Michael Hudson Quotes

Quotes about:

• We go forward with our heads held high, but look back and remember where we come from.

  Michael Hudson

  Inspirational, Moving On, Moving Forward

  63 Copy quote

• Debts grow and grow. And the more they grow, the more they shrink the economy. When you shrink the economy, you shrink the ability to pay the debts, so it's all an illusion that the system can be saved. The question is, how long are people going to be willing to live in this illusion?

  Michael Hudson

  Long, People, Debt

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  8 Copy quote

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

  Michael Hudson

  Promise, Free Money, Mark

  "The $4.7 trillion pyramid: Why Social Security won't be enough to save Wall Street". Harper's Magazine, April 2005.

  19 Copy quote

• People have to pay so much money to the banks that they don't have enough money to buy the goods and services they produce. So there's not much new investment, there's not new employment (except minimum-wage "service" jobs), markets are shrinking, and people are defaulting. So many companies can't pay their banks.

  Michael Hudson

  Jobs, People, Shrinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Support, Today, Financial

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  8 Copy quote

• A stand in is a politician who can deliver her constituency to her Wall Street backers. That's what a politician does in America. 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

  Art, Wall, Believe

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• What do the 5%, or the 1% actually use their money for? They lend it back to the economy at large, they load it down with debt. They make their money by lending to the bottom 95%, or the bottom 99%. When you give them more after-tax income, it enables them to buy even more control of government, even more control of election campaigns. They're not going to spend this money back into the goods-and-services economy.

  Michael Hudson

  Government, Giving, Income

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Michael Hudson

  Get Money

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  5 Copy quote

• The current U.S. and Eurozone depression isn't because of China. It's because of domestic debt deflation. Commodity prices and consumer spending are falling, mainly because consumers have to pay most of their wages to the FIRE sector for rent or mortgage payments, student loans, bank and credit card debt, plus over 15 percent FICA wage withholding for Social Security and Medicare actually, to enable the government to cut taxes on the higher income brackets, as well income and sales taxes.

  Michael Hudson

  Fall, Cutting, Students

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• There are many ways to create economic suicide on a national level. The major way through history has been through indebting the economy. Debt always expands to reach a point where it cannot be paid by a large swathe of the economy. This is the point where austerity is imposed and ownership of wealth polarizes between the One Percent and the 99 Percent.

  Michael Hudson

  Suicide, Wealth, Economic

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  8 Copy quote

• Nobody prefers to earn income any more, because that's taxable. Rich people prefer to make capital gains.

  Michael Hudson

  People, Income, Gains

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  7 Copy quote

• The ideological foundation of today's business schools is that economic control should be shifted out of government hands into those of financial managers - that is, Wall Street.

  Michael Hudson

  Wall, School, Financial

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• The most serious problems lie in the financial sphere, where the economy's debt overhead has grown more rapidly than the 'real' economy's ability to carry this debt. [...] The essence of the global financial bubble is that savings are diverted to inflate the stock market, bond market and real estate prices rather than to build new factories and employ more labor.

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Lying, Essence

  "Financial Capitalism v. Industrial Capitalism". michael-hudson.com. September 3, 1998.

  14 Copy quote

• What's bad for the frackers usually is good for the rest of the world.

  Michael Hudson

  World

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  12 Copy quote

• The underlying strategy of the Fed is to tell people, "Do you want your money to lose value in the bank, or do you want to put it in the stock market?" They're trying to push money into the stock market, into hedge funds, to temporarily bid up prices. Then, all of a sudden, the Fed can raise interest rates, let the stock market prices collapse and the people will lose even more in the stock market than they would have by the negative interest rates in the bank. So it's a pro-Wall Street financial engineering gimmick.

  Michael Hudson

  Wall, Engineering, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  11 Copy quote

• The fact that you have government-guaranteed student loans has created a whole new sector in the American economy that didn't really exist before - private for-profit universities that sell junk degrees that don't help the students. They promise the students, "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

  Jobs, Government, Pet

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Leaving, Bags, Fund

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• The 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 - when you know what you're going to get - into just "defined contribution plans," where you put money in, like into a roach motel, and you don't know what's coming out.

  Michael Hudson

  Mean, Cutting, Pension Plans

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  7 Copy quote

• The bank's product is debt, because the banks want to make sure that they can get paid for the debt. But ultimately the only party that can pay the debt is the government, because it runs the printing presses. So the debts ultimately either are paid by the government, or they're paid by a huge transfer of property from debtors to creditors - or, the debts are written off.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, Party, Government

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Fire, Debt, Pay

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• You have a choice. Either you can have more oil, or more clean water. Fracking is not good for the water supply.

  Michael Hudson

  Oil, Water, Choices

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  27 Copy quote

• The myth is that if housing prices go up, Americans will be richer. What banks - and behind them, the Federal Reserve - really want is for new buyers to be able to borrow enough money to buy the houses from mortgage defaulters, and thus save the banks from suffering from more mortgage defaults.

  Michael Hudson

  House, Suffering, Want

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  9 Copy quote

• The IMF acts as the collection agent for global bondholders. Its projections begin by assuming that all debts can be paid, if economies will cut wages and wiping out pension funds so as to pay banks and bondholders.

  Michael Hudson

  Cutting, Assuming, Economy

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  5 Copy quote

• Since 2008 you've had the largest bond market rally in history, as the Federal Reserve flooded the economy with quantitative easing to drive down interest rates. 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 Hudson

  Real, Income, Gains

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• The biggest industrial sector next to real estate is oil, gas and other mineral resources. They don't report any taxable income, because if you depict yourself as earning a profit, you have to pay a tax on it. So, it's all about what accountants choose to declare as profit.

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Oil, Income

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  9 Copy quote

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