Michael Hudson Quotes - Page 2

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• So the Bush-Obama administration has taken a fiscal stance diametrically opposed to that of the patron saint of free enterprise. While escalating war in Afghanistan and maintaining over 850 military bases around the world, the administration has run up the national debt that Smith decried. By shifting the tax burden off property and off rent-seeking monopolies - above all, off the financial sector - this policy has raised America's cost of living and doing business, thereby undercutting its competitive power and running up larger and larger foreign debt.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, Military, War

  "Adam Smith Critiques the Deficit Reduction Commission". Personal website, michael-hudson.com. December 06, 2010.

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• The problems of 2008 were never cured. The Federal Reserve's solution to the crisis was to lend the economy enough money to borrow its way out of debt. 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.

  Michael Hudson

  People, House, Balance

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  6 Copy quote

• There are two definitions of deflation. Most people think of it simply as prices going down. But debt deflation is what happens when people have to spend more and more of their income to carry the debts that they've run up - to pay their mortgage debt, to pay the credit card debt, to pay student loans.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, Thinking, Two

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• When you buy enough stocks to give you control of a target company, that's called mergers and acquisitions or corporate raiding. Hedge funds have been doing this, as well as corporate financial managers. With borrowed money you can take over or raid a foreign company too. So, you're having a monopolistic consolidation process that's pushed up the market, because in order to buy a company or arrange a merger, you have to offer more than the going stock-market price. You have to convince existing holders of a stock to sell out to you by paying them more than they'd otherwise get.

  Michael Hudson

  Giving, Financial, Enough

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• Everyone from Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill, they were all reforms. What they wanted to reform was getting rid of this parasitic landlord class that had conquered England in 1066 and it's the heirs of the military warlords who ended up taking the land and making everybody pay them and all of their descendants just for having been conquered. You can see the carry-over of this today. The rent that people have to pay, the money they have to pay the banks instead of having a public option. That's the price they still have to pay for being conquered.

  Michael Hudson

  Military, People, Today

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Governments create money and spend it into the economy by running budget deficits. The paper currency in your pocket is technically a government debt.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, Economy, Currency

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• 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

• A derivative is a bet on whether a stock, or a bond or a real estate asset, is going to go up or down. There's a winner and a loser. It's like betting on a horserace.

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Derivatives, Loser

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• When you say "bank," a bank is a building, a set of computers and chairs and things. The bankers are the people running these banks. They're the chief officers, and they push the loans because they don't care if they go bad. For one thing, they may package these bad loans and sell them off to gullible institutional investors.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, People, Bankers

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  6 Copy quote

• If you want to see where Trump is moving, look at what the United States neoliberals advised Russia to do after 1991, when they promised to create an ideal economy. Russia was under the impression that the neoliberal advisors were going to make Russia as rich as the United States. What they really did was create a kleptocracy that was virtually tax-free.

  Michael Hudson

  Moving, Russia, United States

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• When Mr.Trump says he wants to help all Americans, he means he wants to help all Americans in the 1% by really letting Wall Street get a huge debt from the 99% of the Americans. It's just the opposite of what people believe.

  Michael Hudson

  Wall, Believe, Mean

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• If you're a wealthy heir with a trust fund, and you sell stocks, make your 10% gains since Donald Trump, and then you buy other stocks, you can avoid paying taxes. And if your accountant registers your wealth offshore in a Panamanian fund, like Russian kleptocrats do - and as more and more Americans do - you don't have to pay any tax at all, because it's not American income, it's foreign income in an enclave without an income tax.

  Michael Hudson

  Income, Paying Taxes, Heirs

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Deflation is a leakage from this circular flow, to pay banks and the real estate, called the FIRE sector - finance, insurance and real estate. These transfer payments leave less and less of the paycheck to be spent on goods and services, so markets shrink.

  Michael Hudson

  Real, Fire, Pay

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Stocks always go down much faster than they go up. That's why it's called a crash. People who put their money into the stocks will find, all of a sudden, that stock prices are no longer being supported by the debt leveraging that's been holding them up.

  Michael Hudson

  People, Debt, Crash

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Actually, high housing prices don't help the economy. They raise the cost of living.

  Michael Hudson

  Cost Of Living, Helping, Economy

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• 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

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• The banks' product is debt. They try to tell customers that "debts are good for you," but the customers can't afford any more debt, so there's no way the banks can continue their current business plan.

  Michael Hudson

  Trying, Way, Debt

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• So we are in for years of debt deflation. That means that people have to pay so much debt service for mortgages, credit cards, student loans, bank loans and other obligations
  that they have less to spend on goods and services. So markets shrink. New investment and employment fall off, and the economy is falls into a downward spiral.

  Michael Hudson

  Fall, Mean, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• You have the economic vocabulary turning into vocabulary of deception.

  Michael Hudson

  Deception, Economic

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 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

• People think of a parasite as simply taking money, taking blood out of a host or taking money out of the economy. But in nature it's much more complicated. 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. And then the parasites have another enzyme that takes over the host's brain. It makes the host imagine that the parasite is part of its own body, actually part of itself and hence to be protected. That’s basically what Wall Street has done.

  Michael Hudson

  Wall, Thinking, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• Trump's claims that he's making taxes more democratic for the people, but it actually is a vast sucking of income and wealth upward.

  Michael Hudson

  People, Income, Wealth

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• The price decline is a result of having to pay debts. That drains income from the circular flow between production and consumption - that is, between what people are paid when they go to work, and the things that they buy.

  Michael Hudson

  People, Income, Debt

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

• The natural geopolitical arrangement is for Europe to be part of Eurasia, especially for Germany to develop trade and investment relationships with Russia.

  Michael Hudson

  Russia, Europe, Germany

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.

  Michael Hudson

  Paying Debts, Income, Goods And Services

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  4 Copy quote

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