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The economy is being run primarily by the banks for their own interest.

Michael Hudson

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Michael Hudson
Economy
Interest
Running
Primarily
Banks

More quotes by Michael Hudson

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No price is too high to pay to try to make the financial system go on a little bit longer. But ultimately it can't be saved, because of the mathematics that are involved.
Michael Hudson
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Debtors will seek to cancel their debts. Creditors will try to collect, and the more they succeed, the more they will impoverish the economy.
Michael Hudson
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Oil is a special case. Saudi Arabia is trying to drive U.S. fracking rivals out of business, while also hurting Russia. This lowers gas prices for U.S. and Eurozone consumers, but not by enough to spur economic recovery.
Michael Hudson
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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
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The Eurozone die is cast. Countries must withdraw from the euro so that governments can create their own money once again, and resist creditor demands to carve up and privatize their public domain.
Michael Hudson
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In fact, there's no way that banks can be paid everything that they're owed.
Michael Hudson
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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
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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
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The concept of productivity in America is income divided by labor. So if you're Goldman Sachs and you pay yourself $20 million a year in salary and bonuses, you're considered to have added $20 million to GDP, and that's enormously productive. So we're talking in a tautology. We're talking with circular reasoning here.
Michael Hudson
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In real estate you can avoid ever having to pay a capital gains tax, decade after decade, century after century. When you sell a property and make a capital gain, you simply turn around and buy a new property. The gain is not taxed. It's called preserving your capital investment - which goes up and up in value with each transaction.
Michael Hudson
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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
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What's bad for the frackers usually is good for the rest of the world.
Michael Hudson
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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
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Most people think of the economy as producing goods and services and paying labor to buy what it produces. But a growing part of the economy in every country has been the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which comprises the rent and interest paid to the economy's balance sheet of assets by debtors and rent payers.
Michael Hudson
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Normally, if someone goes bankrupt, you wipe out the debt and get a fresh start. But that's not permitted with student loans. So the effect is to impoverish many graduates with very high debts.
Michael Hudson
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When economists speak of money, they neglect that all money and credit is debt. That is the essence of bookkeeping and accounting. There are always two sides to the balance sheet. And one party’s money or savings is another party
Michael Hudson
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In China the largest denomination bill they have is 100 yen, and that's maybe $7. So here you have a whole economy working with only a $7 note as the largest denomination. The euro wants to get rid of the 500-euro bill just as the United States years ago got rid of the $1,000 bill because only the criminals used $1,000 bills.
Michael Hudson
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When there's deflation, it means that although most markets are shrinking and people have less to spend, the 1% that hold the 99% in debt are getting all the growth in wealth and income. Deflation means that income is being transferred to the 1%, that is, to the creditors and property owners.
Michael Hudson
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The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.
Michael Hudson
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Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.
Michael Hudson