The Worsening Debt Crisis – An Interview With Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson is a very astute observer of economics, finance, politics, and history.
When he speaks everyone should pay attention.

I strongly recommend that anyone who wishes to understand, not just economics and finance, but our general socio-political predicament should read his entire interview.

I agree with his statement that “The economy has reached its debt limit and is entering its insolvency phase. We are not in a cycle but the end of an era. The old world of debt pyramiding to a fraudulent degree cannot be restored.”

He says “the only basis for borrowing more is to inflate the price of real estate that is being pledged as collateral for mortgage refinancing.” That was the reason for the banks creating the real estate bubble in the first place, to provide a basis for lending ever more credit (debt-money) into circulation.

The political debt-money system contains a debt and growth imperative because of the compound interest that is attached to loans. To keep the game going there are two choices, expand debt by lending to the government sector (by running budget deficits), or expand debt by lending to the private sector (liberal lending to enable people to buy whatever (real estate, stocks and other securities, commodities, education (student loans), cars and other stuff, what else?)). When incomes are not sufficient for the debt burden to be carried, defaults occur. Defaults can be denied and deferred by various tricks — e.g., refinancing to reduce payments by extending length of repayment. When a financial institution has such extreme cash flow problems as to be unable to continue denial, the government will come in with a bailout plan that leaves the taxpayer to foot the bill. Now, it becomes the public sector’s turn to carry the expanding debt burden.

I am in full agreement with Hudson’s claim that, “It is pure hypocrisy for Wall Street’s Hank Paulson to claim that all this is being done to “help home owners.” They are vehicles off whom to make money, not the beneficiaries. They are at the bottom of an increasingly carnivorous and extractive financial food chain.”
The parasitic nature of the system becomes ever more evident. Either the host becomes increasingly sick and eventually dies, taking the parasites with it to the grave, or the host will act on the increasingly strong signals of malaise and find a way to expel the parasites or keep them in check. Nature shows us that co-existence is a possibility but only if the parasites are held within certain bounds. The New Deal of FDR was a temporary expedient to do just that. One could argue that FDR saved Capitalism.

Hudson clearly states what I have been trying to get across to people: “What people still view as an economic democracy is turning into a financial oligarchy. Politicians are looking for campaign support mainly from this oligarchy because that is where the money is. So they talk about a happy-face economy to appeal to American optimism, while being quite pragmatic in knowing who to serve if they want to get ahead and not be blackballed.”

So don’t expect Obama to do much different.

Hudson correctly observes that “financial interests have replaced the government as society’s new central planners.”
They control politics and everything else. – t.h.g.