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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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Michael Hudson
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More quotes by Michael Hudson

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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
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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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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
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The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.
Michael Hudson
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The real estate interests and banks are in a kind of symbiosis. They're the largest-growing part of the economy. This is the sector that backs the political campaigns of senators, presidents and congressmen, and they use this leverage to make sure that their people dominate the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the federal housing agencies.
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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In order to be an economist these days, you have to participate in this fairytale that somehow we can recover and still make the banks rich. And it is a fairytale.
Michael Hudson
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Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.
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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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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So the political choice today is much like the 1930s, when the global economy also broke down. The choice is between nationalism and populism on the right, or socialism reviving what used to be left-wing politics.
Michael Hudson
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I don't think that governments should permit speculation in raw materials, because they're what the economy basically needs.
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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Just like a house is worth whatever a bank's going to lend against it, an education is worth whatever the bank is going to lend the student to pay the university. So the availability of government-guaranteed student loans has vastly inflated the cost of education, just like it's inflated the cost of housing.
Michael Hudson
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Actually, high housing prices don't help the economy. They raise the cost of living.
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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The economy is being run primarily by the banks for their own interest.
Michael Hudson
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On the flat tax, the more you compress the tax rates, the more you untax where the income is really made, at the top of the pyramid.
Michael Hudson
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Europe is acting in a very self-destructive manner, but is doing so because it's trying to be loyal to the United States.
Michael Hudson
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Trump's junk economics is the illusion that if we cut the taxes on the wealthiest brackets, it'll all trickle down. But it doesn't trickle down.
Michael Hudson