible to the non academic economist. May I recommend also releasing smaller segments for the masses? Thank u for your service. I am not formally educated. Hudson’s message is important to inform the labor classes. His works have opened my eyes. I have read nine of his books and have seen every posted interview numerous times. Fellow wage laborers, read and watch all you can you will never regret it cuz no one can ever sell u snake oil/economic rent again. You will understand what is happening.
Michael Hudson - like most people who REALLY know what they're talking about - explains the complexities of global economics with clarity and precision. He's the world's greatest living economist.
Prof.Hudson makes an astounding point that "... what I learned especially in monetary theory had nothing to do at all with what I was learning in practice." "... Milton Friedman...[taught that] when you create more money it increases consumer prices....When banks create money they don't lend for people to spend... 80% of loans are mortgage loans. They loan against property already in place." "They lend to increase asset prices, not consumer prices." "The pretence is that money created by banks lending to people who build factories and employ labor to produce more and somehow credit is all productive...." "After WWII all of this stopped,... merchant banking... [which was just] banking to lend against assets....' "... the financial sector, after income tax, after WWI, basically made commercial real estate tax exempt by the pretence that buildings depreciate in value instead of rise in price...." "... the whole essence of classical economics was its value and price theory...[whose sole] purpose was to define the excess of market price over actual cost value and that difference was economic rent...." "...industrial capitalism... was a radical campaign...because it realized that ...to make... any country competitive ...was to get rid of the landlord class and its demands for economic rents ...You had to get rid of...all payments of income that were not necessary for production to take place.... You wanted to bring prices in line with the actual cost value of production and not include [these] rake offs to unproductive investment and labor. That was land rent, monopoly rent, and financial interest charges....[These] three categories of rent were the focus of all classical economics.... That led to...political reform. How do you gt rid of the landlord class." And yet the Federal Reserve is currently increasing interest rates because they don't want wage increases and resulting productive spending to raise the inflation rate. Much of this QE bubble pumping money is going to stock repurchases to inflate executive salaries. The massive 40% increase in monetary supply since 2020 is designed to reduce the value of financial reserves held overseas. It's a last ditch effort to grab global resources with crapified money that will quickly lose its value. This trend will accelerate as Russia, China and the Global South dump US dollars and Treasury Bills before they are seized. Increasing rates of disposable income going to mortgage debt service was deflationary. Thus, 'Stagflation' was the result of money creation being sunk into mortgages producing stagnation, while inflationary pressure was being created by bank money creation being used to inflate asset prices to benefit the oligarchs.
Dr. Michael Hudson performs his best when he doesn't have some little known side-kick, trying to voice his/her views. Just let Hudson talk.....Thank you, Jonathan for doing that.
The landlord class (rent seekers of unearned income, basically everybody who owns real estate and enjoys ever increasing valuation without taxation) has been greatly expanded by the MIC, Education, Pharma, Finance and Insurance.
Alexis de Tocqueville: "A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it." 'Public infrastructure' is great when it's supported by equitable taxation. That hasn't happened as oligarchs avoid taxes, health costs, education costs, and every other cost they can shift onto society. Basically, middle and upper classes didn't hate aristocrats so much as they want to be aristocrats, with all the arrogant privileges that come with assumed superiority. 'Authoritarian repressive impulses' are inherent risk in any society, as Trump and other so-called libertarians exemplify. GFW Hegel, The Philosophy of History: "What experience and history tells us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."
It would seem to me that nobody understands what capital is. People believe capital is currency. Richard Wolff has the best description for capital. He says, “your brains, your muscles, what you produce“. Language is used against you and you go along with it. Why, I don’t know.
Even from the shitty wages, workers are made to give some of their income to so called insurance, so the workers have even less wages and are even poorer, and quite often when they need the insurance money their denied and they never see that money again, even on retirement.
@26:30 that was wrong. Public infrastructure is not "financed" by the land tax liability. The tax revenue (Fr. _revenir_ = return back) is a redemption operation driving _demand_ for the currency, the tax return merely records the redemption, it is not a supply of currency for the issuer. The government always spends first before it can tax back it's own currency, and _never_ needs t tax back every last dollar. What tax credits are issued but not returned as tax becomes private sector savings, to the penny. Investment creates savings, not the other way around. Governments do not get money from anywhere, they vote for the spending and write the issuance on a balance sheet, it is fiat, not commodity. And really always has been fiat, a peg to gold is still a fiat currency, but instead of units of labour setting the price it is gold that sets the price level (so highly unstable and prone to catastrophic debt deflation). What people call "government borrowing" is not borrowing at all, it is interest rate maintenance, no one can buy a Treasury bond until the government first issues the money the private sector can then use to buy bonds. When banks issue credit money they are acting as agents of government, since the government sets the price by defining in Law what banks are required to assess as collateral for the credit issue. The insanity of the mortgage rentierism is purely a choice of governments, a choice of refusing to regulate bank credit. You cannot blame the F.I.R.E. sector for acting within the law (they also commit fraud, but that's a different story). The whole problem is failure of government regulation to protect workers and the small guys, and failure to police financial fraud.
If the idea of MMT Provisioning is the natural Defence Strategy that has a Civil Precedent.., of operating according to a budget cycle written around a Calendar, and related long-term Almanac style of Recording.., then Professor Hudson's assessment of Sociological Management practices, at last distinguishes "people oriented" policies from the "overbudget" excursions of privatisation and Conquest. Conquer's Rule, is by making themselves an elevated standard above the population they claim to serve, (always ambiguous language), by Decree and Declaration of Ownership not Contract, often "in God's Name". (Michael was talking about other Feudalist aspects of these Economic Royalisms Professor Kelton refers to) If "There's no such thing as unearned income", it might be because classically, there's always been a double standard of privilege and entitlement protected from criticism, above the (conquered/defrauded) population they claim to serve. The French said, "you know who rules, by who you're not allowed to talk about".
MMT is definitely _not_ about budgeting around a calendar cycle, quite the contrary. MMT is the lens through which state currecny (aka tax credits) are used to mobilize real resources. This rejects (or suggests we aught to reject) all predatory finance, rentiers, and of course wasteful military defence spending. It is cheaper to do peace making diplomacy, but not only in monetary terms, in human spiritual dividend terms as well. With MMT understanding the government financial budget position is irrelevant, since the monopolist is price setter, not price taker, the currency monopolist can set price (as monopsonist often) and can focus on full employment of sustainable resources, and let the budget deficit float. So they (government) can choose set price and let supply float, as any monopolist can do, it is a choice. The currency issuers budget statement is a moral document, not a financial statement, since they cannot run out of their own tax credits.
In short, yes. The premise is that there is such a thing as a free lunch and it's called economic rent. This includes what we commonly understand when renting property, nothing is produced, yet income is earned. But it also includes being in control of monopolies, since monopolies are able to control the price, this is another form of rent. The argument of Prof. Hudson is that the US economy and many other Neo-liberalized economies have been streamlined into generating wealth through accumulating rent, aka rent-seeking. In the longer trend of capitalism, there's the argument, that as industrial capitalism, which produces wealth, has a problem of overproduction and therefore creates a fall in profits (unless it can expand markets at an even faster rate), capital will resort to rent-seeking because it is easier/more profitable to collect rent than it is to produce things.
@@acetabularia03 The long term trend of capitalism is to end labor. But maybe that's fantasy. The Fed creates rent seeking. THE FED! Yet, Michael rarely says a word about them. He would like to pretend that financialization of the economy was all about greed or a mere accident. It was about putting the reigns of economy in the hands of Vanguard, State Street, and Black Rock. So now they want another Great Reset to consolidate even more power.
Like an Obsessive Compulsive person society has allowed money center stage in how economics will work. Made up numbers shall be thy king....people think such a statement far fetched, no thats how we roll
Michael Hudson is, IMHO, the most important economist of our time. I’m basing this assessment on the past two years of listening to 100s of hours of economics lectures and podcasts on RUclips against the backdrop of Covid, lockdowns, stock market inflation and brief crashes, as well as having lived and worked in New York City from before 9/11 until well after the finance and housing collapse of 2008. Michael is describing the reality of the system as it actually functions, not the lies we’ve been sold or the fairy tales we were taught. Thank you for interviewing him!
You're welcome!
Well said.
Don’t forget Richard Wolfe, too!
What's so strange is going back to the Mainstream News and realizing how much they say without explaining anything.
How can lies become the prevailing notion? How does the truth get so repressed?
I am an avid Micheal Hudson enthusiast. I watch all his videos. This was an excellent and thorough interview. Well done to the interviewer. Thank you for framing this in a way that is easily digestible to the non academic economist. May I recommend also releasing smaller segments for the masses? Thank u for your service. I am not formally educated. Hudson’s message is important to inform the labor classes. His works have opened my eyes. I have read nine of his books and have seen every posted interview numerous times. Fellow wage laborers, read and watch all you can you will never regret it cuz no one can ever sell u snake oil/economic rent again. You will understand what is happening.
I'm just like you. I agree: Excellent and thorough are good adjectives for this 2 part series.
Brilliance and Courage = Michael Hudson
Precisely!
The question 'what is money?' will haunt the entire world for the next 50 years. Thanks Michael for helping us understand it.
Michael Hudson - like most people who REALLY know what they're talking about - explains the complexities of global economics with clarity and precision. He's the world's greatest living economist.
simply amazing. I've listened to both Part I and Part II at least 10 times and each time I learn more.
Hi, David. Glad it was helpful!
Michael Hudson kicks ass
Prof.Hudson makes an astounding point that "... what I learned especially in monetary theory had nothing to do at all with what I was learning in practice." "... Milton Friedman...[taught that] when you create more money it increases consumer prices....When banks create money they don't lend for people to spend... 80% of loans are mortgage loans. They loan against property already in place." "They lend to increase asset prices, not consumer prices." "The pretence is that money created by banks lending to people who build factories and employ labor to produce more and somehow credit is all productive...." "After WWII all of this stopped,... merchant banking... [which was just] banking to lend against assets....'
"... the financial sector, after income tax, after WWI, basically made commercial real estate tax exempt by the pretence that buildings depreciate in value instead of rise in price...."
"... the whole essence of classical economics was its value and price theory...[whose sole] purpose was to define the excess of market price over actual cost value and that difference was economic rent...." "...industrial capitalism... was a radical campaign...because it realized that ...to make... any country competitive ...was to get rid of the landlord class and its demands for economic rents ...You had to get rid of...all payments of income that were not necessary for production to take place.... You wanted to bring prices in line with the actual cost value of production and not include [these] rake offs to unproductive investment and labor. That was land rent, monopoly rent, and financial interest charges....[These] three categories of rent were the focus of all classical economics.... That led to...political reform. How do you gt rid of the landlord class."
And yet the Federal Reserve is currently increasing interest rates because they don't want wage increases and resulting productive spending to raise the inflation rate. Much of this QE bubble pumping money is going to stock repurchases to inflate executive salaries. The massive 40% increase in monetary supply since 2020 is designed to reduce the value of financial reserves held overseas. It's a last ditch effort to grab global resources with crapified money that will quickly lose its value. This trend will accelerate as Russia, China and the Global South dump US dollars and Treasury Bills before they are seized.
Increasing rates of disposable income going to mortgage debt service was deflationary. Thus, 'Stagflation' was the result of money creation being sunk into mortgages producing stagnation, while inflationary pressure was being created by bank money creation being used to inflate asset prices to benefit the oligarchs.
Nice 1.
Nobody talks MH. One of a kind rare knowledge.
Thank you for the interview! Always a pleasure listening to Prof Hudson
Thanks for listening!
Great job as alway's. Keep the truth alive for humanity and the planet and to wake up the masses of the world. ❤ ❤ ❤ 💚 💚 💚
Thank you, Zehra. Glad you enjoyed listening to this interview.
Dr. Michael Hudson performs his best when he doesn't have some little known side-kick, trying to voice his/her views. Just let Hudson talk.....Thank you, Jonathan for doing that.
Michael Hudson. Making the incomprehensible _coherent._
Thank you for bringing this different economic perspective to the public. I will be sharing this wherever I can.
Michael Hudson a legend my mind!!
If you are here, reading this, please "like". That helps prospective audiences find the stream.
Thank you Michael Hudson always for clarity and truth ❤️
You are so welcome
Thank you very much. I will listen and replay a few times and enjoy doing so. Cheers.
Wonderful!
A superb commentary on Political Economy.
Stephen A Hardy
Macclesfield , UK
So many views so few likes. The truth obviously hurts!
Absolutely fascinating!
Glad you like it, Dennis!
Amazing, the landlords appropriated "there's no free lunch" as proof of their own economic utility.
The landlord class (rent seekers of unearned income, basically everybody who owns real estate and enjoys ever increasing valuation without taxation) has been greatly expanded by the MIC, Education, Pharma, Finance and Insurance.
Alexis de Tocqueville: "A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it."
'Public infrastructure' is great when it's supported by equitable taxation. That hasn't happened as oligarchs avoid taxes, health costs, education costs, and every other cost they can shift onto society. Basically, middle and upper classes didn't hate aristocrats so much as they want to be aristocrats, with all the arrogant privileges that come with assumed superiority.
'Authoritarian repressive impulses' are inherent risk in any society, as Trump and other so-called libertarians exemplify.
GFW Hegel, The Philosophy of History: "What experience and history tells us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it."
“Rent is for paying interest”, contemplate that for 9 seconds
Michael Hudson!
It would seem to me that nobody understands what capital is. People believe capital is currency. Richard Wolff has the best description for capital. He says, “your brains, your muscles, what you produce“. Language is used against you and you go along with it. Why, I don’t know.
Even from the shitty wages, workers are made to give some of their income to so called insurance, so the workers have even less wages and are even poorer, and quite often when they need the insurance money their denied and they never see that money again, even on retirement.
So, General Motors earns more money by putting money on the street at interest than by making cars?
GE did. GM is probably incompetent at everything, so not a safe bet.
@26:30 that was wrong. Public infrastructure is not "financed" by the land tax liability. The tax revenue (Fr. _revenir_ = return back) is a redemption operation driving _demand_ for the currency, the tax return merely records the redemption, it is not a supply of currency for the issuer. The government always spends first before it can tax back it's own currency, and _never_ needs t tax back every last dollar. What tax credits are issued but not returned as tax becomes private sector savings, to the penny. Investment creates savings, not the other way around.
Governments do not get money from anywhere, they vote for the spending and write the issuance on a balance sheet, it is fiat, not commodity. And really always has been fiat, a peg to gold is still a fiat currency, but instead of units of labour setting the price it is gold that sets the price level (so highly unstable and prone to catastrophic debt deflation). What people call "government borrowing" is not borrowing at all, it is interest rate maintenance, no one can buy a Treasury bond until the government first issues the money the private sector can then use to buy bonds.
When banks issue credit money they are acting as agents of government, since the government sets the price by defining in Law what banks are required to assess as collateral for the credit issue. The insanity of the mortgage rentierism is purely a choice of governments, a choice of refusing to regulate bank credit. You cannot blame the F.I.R.E. sector for acting within the law (they also commit fraud, but that's a different story). The whole problem is failure of government regulation to protect workers and the small guys, and failure to police financial fraud.
If the idea of MMT Provisioning is the natural Defence Strategy that has a Civil Precedent.., of operating according to a budget cycle written around a Calendar, and related long-term Almanac style of Recording.., then Professor Hudson's assessment of Sociological Management practices, at last distinguishes "people oriented" policies from the "overbudget" excursions of privatisation and Conquest.
Conquer's Rule, is by making themselves an elevated standard above the population they claim to serve, (always ambiguous language), by Decree and Declaration of Ownership not Contract, often "in God's Name". (Michael was talking about other Feudalist aspects of these Economic Royalisms Professor Kelton refers to)
If "There's no such thing as unearned income", it might be because classically, there's always been a double standard of privilege and entitlement protected from criticism, above the (conquered/defrauded) population they claim to serve.
The French said, "you know who rules, by who you're not allowed to talk about".
MMT is definitely _not_ about budgeting around a calendar cycle, quite the contrary. MMT is the lens through which state currecny (aka tax credits) are used to mobilize real resources. This rejects (or suggests we aught to reject) all predatory finance, rentiers, and of course wasteful military defence spending. It is cheaper to do peace making diplomacy, but not only in monetary terms, in human spiritual dividend terms as well.
With MMT understanding the government financial budget position is irrelevant, since the monopolist is price setter, not price taker, the currency monopolist can set price (as monopsonist often) and can focus on full employment of sustainable resources, and let the budget deficit float. So they (government) can choose set price and let supply float, as any monopolist can do, it is a choice. The currency issuers budget statement is a moral document, not a financial statement, since they cannot run out of their own tax credits.
Jonathan Brown - If you believe ( @ 43 seconds ) " no one has heard of Michael Hudson ", it is apparent only you know that to be true .
Sadly, i fully didnt understand it. Would someone pls tldr?
Was driedman wrong? Is the US economy bad or what?
It is not the economy its how capitalism runs or ruins it.
In short, yes. The premise is that there is such a thing as a free lunch and it's called economic rent. This includes what we commonly understand when renting property, nothing is produced, yet income is earned. But it also includes being in control of monopolies, since monopolies are able to control the price, this is another form of rent. The argument of Prof. Hudson is that the US economy and many other Neo-liberalized economies have been streamlined into generating wealth through accumulating rent, aka rent-seeking.
In the longer trend of capitalism, there's the argument, that as industrial capitalism, which produces wealth, has a problem of overproduction and therefore creates a fall in profits (unless it can expand markets at an even faster rate), capital will resort to rent-seeking because it is easier/more profitable to collect rent than it is to produce things.
@@acetabularia03 The long term trend of capitalism is to end labor. But maybe that's fantasy. The Fed creates rent seeking. THE FED! Yet, Michael rarely says a word about them. He would like to pretend that financialization of the economy was all about greed or a mere accident. It was about putting the reigns of economy in the hands of Vanguard, State Street, and Black Rock. So now they want another Great Reset to consolidate even more power.
@@acetabularia03 thank you for summarizing it. Did i also missed hudson's solution about rent?
Any form of hierarchy can become oppressive -- socialist or capitalist.
Like an Obsessive Compulsive person society has allowed money center stage in how economics will work. Made up numbers shall be thy king....people think such a statement far fetched, no thats how we roll
Getting.rid.of.the.of.the.la
Grazie!