Yves here. I beg to differ a tad with Hudson in this Real News Network video regarding his third economic story. The US had already pushed Europe to side with it against Russia when it hit Russia with economic sanctions. The US had similarly declared an economic war of sorts against China with its “pivot to Asia” and its explicit plan to use the TPP to isolate China (this “war” idea is all very odd given how co-depenent the US and Chinese economies are). But one could point out that those struggles intensified in 2015.
I would also add growing deflation risk as a big story. The collapse in commodities prices is a symptom of the fact that China has started to “export” deflation.
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. And welcome to this edition of the Hudson Report. Now joining us is Michael Hudson. He’s an economics professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City, and he has a new book out titled Killing the Host. Thank you so much for joining us, Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s good to be here, Jessica. Since we last talked I’ve also been appointed a professor at Peking University in Beijing.
DESVARIEUX: Awesome. Congratulations. So Michael, let’s get right into it and talk about the big stories of 2015, economic stories, I should say. What would you say are the three most important stories that people should be aware of?
HUDSON: Well, the leading story is that the economy has not recovered. That the 1 percent have recovered, but the 99 percent have not recovered. And there is no sign of recovery, or even any sign that the presidential candidates running in next year’s election are trying to do anything.
The next story is that the 1 percent have recovered. I’m told that the largest sustained gains in any kind of asset have been number one Andy Warhol paintings, and number two, Stradivarius violins. These are trophies for the rich. They’re going way up while wages are not going up and consumer prices are not going up.
And the third story would be international, that the United States has changed the rules of the International Monetary Fund. Essentially, the U.S. has dragged Europe into an economic war against Russia, China, and the BRICS.
DESVARIEUX: Can you be more specific about that last story? How are they doing that?
HUDSON: Well, earlier this month the International Monetary Fund changed its rules that it had had since 1945. The whole international financial system since 1945 was based on the fact that governments when they’re bailed out, or when they borrow from other governments, they have to repay their debts, and that the IMF is going to bring leverage to make sure that the international, intergovernmental finance system remains intact by saying it’s not going to make a loan or be part of any loan renegotiation or debt renegotiation to countries that owe money to foreign governments.
Last month the IMF said no, no. What we really meant is foreign governments have to repay the U.S. government, and they have to pay the U.S. commercial banks that have made loans to countries to enable them to bail out their banks at the expense of their population, but countries don’t have to repay Russia or China. We’re trying to exclude them from the international monetary system. The United States has boycotted the Haitian Infrastructure Investment Bank. So it’s not going to be part of the rebuilding of the Eurasian economies. And it’s told Europe to essentially back Ukraine avoid importing Russian gas. There is a trade war and a financial war against Russia, China, and the BRICS that is splitting the world into two halves, turning the Cold War into what’s really a class war.
DESVARIEUX: Okay, Michael. So what should we be paying attention to in 2016?
HUDSON: Well, the failure of the U.S. economy and the European economies to recover. The continued austerity programs that they have. And what is going to be the political response to this austerity? At what point are voters going to say, wait a minute, we’re not going to vote the establishment mainstream parties if both the Republicans and the Democrats here, or in Europe the Conservatives and the Labour Party and the social democratic parties, they’ve all moved to the right wing of the spectrum, to pro-Wall Street. And either you save the economy, or you save Wall Street and the 1 percent. And so far both parties, both sides of the spectrum in Europe and America, are saving the 1 percent, not the 99 percent.
And you know, 200 years ago the solution to all this was to restore prosperity by extending democratic parliamentary reform, thinking that people were going to vote in their own self-interest. But that hasn’t happened. Instead of voting for self-interest, people get to vote which party supporting Wall Street do they want to watch on television, when the president and the cabinet come on and promote one tax cut on the 1 percent after another. One tax increase on the 99 percent after another. As they gut environmental laws. Which party do you want to actually administer this move to the right? A friendly Democratic face, or a sort of frowning Republican face, in the world of Orwellian doublethink rhetoric. At what point are voters going to see through all this?
DESVARIEUX: All right, Michael Hudson. We’re certainly going to be tracking that as the elections are coming up next year in 2016. Michael Hudson, thank you so much for joining us.
HUDSON: It’s always good to be here, Jessica.
DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.
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Prof Hudson is always a pleasure to listen to as he knows his history.
I’m surprised that Hudson didn’t identify as a “big story” the fact that no MSM are reporting that the economy has not recovered. I’m appalled every time I read that the Great Recession “ended” in 2009, or whatever date they choose. The MSM seem to motor along quoting from the press releases of whomever about how everything’s on the upswing.
koku – In all fairness they sorta do in essence by consistently reporting on a weekly basis that we are about to enter a new recession. What kind of economy is perpetually entering a recession?
One where the Fed is doing everything it can to prevent it entering a recession :-). But that isn’t enough to produce a recovery. As Hudson pointed out, all it does is help the capital-owing classes and those who are beneficiaries (as in they working in parts of finance and other sectors that benefit from super-low rates or provide services to the capital-owing classes) with spotty trickle-down to the rest.
“capital-owing” or “capital-owning”?
Who are the “capital-owing classes”?
Sounds like an apt description of the residual owners of claims against the assets of highly-leveraged business associations–like the shareholders of big banks.
Did he say “Haitian Infrastructure Investment Bank” or “Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank?”
Thanks for clearing that up.
There’s always the transcript.
Clearly he meant Asian.
The transcript says “Haitian” – but “Asian” makes a lot more sense.
“And there is no sign of recovery, or even any sign that the presidential candidates running in next year’s election are trying to do anything.”
Creating Jobs Rebuilding America via Bernie Sanders.
At what point are voters going to see through all this?
In the extant political economy, who is “we,” as in “we must do this or that policy thingie,” and of what import are “voters”?
Almost all the agency (and “agencies” too) belong to “them…”
To have even a Hope of Change, what should “we” be thinking, and more important, doing?
It’s time for mass civil disobedience of the sort that happened in the 60s. I think we, the people, should do something like this.
Thanks for this post. The article you shared the link for, emphasizes the transformative power of principled action that risks arrest, changing first and foremost the participants. In my long experience as an organizer I have seen the same. This kind of action helps free the person for further action. And it can inspire others to action. Whether in resistance to a particular evil or in constructing an alternative to the existing institutions. This is how the revolutionary project looks today, in my view.
The young people, who have the energy to go out in the streets…. most of them are so thoroughly brainwashed that they regard unions as their enemies. They are pacified, and do not have the courage to face the police terror. Today everyone knows that the police shoot to kill. It was a little different in the 60’s. Now the police have military weaponry from the federal government and are organized in military SWAT teams. It would take real courage to go against that. But above all, it would take the belief that taking from the rich is okay. And no “true American” believes that. Most of us believe that getting rich is a god-given right, and those who cannot do it are losers.
Yea, but who are we after here, the masses, who at present may never agree to give up conventional lives to become full time protesters (which is what getting arrested will make you sooner or later, once one becomes nearly unemployable with a criminal record) or those who primary life purpose is activism. I could see how getting arrested would switch one into the latter category.
I think the IMF backtracked a tiny bit on Ukraine by saying that they (IMF) expect Ukraine to pay its debt to Russia but it is not a requirement for the new bailout. To which Ukraine replied that they were never paying Russia a dime because they consider it to be an odious debt. They are going to have a hard time making the case that all that heating oil they burned was an odious act by Russia and their own former government hacks… we know they can’t repay it and we are determined to bail them out anyway. It’s nice that Hudson is going off to the U. of Beijing; we’ll get some interesting stories.
It’s nice that Hudson is going off to the U. of Beijing; we’ll get some interesting stories.’
Michael Hudson and Michael Pettis, hangin’ out in the Beijing U. rathskeller, spinning economic tall tales.
I’d buy them a beer.
Yes, me too. I hope he can give us straight talk from China/Chinese viewpoint. And no censorship here or there.
I wish the USG would tell American citizens where the economic bomb shelters are when it declares these wars on our former friends. Tim Geithner repeatedly told us China is not a currency manipulator and as far as I know, Jack Lew still agrees with the assessment. So I guess we decided to fight fair by taking a cheap nock off of a samurai sword in the chest while waving our arms around with our heavy artillery, IMF loans and running a destroyer past fake Chinese Islands on the other side of the world.
Then we are still friends with Europe. Friends don’t let Europeans buy oil and gas from Russians. Qatar is one option for gas, presently by LNG tanker, but the big volume is coming someday when we get Syria all straightened out. Furthermore, we’ve lifted export bans on US energy product, so more help for Europe on the way. Tho to get our fracking gas to Europe we need the LNG terminal in Nawlings operational and it’s majority funded by China. So we may need another destroyer escort there to get the product pointed properly at Europe… but Europe must have their 11 dimensional chess players who can figure out the brilliance in all this. But no Canadian Keystone oil for Europe, anyway, unless Warren Buffet figures out a way to get it there.
No good news to report on citizen investment opportunities in Ukraine. My formerly favorite international bond fund *, Templeton Global, thought it wise to accumulate half the Ukraine debt. They just took a 20% haircut, and it may not be the last haircut. So if anyone was trying to be an amateur bond vulture and bet that the IMF will bail out your investment, you lost that bet.
* Disclosure – I haven’t owned any since the GFC.
Which party do you want to actually administer this move to the right? A friendly Democratic face, or a sort of frowning Republican face,
See! Ralph Nader was wrong.There is a difference between the Democrats and Republicans.
That’s “friendly” with ironic quotes around it. Check out her crocodile smile (jpg image):
http://tinyurl.com/qz9kj63
. . . There is a trade war and a financial war against Russia, China. . .
What trade war against China.
Last I looked, every TV, stereo, and phone or any electronic device in any store in the US was made in China. It isn’t even possible to buy a new car without Chinese made components in it.
Yves’ comment
I would also add growing deflation risk as a big story. The collapse in commodities prices is a symptom of the fact that China has started to “export” deflation.
China has been exporting deflation for decades. The collapse in commodities prices, now, is the result of massive speculation and huge increases in prices due to ZIRP.
We haven’t seen anything yet. I just bought a big pile of “vanilla” HV-transistors for some audio amplifiers I want to make directly from AliExpress – about $3 for 200 off, including shipping. “Here”, I would pay 50 times that at the official distributor – unless I buy 5000 and up, then it’s the same price.
China is beginning to cut out the middle-man and going straight for making 3’rd world prices available in the 1’st world. The Chinese shops even have customer service too, I have always managed to get refunds / replacements when something went wrong with an order.
E-Bay and Ali is definitely the way to go for electronics parts, if they got what you want. It’s your Karmic reward for ever shopping at Radio Shack. China Post is subsidizing shipments under 2 lbs as well. It comes all the way to your mailbox for $3 max. I have bought stuff for a buck, freight included, tho I’m really not sure who ate it there.
Now for my Radio Shack karma experience. I needed 4 common ceramic caps for a project. They probably sell for 3 cents each in volume. Radio Shack price, $1.25 EACH. Ebay price, 20 for $1.50, shipping included. It felt so good.
And they have only two of the three cap values you need… ;o/
That is my perpetual experience w/ RS as well in general, Home Despot w/ any hardware related widgets –before I swore off that joint entirely.
I refuse to shop HD anymore for ANYTHING. A perpetually unfulfilled experience that takes your life away in 1 hour increments, actually more because I would then go on scavenger hunts to find missing bits.
There is a street in Shenzhen called Wak Keung North Road with high-rise buildings end to end. One is for computer parts, another for telephone stuff, another generaL electronics, video, audio, etc., etc.
Inside each building the floor space is divided into 60 square foot booths, each rented by a factory. They display their wares, you agree prices and delivery goes to wherever you want to go.
I’d say that’s cutting out the middleman.
This is an interesting series of responses.
@ fajensen
China is beginning to cut out the middle-man and going straight for making 3’rd world prices available in the 1’st world. . .
@ craazyboy
China Post is subsidizing shipments under 2 lbs as well. It comes all the way to your mailbox for $3 max. I have bought stuff for a buck, freight included, tho I’m really not sure who ate it there.
@ optimander
I refuse to shop HD anymore for ANYTHING. A perpetually unfulfilled experience that takes your life away in 1 hour increments . . .
@ RB Houghton
They display their wares, you agree prices and delivery goes to wherever you want to go.
I’d say that’s cutting out the middleman.
Please consider what the middleman does. They import and warehouse the items, and display those items on a retail shelf. The counting and inventory control cost multiples of what these electronic parts cost.
Retail and warehouse businesses are mercilessly taxed by the municipality they reside in, whether they have a good or bad year, and they employ some of our neighbors.
As one business after another is wiped out, what profitable enterprise will be left?
Hopefully some that don’t involve charging me $1.25 for a 3 cent part that’s smaller than your little pinky’s fingernail and can sit on a shelf indefinitely without spoiling or going bad..
In the absence of Mutual Protectionism for Everybody, this approach offers the only hope of short term survival to those who are the first to take it. Because if you don’t do it, someone else will. Of course in the long run, every middleman will be cut out, will go out of bussiness and/or jobless, and will be unable to buy anything much anywhere. That will help bankrupt even more domestic bussinesses and de-job even more domestic workers. (And of course every American electronic-parts-maker and everyone they employed is already out of bussiness and/or unemployed and subsisting at the WalMart level or the Dollar Tree level below that now already.) In the longest run, it will make the American 99% as poor as the Chinese 99%, which is the long range goal of the Global OverClass.
The only way any of us can get off this hamsterwheel-race to the bottom is if everybody gets off it together. And the only way for us to do that is for those of us who WANT to do that to be able to force those of us who DON’T want to do that . . . to do that anyway. And the only way to apply that force is with the impermeable economic borders we could give ourself by abolishing Free Trade and restoring Militant Belligerent Protectionism.
I agree that “free” trade is a big problem. If we are to have an economy that will sustain us all, we have to be willing to pay more and have less. I actually don’t think this will be all that terrible. I am in my mid fifties and all my friends and I talk about is getting rid of all the crap we have managed to acquire over the last twenty years. Most of it is not of a good quality, bought cheap thanks to exploited labor in factories in the Undeveloped World. Everyone wants first world wages for themselves, yet we all want to pay cheap prices. Something has to give – and right now it is the wages of the working class.
the west is no longer a society. it is a collection of nuclear individuals. i doubt they can form a positive, beneficial political force anymore.
except in the Marcus Olson sense, tight groups linked by ethnic or financial interest which conspire to extract from the “outsiders”. These groups are predatory and will do anything to protect their privileges.
I think the party has ended for the west (“the white people”). Its economies are mostly based on high brow money laundering, no future for the kids, and ever more frustrated population.
Yves and the rest of you are absolutely right about what I left out.
I was phoned and asked to go on Skype in 10 minutes. I thought I’d have the usual 20 minutes or so to talk. Just as I was getting started, the interview was over. So I didn’t have a chance to say what you commentators are rightly bringing up.
The economy is in a mess. It’s not recovering. And instead of blaming debt deflation and the tax shift off the FIRE sector onto labor and industry, China is blamed for not growing fast enough to provide enough of a market to compensate for Western austerity and financialization.
There is no thought that maybe the West should emulate China and return to the idea of social democratic industrial capitalism of a century ago, as it seemed to be evolving into socialism.\
I wasn’t sent a link (and still can’t find the interview on TRNN’s site), so i couldn’t change Haitian to Asian. But I love these machine-translators. Maybe robotization of life and culture can only go so far …
:)- Happy Ne wYear
Thank you very much for your work Mr Hudson.
Cheers and I hope you have a good new year.
Mr. Hudson,
You are the best economic writer I have ever seen. Have been following others’ blogs, books and lectures for years. Bought most of your books and truly appreciate your ability to take the hideously complex and explain in several different ways so that amateurs can understand. (Sorry Yves, you presuppose a graduate degree in economics, but we still love you.) Love the footnotes instead of having to flip back and forth to the back of the book. But, why, oh why, is there not an index in “Killing The Host”? Please create one for the second edition.
Thank you!
I would also have mentioned the Greece fiasco. What the ECB and EU did to Greece I think is a turning point which will eventually lead to the dissolution of the EU. I can’t help but believe that behind the scenes various governments are working on plans to return to their own central banks and currencies if need be. The drum beats of nationalism are just starting and as economic conditions worsen they will only get louder.
Yves and the rest of you are absolutely right about what I left out.
I was phoned and asked to go on Skype in 10 minutes. I thought I’d have the usual 20 minutes or so to talk. Just as I was getting started, the interview was over. So I didn’t have a chance to say what you commentators are rightly bringing up.
The economy is in a mess. It’s not recovering. And instead of blaming debt deflation and the tax shift off the FIRE sector onto labor and industry, China is blamed for not growing fast enough to provide enough of a market to compensate for Western austerity and financialization.
There is no thought that maybe the West should emulate China and return to the idea of social democratic industrial capitalism of a century ago, as it seemed to be evolving into socialism.\
I wasn’t sent a link (and still can’t find the interview on TRNN’s site), so i couldn’t change Haitian to Asian. But I love these machine-translators. Maybe robotization of life and culture can only go so far …
I didn’t mean my comment to come off as a criticism….and I did notice your interview was UNUSUALLY short. RNN normally gives you ate least ten minutes.
On Canadian TV I heard someone (maybe a comedian) describe the relationship of Canada and the US. This article brings it to mind. Basically she said (and I’m paraphrasing here),
I just think that is very funny and better than the elephant and mouse analogy. It’s my joke for the New Year.
It should have been very obvious the legnth of the interview precluded any sort of deep discussion concerning the issues which caused a “tad” of disagreement. Those who have read previous works by Dr. Hudson are quite aware of his viewpoints concerning the issues felt not adaquately addressed during this certainly not very legnthy discourse. It appears a bit knit-picky.
Yes, but…as manufacture-r to-the-world, China is dependent on demand. There appears to be a demand gap in the US and Europe, driven by austerity.
Is the Austerity program a part of the attack on China? Or a coincidence? Or part of the plan after the brilliant leadership which gave China its manufacturer-to-the-world leadership though the export of jobs from, the US and Europe?
I’ve been curious about this as well. The driving force seems to rest with Hudson’s observation that “The product of Wall Street (WS) is debt.” To WS – and Washington – it doesn’t really seem to matter who holds that debt – only that they continue to be allowed to create ever more of it. To that end, of course, the debt so created has to at least seem to be able to produce an income stream seemingly capable of paying the economic rent, the claims on society’s future wealth its purchasers are led to believe they are buying – that or produce immediate ‘capital gains’ as a substitute.
But Hudson also suggests that ‘austerity’ is just a prelude to seizing what remains of what once were called ‘the commons’, i.e. the last remaining publicly owned assets. A variation on this theme would be that the 0.01% at least understand what they own these days is DEBT – not wealth. And they are anxious to exchange it for something real before the fraudulent social order they have foisted on an anesthetized public stands revealed. See Hudson’s Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
Of course, it may not be that complicated – just Davos group-think along the lines of “the 99.99% must use less so we the 0.01% can have more”.
The 0.01% reads in English as the One Percent Of One Percent Of One Percent.
I still think the acronym OPOOPOOP works well for that phrase. So I offer it again to see if the little acronymeme will fly.
Sure, we’ll buy foreign made merchandise, but we expect a 80 to 90% discount off the stated price to reflect the true cost of labor and materials there.
Saw something labeled “Made in Myanmar” the other day. I guess that’s the newest, cheapest slave pit in the global economy.
The political choice for 2016 (It’s singular)
Here’s what I MEANT to post (I copied the wrong text above; apologies). The choice for 2016 in Europe as well as America will be between “Yes” (independents), “Yes, please” (Democrats), and “Yes, thank you!” (Republicans). All yes to further tax cuts for the wealthy, bank bailouts to “save the system,” downsized social security and other social spending, and a smaller non-military budget as “balanced budgets” mean cutbacks for what is left for the civilian economy after Wall Street and the FIRE sector siphon off their subsidies.
NC remains the best summary of how this scenario is unfolding day to day (AM and PM installments). The gap between its and other internet reporting and mainstream media seems to be widening.
Dr. Hudson, are you a fan of Bernie Sanders?
Excellent summing up. Grim and pithy. I would put the Democrats’ response as “Yes, SCOTUS!” They like to keep the base in a panic as the so-called leadership enacts policies that fleece their supporters.
“NC remains the best summary of how this scenario is unfolding day to day (AM and PM installments). The gap between its and other internet reporting and mainstream media seems to be widening.”
Agreed and thus I’ve found NC is worthy of a financial contribution from time to time!
I think the further out of touch the corporate owned media gets, the more NC will grow and the more it’s needed. Might also indicate some sort of turning point approaches.
There is a mysterious region over the Pacific where an exporters deflation transforms into margin improvement for importers.
China’s problem isn’t all export demand. For the last 15 years, half their economy was internal investment spending. (infrastructure, too many factories, and ghost cities) There are trying to increase consumption and reduce internal investment. Except workers in china don’t have that much money. Oopsie.
Exports have dropped too, implying world demand is down somewhat. But commodity prices are probably impacted as much by ramping down internal investment consumption as by export weakness. Of course industrial commodity producers have ramped up capacity these last 15 years to meet China’s demand. The party only goes so long.
I checked some data on Cu recently. China was importing 25% of world copper production. Half of that was used internally, the other half got made into electrical/electronic exports. You could probably find similar data on oil, aluminum, steel, etc…They are also a big importer of semiconductors – and the electronic boxes get filled and shipped back out again. No iPhone deflation apparent in the US.
***This was supposed to be a response to Synoia above.
How does the failure of the domestic economy to recover in any meaningful sense for the vast majority of Americans contribute to an explanation of why the Russian bear, Chinese dragon, and the Islamic caliphate now pose existential threats to the United States? Fear and economic insecurity at home are externalized outwards beyond the homeland and justify increased military expenditures in conjunction with the erosion of civil liberties, the increasing militarization of society, especially within and among law enforcement, and the expansion of the national security state – all in the name of these existential threats.
The US simply cannot afford peace. It would destroy the raison d’etre of the military industrial security [MIS] complex. The latter now must be fed to protect economic lebensraum – global trade routes and capital mobility. This is what makes the US Navy a force for good, right? But it has to be on our terms. Otherwise, resistance morphs readily into terrorism or espionage in its various forms, electronic, industrial. No longer benign “military Keynesianism”, if it ever was is debatable, but now simply aggressive economic expansiosism backed by military force coupled with increasing austerity in the homeland. Guns with butter are no longer affordable. So it will be guns!
I couldn’t help thinking while I watched the last Republican debate that for two hours the American people were terrorized, but NOT by ISIS. The terrorists were the stooges up on stage posing as candidates for President. If not radical Islam, then China or Putin dominated the discussion. Rand Paul perhaps offered a different take but it had little impact.
No, it just seems to me that the failure of domestic policy across the board in this country is now held hostage by the MIS complex, and its needs – economic, political, and ideological – are driving foreign policy. Indeed, to what extent are the needs of the MIS complex responsible for the failure of domestic policy – especially economic recovery?
Happy New Year!
I have a couple of questions, one, is austerity in the u.s and europe of a similar variety. In europe currently it seems to me austerity is enforced as a policy choice whereas in the usa it enforced through class warfare, play the game or live in a tent under the freeway, then after you’re in the tent under the freeway you’re a “free spirit” who’s chosen this way of life so your own damn fault, live with your choices because in usa anyone succeeds who wants to. Next, I wonder whether tpp is really a war against china, or if our genius financial engineers want china to be the engine of growth, allow wages in china to go up but using the trade deal to isolate chinas increased consumption and create comparative advantage by selling vietnamese goods to the chinese through u.s. corporations thus enriching the u.s. elite? Basically extra-national globalism of elite power. Do either of these thoughts make sense?
Close. Except another valuable trade route is US corporations (and Japan and Europe) will sell Vietnam products(and products from other places in Asia with even lower poverty than China) back to the US..(and their home corporate domiciles) It’s also easier to put your own factories in these places. In China, I think the Chinese guv still wants to own 51%, with some exceptions. They don’t kick in any money tho. Not that that’s a terribly big problem for us because they are overbuilt in so many industries so you just have a bidding war between Chinese companies instead. Then in downturns, you don’t have the associated debt with factory and capital equipment, and debt deflation is now someone else’s problem!
The only thing is the industrial capabilities of these other places are limited at this point. They do clothing, Barbie dolls and disk drives. It’s still Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China (coming on) for things more sophisticated.
Typo Alert!
“even lower poverty” s/b “even worse poverty”. Sorry for the confusion.
I think it was Professor Michael Hudson who came up with the delightful expression that since Ukraine the IMF had been the financial arm of the Pentagon. For that single sentence I vote a Nobel for him.
In spirit I’ve been voting Michael Hudson Nobels for decades. He’s too great for a Nobel. I consider Michael to be our Thorstein Veblen, and such free-thinking radicals are not welcome in a club that allows criticism but not repudiation of neoliberalism.
Killing the Host is very good; I wish I could have reviewed it before the holiday shopping season…
I’d appreciate a review of it even after the holiday season.
The Pentagon? Or the State Department? Since it is the R2P scum and various other neo-whatever filth who have supported the Banderazi coup regime in KiEV, and the Axis of Jihad against the lawful authorities in Syria, and etc. And I am not aware of any R2P scum lurking in the Pentagon.