Economist Michael Hudson: "...this is pure, naked class war."

[immoderate]

HUDSON: Well, it's sort of like The Hound of the Baskervilles, where Sherlock Holmes said the important thing is that the dogs didn't bark. When the government printed $13 trillion to give to the banks after the 2008 breakdown, nobody complained at all about the fact that the government can simply print the money, pour it into the economy, and do something. Nobody's complaining about the increased war spending that we're doing, the waste that the Pentagon [incompr.] war.

Why is it that all these complaints are only focused on one particular small part of the budget, Social Security and medical care and health care? And the reason is this is pure, naked class war. There's no other word for it. You can't believe that people are being honest when they don't talk about the whole budget or the overall economy when they're singlemindedly tunnel-visioned, focused only on how do we pay retirees less, so that we can give the bankers more when President Obama continues the bank deregulation he's doing. You have the idea that they're cutting back pensioners, cutting back Social Security, in order to be able for the next big bank bailout.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10054

On edit: A link to the video. Quite informative.

--imm

[russspeakeasy]

1. Well written. thanks for the post.

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. Mike, hello from one of the millions of nobodies that have and are watching and complaining, even as

and your colleagues continue to ignore us and pretend we don't exist.

It only becomes a class war when it's your class that takes a hit.

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. One need not even be an economist to see it!

There is hardly even an attempt at a fig leaf here.

[mother earth]

4. Socializing risk, privatizing profit, aided & abetted by gov't, the taxpayer pays dearly. nt

[xchrom]

5. Du rec. Nt

[myrna minx]

6. Great post. K&R. n/t

[byeya]

7. Barrons, once owned by Dow, now owned by Newscorp, has never, to my knowledge, mentioned the wars

or Pentagon spending, as a contributor to the nation's debt. Of course they hew to the line that the deficit(under a Democratic President) is an evil, but refuse to point their corporate finger in the right direction.
Also not mentioned is that both LBJ and Clinton left office with a balanced budget while no Republican within memory did so.
I would guess that most business publications stick to this fantasy also.

[xtraxritical]

12. Very true very well put, "liberal media" my ass.

[byeya]

13. It seems all daily or weekly publications that have, or aspire to, a national presence are

conservative - in the current meaning - or farther to the right.

It is not a new phenomenon either: When Hilary Clinton was given the task to reform our health care system, one media watchdog group reported the New York Times mentioned single payer once in 73 articles and that was to disparage the idea. In my view, it's gotten worse since.

(I forgot to exempt The Nation)

[colorado_ufo]

8. Thank you, Michael Hudson!

I wish there were a way to carry you with me everywhere and have you present your crystal-clear insights to those who are fixated on SS as the root of all indebtedness and think the Chinese are going to take over a state or two as payment.

[DeSwiss]

9. Hello:

My name is DeSwiss and I'm from the SFPMM (Society For the Prevention of Misused Metaphors). The bad news is I'm afraid I'll have to give you a ticket for Metaphoric Story-Misdesignation, a misdemeanor. The good news is that if you don't have a previous record of misdesgination and you keep your nose clean for a year, all this will be expunged from your record.

- Oh, and for the record, it was the story Silver Blaze, not the Hound of the Baskervilles where Sherlock mentioned the ''dogs not barking in the nighttime.'' Word to the wise.....

[KoKo]

11. lol's...He wasn't an English Major though... Here's his Impressive Background

WIKIPEDIA--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hudson_%28economist%29
Influential writings

Hudson has written cover stories for Harper's Magazine and is on the editorial board of Lapham's Quarterly. He is a regular on American Public Media's Marketplace, Bloomberg Radio, has been on numerous Pacifica Radio interview programs, and is a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He has written for the Journal of International Affairs, Commonweal, Bible Review, International Economy, The New York Times op-eds, Financial Times opinion, and has often contributed editorials in leading Latvian, Polish, and Arabic business papers. His trade books are translated into Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

Hudson's April 2006 Harper's cover story, “The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Why Social Security Won’t Be Enough to Save Wall Street,” helped defeat the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize Social Security by showing its aim of steering wage withholding into the stock market to reflate stock market prices for the benefit of insiders and speculators – and to sell to the pension funds. His May 2006 Harper's cover story, “The New Road to Serfdom: An illustrated guide to the coming real estate collapse,” was the first major national article forecasting - in precise chart form - the bursting of the real estate bubble and its consequences for homeowners and state and local government solvency.[4] The November 2008 “How to Save Capitalism” issue of Harper's includes an article by Hudson on the inevitability of a large write-off of debts and the savings they back.

In December 2011, he had two articles in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the "Feuilleton" section.


Professor Hudson received his Ph.D. in economics from New York University in 1968. His dissertation was on American economic and technological thought in the nineteenth century. He received his M.A. also from New York University in 1963 in economics, with a thesis on the World Bank's philosophy of development, with special reference to lending policies in the agricultural sector. He was a philology major with a minor in history at the University of Chicago, where he received his B.A. in 1959. He attended the University of Chicago's Laboratory School for high school and grade school.

Career

Hudson previously taught at the New School in New York City. He is currently a professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC).[4] He also lectures and publishes in association with UMKC at The Berlin School of Economics.

Hudson served as Chief Economic Advisor for Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and holds the same position in Kucinich’s Congressional campaign. He has been economic advisor to the Icelandic, Chinese, Latvian,[4] U.S., Canadian, and Mexican governments,[5] to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and he is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET).

Hudson is a former balance-of-payments economist for Chase Manhattan Bank and Arthur Andersen, and economic futurist for the Hudson Institute (no relation). For Scudder, Stevens & Clark in 1990, he established the world’s first Third World sovereign debt fund, which became the second best performing international fund in 1991[citation needed] (an Australian real estate fund was number one).[citation needed]

Influential writings

Hudson has written cover stories for Harper's Magazine and is on the editorial board of Lapham's Quarterly. He is a regular on American Public Media's Marketplace, Bloomberg Radio, has been on numerous Pacifica Radio interview programs, and is a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He has written for the Journal of International Affairs, Commonweal, Bible Review, International Economy, The New York Times op-eds, Financial Times opinion, and has often contributed editorials in leading Latvian, Polish, and Arabic business papers. His trade books are translated into Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

Hudson's April 2006 Harper's cover story, “The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Why Social Security Won’t Be Enough to Save Wall Street,” helped defeat the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize Social Security by showing its aim of steering wage withholding into the stock market to reflate stock market prices for the benefit of insiders and speculators – and to sell to the pension funds. His May 2006 Harper's cover story, “The New Road to Serfdom: An illustrated guide to the coming real estate collapse,” was the first major national article forecasting - in precise chart form - the bursting of the real estate bubble and its consequences for homeowners and state and local government solvency.[4] The November 2008 “How to Save Capitalism” issue of Harper's includes an article by Hudson on the inevitability of a large write-off of debts and the savings they back.

In December 2011, he had two articles in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the "Feuilleton" section.

[immoderate]

15. Thanks. I am actually new to his writings.

--imm

[KoKo]

10. Love Michael Hudson....He does Plain Speak about Economics...K&R!

[Initech]

14. The only way to fight a class war is to hit 'em where it hurts: their wallets.

[tclambert]

16. Hard to take this guy seriously. He gets so many facts wrong in the first paragraph.

Lots of people complained about the government printing money and giving it to the banks. Many, many threads on DU did just that. And nobody complained about war spending? Again, here on DU, every frakkin' day. And Sherlock Holmes said the dogs didn't bark in The Hound of the Baskervilles? No! What the dog didn't do in the night-time was significant in the story "Silver Blaze." Sorry, but I cannot forgive getting your Sherlock Holmes references incorrect.

[salib]

17. ha ha ha

hee hee
ho ho


ho hum.

tclambert - Even this post has more relevance to the OP than yours.

[KoKo]

19. Here's his Background.. He's an Economics Professor not English Major...

I'm sure he just flubbed the Sherlock Holmes quote. Here's had background:

-----------

WIKIPEDIA--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hudson_%28economist%29
Influential writings

Hudson has written cover stories for Harper's Magazine and is on the editorial board of Lapham's Quarterly. He is a regular on American Public Media's Marketplace, Bloomberg Radio, has been on numerous Pacifica Radio interview programs, and is a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He has written for the Journal of International Affairs, Commonweal, Bible Review, International Economy, The New York Times op-eds, Financial Times opinion, and has often contributed editorials in leading Latvian, Polish, and Arabic business papers. His trade books are translated into Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

Hudson's April 2006 Harper's cover story, “The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Why Social Security Won’t Be Enough to Save Wall Street,” helped defeat the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize Social Security by showing its aim of steering wage withholding into the stock market to reflate stock market prices for the benefit of insiders and speculators – and to sell to the pension funds. His May 2006 Harper's cover story, “The New Road to Serfdom: An illustrated guide to the coming real estate collapse,” was the first major national article forecasting - in precise chart form - the bursting of the real estate bubble and its consequences for homeowners and state and local government solvency. The November 2008 “How to Save Capitalism” issue of Harper's includes an article by Hudson on the inevitability of a large write-off of debts and the savings they back.

In December 2011, he had two articles in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the "Feuilleton" section.


Professor Hudson received his Ph.D. in economics from New York University in 1968. His dissertation was on American economic and technological thought in the nineteenth century. He received his M.A. also from New York University in 1963 in economics, with a thesis on the World Bank's philosophy of development, with special reference to lending policies in the agricultural sector. He was a philology major with a minor in history at the University of Chicago, where he received his B.A. in 1959. He attended the University of Chicago's Laboratory School for high school and grade school.

Career

Hudson previously taught at the New School in New York City. He is currently a professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (UMKC). He also lectures and publishes in association with UMKC at The Berlin School of Economics.

Hudson served as Chief Economic Advisor for Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and holds the same position in Kucinich’s Congressional campaign. He has been economic advisor to the Icelandic, Chinese, Latvian, U.S., Canadian, and Mexican governments, to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and he is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET).

Hudson is a former balance-of-payments economist for Chase Manhattan Bank and Arthur Andersen, and economic futurist for the Hudson Institute (no relation). For Scudder, Stevens & Clark in 1990, he established the world’s first Third World sovereign debt fund, which became the second best performing international fund in 1991 (an Australian real estate fund was number one).

Influential writings

Hudson has written cover stories for Harper's Magazine and is on the editorial board of Lapham's Quarterly. He is a regular on American Public Media's Marketplace, Bloomberg Radio, has been on numerous Pacifica Radio interview programs, and is a regular contributor to CounterPunch. He has written for the Journal of International Affairs, Commonweal, Bible Review, International Economy, The New York Times op-eds, Financial Times opinion, and has often contributed editorials in leading Latvian, Polish, and Arabic business papers. His trade books are translated into Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

Hudson's April 2006 Harper's cover story, “The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Why Social Security Won’t Be Enough to Save Wall Street,” helped defeat the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize Social Security by showing its aim of steering wage withholding into the stock market to reflate stock market prices for the benefit of insiders and speculators – and to sell to the pension funds. His May 2006 Harper's cover story, “The New Road to Serfdom: An illustrated guide to the coming real estate collapse,” was the first major national article forecasting - in precise chart form - the bursting of the real estate bubble and its consequences for homeowners and state and local government solvency. The November 2008 “How to Save Capitalism” issue of Harper's includes an article by Hudson on the inevitability of a large write-off of debts and the savings they back.

In December 2011, he had two articles in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in the "Feuilleton" section.

[snagglepuss]

20. k and r

[immoderate]

21. A kick.