By Michael Hudson and posted with the author’s permission
As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.
Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society.
What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear. Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19th and early 20th century.
Clausewitz popularized the axiom that war is an extension of national interests – mainly economic. The United States views its economic interest to lie in seeking to spread its neoliberal ideology globally. The evangelistic aim is to financialize and privatize economies by shifting planning away from national governments to a cosmopolitan financial sector. There would be little need for politics in such a world. Economic planning would shift from political capitals to financial centers, from Washington to Wall Street, with satellites in the City of London, the Paris Bourse, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Board meetings for the new oligarchy would be held at Davos’s World Economic Forum. Hitherto public infrastructure services would be privatized and priced high enough to include profits (and indeed, monopoly rents), debt financing and management fees rather than being publicly subsidized. Debt service and rent would become the major overhead costs for families, industry and governments.
The U.S. drive to retain its unipolar power to impose “America First” financial, trade and military policies on the world involves an inherent hostility toward all countries seeking to follow their own national interests. Having less and less to offer in the form of mutual economic gains, U.S. policy makes threats of sanctions and covert meddling in foreign politics. The U.S. dream envisions a Chinese version of Boris Yeltsin replacing the nation’s Communist Party leadership and selling off its public domain to the highest bidder – presumably after a monetary crisis wipes out domestic purchasing power much as occurred in post-Soviet Russia, leaving the international financial community as buyers.
Russia and President Putin cannot be forgiven for having fought back against the Harvard Boys’ “reforms.” That is why U.S. officials planned how to create Russian economic disruption to (they hope) orchestrate a “color revolution” to recapture Russia for the world’s neoliberal camp. That is the character of the “democracy” and “free markets” being juxtaposed to the “autocracy” of state-subsidized growth. As Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov explained in a press conference on July 20, 2022 regarding Ukraine’s violent coup in 2014, U.S. and other Western officials define military coups as democratic if they are sponsored by the United States in the hope of promoting neoliberal policies.
Do you remember how events developed after the coup? The putschists spat in the face of Germany, France and Poland that were the guarantors of the agreement with Viktor Yanukovych. It was trampled underfoot the next morning. These European countries didn’t make a peep – they reconciled themselves to this. A couple of years ago I asked the Germans and French what they thought about the coup. What was it all about if they didn’t demand that the putschists fulfil the agreements? They replied: “This is the cost of the democratic process.” I am not kidding. Amazing – these were adults holding the post of foreign ministers.[1]
This Doublethink vocabulary reflects how far mainstream ideology has evolved from Rosa Luxemburg’s description a century ago of the civilizational choice being posed: barbarism or socialism.
The contradictory U.S. and European interests and burdens of the war in Ukraine
To return to Clausewitz’s view of war as an extension of national policy, U.S. national interests are diverging sharply from those of its NATO satellites. America’s military-industrial complex, oil and agriculture sectors are benefiting, while European industrial interests are suffering. That is especially the case in Germany and Italy as a result of their governments blocking North Stream 2 gas imports and other Russian raw materials.
The interruption of world energy, food and minerals supply chains and the resulting price inflation (providing an umbrella for monopoly rents by non-Russian suppliers) has imposed enormous economic strains on U.S. allies in Europe and the Global South. Yet the U.S. economy is benefiting from this, or at least specific sectors of the U.S. economy are benefiting. As Sergey Lavrov, pointed out in his above-cited press conference: “The European economy is impacted more than anything else. The stats show that 40 percent of the damage caused by sanctions is borne by the EU whereas the damage to the United States is less than 1 percent.” The dollar’s exchange rate has soared against the euro, which has plunged to parity with the dollar and looks set to fall further down toward the $0.80 that it was a generation ago. U.S. dominance over Europe is further strengthened by the trade sanctions against Russian oil and gas. The U.S. is an LNG exporter, U.S. companies control the world oil trade, and U.S. firms are the world’s major grain marketers and exporters now that Russia is excluded from many foreign markets.
A revival of European military spending – for offense, not defense
U.S. arms-makers are looking forward to making profits off arms sales to Western Europe, which has almost literally disarmed itself by sending its tanks and howitzers, ammunition and missiles to Ukraine. U.S. politicians support a bellicose foreign policy to promote arms factories that employ labor in their voting districts. And the neocons who dominate the State Department and CIA see the war as a means of asserting American dominance over the world economy, starting with its own NATO partners.
The problem with this view is that although America’s military-industrial, oil and agricultural monopolies are benefitting, the rest of the U.S. economy is being squeezed by the inflationary pressures resulting from boycotting Russian gas, grain and other raw-materials exports, and the enormous rise in the military budget will be used as an excuse to cut back social spending programs. That also is a problem for Eurozone members. They have promised NATO to raise their military spending to the stipulated 2 percent of their GDP, and the Americans are urging much higher levels to upgrade to the most recent array of weaponry. All but forgotten is the Peace Dividend that was promised in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact alliance, expecting that NATO likewise would have little reason to exist.
Russia has no discernable economic interest in mounting a new occupation of Central Europe. That would offer no gain to Russia, as its leaders realized when they dissolved the old Soviet Union. In fact, no industrial country in today’s world can afford to field an infantry to occupy an enemy. All that NATO can do is bomb from a distance. It can destroy, but not occupy. The United States found that out in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. And just as the assassination Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) triggered World War I in 1914, NATO’s bombing of adjoining Serbia may be viewed as throwing down the gauntlet to turn Cold War 2 into a veritable World War III. That marked the point at which NATO became an offensive alliance, not a defensive one.
How does this reflect European interests? Why should Europe re-arm, if the only effect is to make it a target of retaliation in the event of further attacks on Russia? What does Europe have to gain in becoming a larger customer for America’s military-industrial complex? Diverting spending to rebuild an offensive army – that can never be used without triggering an atomic response that would wipe out Europe – will limit the social spending needed to cope with today’s Covid problems and economic recession.
The only lasting leverage a nation can offer in today’s world is trade and technology transfer. Europe has more of this to offer than the United States. Yet the only opposition to renewed military spending is coming from right-wing parties and the German Linke party. Europe’s Social Democratic, Socialist and Labour parties share American neoliberal ideology.
Sanctions against Russian gas makes coal “the fuel of the future”
The carbon footprint of bombing, arms manufacturing and military bases is strikingly absent from today’s discussion about global warming and the need to cut back on carbon emissions. The German party that calls itself Green is leading the campaign for sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas, which electric utilities are replacing with Polish coal and even German lignite. Coal is becoming the “fuel of the future.” Its price also is soaring in the United States, benefitting American coal companies.
In contrast to the Paris Club agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the United States has neither the political capability nor the intention to join the conservation effort. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Executive Branch has no authority to issue nation-wide energy rules; only individual states can do that, unless Congress passes a national law to cut back on fossil fuels.
That seems unlikely in view of the fact that becoming head of a Democratic Senate and Congressional committee requires being a leader in raising campaign contributions for the party. Joe Manchin, a coal-company billionaire, leads all senators in campaign support from the oil and coal industries, enabling him to win his party’s auction for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee chairmanship and block any seriously restrictive environmental legislation.
Next to oil, agriculture is a major contributor to the U.S. balance of payments. Blocking Russian grain and fertilizer shipping threatens to create a Global South food crisis as well as a European crisis as gas is unavailable to make domestic fertilizer. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of grain and also of fertilizer, and its exports of these products have been exempted from NATO sanctions. But Russian shipping was blocked by Ukraine placing mines in the sea lanes through the Black Sea to close off access to Odessa’s harbor, hoping that the world would blame the world’s imminent grain and energy crisis on Russia instead of the US/NATO trade sanctions imposed on Russia.[2] At his July 20, 2022 press conference Sergey Lavrov showed the hypocrisy of the public relations attempt to distort matters:
For many months, they told us that Russia was to blame for the food crisis because the sanctions don’t cover food and fertiliser. Therefore, Russia doesn’t need to find ways to avoid the sanctions and so it should trade because nobody stands in its way. It took us a lot of time to explain to them that, although food and fertiliser are not subject to sanctions, the first and second packages of Western restrictions affected freight costs, insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign ports and those for foreign ships taking on the same consignments at Russian harbours. They are openly lying to us that this is not true, and that it is up to Russia alone. This is foul play.
Black Sea grain transport has begun to resume, but NATO countries have blocked payments to Russia in dollars, euros or currencies of other countries in the U.S. orbit. Food-deficit countries that cannot afford to pay distress-level food prices face drastic shortages, which will be exacerbated when they are compelled to pay their foreign debts denominated in the appreciating U.S. dollar. The looming fuel and food crisis promises to drive a new wave of immigrants to Europe seeking survival. Europe already has been flooded with refugees from NATO’s bombing and backing of jihadist attacks on Libya and Near Eastern oil-producing countries. This year’s proxy war in Ukraine and imposition of anti-Russian sanctions is a perfect illustration of Henry Kissinger’s quip: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
Blowback from the US/NATO miscalculations
America’s international diplomacy aims to dictate financial, trade and military policies that will lock other countries into dollar debt and trade dependency by preventing them from developing alternatives. If this fails, America seeks to isolate the recalcitrants from the U.S.-centered Western sphere.
America’s foreign diplomacy no longer is based on offering mutual gain. Such could be claimed in the aftermath of World War II when the United States was in a position to offer loans, foreign-aid and military protection against occupation – as well as manufactures to rebuild war-torn economies – to governments in exchange for their accepting trade and monetary policies favorable to American exporters and investors. But today there is only the belligerent diplomacy of threatening to hurt nations whose socialist governments reject America’s neoliberal drive to privatize and sell off their natural resources and public infrastructure.
The first aim is to prevent Russia and China from helping each other. This is the old imperial divide-and-conquer strategy. Minimizing Russia’s ability to support China would pave the way for the United States and NATO Europe to impose new trade sanctions on China, and to send jihadists to its western Xinjiang Uighur region. The aim is to bleed Russia’s armaments inventory, kill enough of its soldiers, and create enough Russian shortages and suffering to not only weaken its ability to help China, but to spur its population to support a regime change, an American-sponsored “color revolution.” The dream is to promote a Yeltsin-like leader friendly to the neoliberal “therapy” that dismantled Russia’s economy in the 1990s.
Amazing as it may seem, U.S. strategists did not anticipate the obvious response by countries finding themselves together in the crosshairs of US/NATO military and economic threats. On July 19, 2022, the presidents of Russia and Iran met to announce their cooperation in the face of the sanctions war against them. That followed Russia’s earlier meeting with India’s Prime Minister Modi. In what has been characterized as “shooting itself in its own foot,” U.S. diplomacy is driving Russia, China, India and Iran together, and indeed to reach out to Argentina and other countries to join the BRICS-plus bank to protect themselves.
The U.S. itself is ending the Dollar Standard of international finance
The Trump Administration took a major step to drive countries out of the dollar orbit in November 2018, by confiscating nearly $2 billion of Venezuela’s official gold stock held in London. The Bank of England put these reserves at the disposal of Juan Guaidó, the marginal right-wing politician selected by the United States to replace Venezuela’s elected president as head of state. This was defined as being democratic, because the regime change promised to introduce the neoliberal “free market” that is deemed to be the essence of America’s definition of democracy for today’s world.
This gold theft actually was not the first such confiscation. On November 14, 1979, the Carter Administration paralyzed Iran’s bank deposits in New York after the Shah was overthrown. This act blocked Iran from paying its scheduled foreign debt service, forcing it into default. That was viewed as an exceptional one-time action as far as all other financial markets were concerned. But now that the United States is the self-proclaimed “exceptional nation,” such confiscations are becoming a new norm in U.S. diplomacy. Nobody yet knows what happened to Libya’s gold reserves that Muammar Gadafi had intended to be used to back an African alternative to the dollar. And Afghanistan’s gold and other reserves were simply taken by Washington as payment for the cost of “freeing” that country from Russian control by backing the Taliban. But when the Biden Administration and its NATO allies made a much larger asset grab of some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign bank reserves and currency holdings in March 2022, it made official a radical new epoch in Dollar Diplomacy. Any nation that follows policies not deemed to be in the interests of the U.S. Government runs the risk of U.S. authorities confiscating its holdings of foreign reserves in U.S. banks or securities.
This was a red flag leading countries to fear denominating their trade, savings and foreign debt in dollars, and to avoid using dollar or euro bank deposits and securities as a means of payment. By prompting other countries to think about how to free themselves from the U.S.-centered world trade and monetary system that was established in 1945 with the IMF, World Bank and subsequently the World Trade Organization, the U.S. confiscations have accelerated the end of the U.S. Treasury-bill standard that has governed world finance since the United States went off gold in 1971.[3]
Since dollar convertibility into gold ended in August 1971, dollarization of the world’s trade and investment has created a need for other countries to hold most of their new international monetary reserves in U.S. Treasury securities and bank deposits. As already noted, that enables the United States to seize foreign bank deposits and bonds denominated in U.S. dollars.
Most important, the United States can create and spend dollar IOUs into the world economy at will, without limit. It doesn’t have to earn international spending power by running a trade surplus, as other countries have to do. The U.S. Treasury can simply print dollars electronically to finance its foreign military spending and purchases of foreign resources and companies. And being the “exceptional country,” it doesn’t have to pay these debts – which are recognized as being far too large to be paid. Foreign dollar holdings are free U.S. credit to the Unites States, not requiring repayment any more than the paper dollars in our wallets are expected to be paid off (by retiring them from circulation). What seems to be so self-destructive about America’s economic sanctions and confiscations of Russian and other foreign reserves is that they are accelerating the demise of this free ride.
Blowback resulting from US/NATO isolating their economic and monetary systems
It is hard to see how driving countries out of the U.S. economic orbit serves long-term U.S. national interests. Dividing the world into two monetary blocs will limit Dollar Diplomacy to its NATO allies and satellites.
The blowback now unfolding in the wake of U.S. diplomacy begins with its anti-Russia policy. Imposing trade and monetary sanctions was expected to block Russian consumers and businesses from buying the US/NATO imports to which they had become accustomed. Confiscating Russia’s foreign currency reserves was supposed to crash the ruble, “turning it into rubble,” as President Biden promised. Imposing sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas to Europe was supposed to deprive Russia of export earnings, causing the ruble to collapse and raising import prices (and hence, living costs) for the Russian public. Instead, blocking Russian exports has created a worldwide price inflation for oil and gas, sharply increasing Russian export earnings. It exported less gas but earned more – and with dollars and euros blocked, Russia demanded payment for its exports in rubles. Its exchange rate soared instead of collapsing, enabling Russia to reduce its interest rates.
Goading Russia to send its soldiers to eastern Ukraine to defend Russian speakers under attack in Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the expected impact of the ensuing Western sanctions, was supposed to make Russian voters press for regime change. But as almost always happens when a country or ethnicity is attacked, Russians were appalled at the Ukrainian hatred of Russian-language speakers and Russian culture, and at the Russophobia of the West. The effect of Western countries banning music by Russian composers and Russian novels from libraries – capped by England banning Russian tennis players from the Wimbledon tournament – was to make Russians feel under attack simply for being Russian. They rallied around President Putin.
NATO’s trade sanctions have catalyzed helped Russian agriculture and industry to become more self-sufficient by obliging Russia to invest in import substitution. One well-publicized farming success was to develop its own cheese production to replace that of Lithuania and other European suppliers. Its automotive and other industrial production is being forced to shift away from German and other European brands to its own and Chinese producers. The result is a loss of markets for Western exporters.
In the field of financial services, NATO’s exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT bank-clearing system failed to create the anticipated payments chaos. The threat had been so loudly for so long that Russia and China had plenty of time to develop their own payments system. This provided them with one of the preconditions for their plans to split their economies away from those of the US/NATO West.
As matters have turned out, the trade and monetary sanctions against Russia are imposing the heaviest costs on Western Europe, and are likely to spread to the Global South, driving them to think about whether their economic interests lie in joining U.S. confrontational Dollar Diplomacy. The disruption is being felt most seriously in Germany, causing many companies to close down as a result of gas and other raw-materials shortages. Germany’s refusal to authorize the North Stream 2 pipeline has pushed its energy crisis to a head. This has raised the question of how long Germany’s political parties can remain subordinate to NATO’s Cold War policies at the cost of German industry and households facing sharp rises in heating and electricity costs.
The longer it takes to restore trade with Russia, the more European economies will suffer, along with the citizenry at large, and the further the euro’s exchange rate will fall, spurring inflation throughout its member countries. European NATO countries are losing not only their export markets but their investment opportunities to gain from the much more rapid growth of Eurasian countries whose government planning and resistance to financialization has proved much more productive than the US/NATO neoliberal model.
It is difficult to see how any diplomatic strategy can do more than play for time. That involves living in the short run, not the long run. Time seems to be on the side of Russia, China and the trade and investment alliances that they are negotiating to replace the neoliberal Western economic order.
America’s ultimate problem is its neoliberal post-industrial economy
The failure and blowbacks of U.S. diplomacy are the result of problems that go beyond diplomacy itself. The underlying problem is the West’s commitment to neoliberalism, financialization and privatization. Instead of government subsidy of basic living costs needed by labor, all social life is being made part of “the market” – a uniquely Thatcherite deregulated “Chicago Boys” market in which industry, agriculture, housing and financing are deregulated and increasingly predatory, while heavily subsidizing the valuation of financial and rent-seeking assets – mainly the wealth of the richest One Percent. Income is obtained increasingly by financial and monopoly rent-seeking, and fortunes are made by debt-leveraged “capital” gains for stocks, bonds and real estate.
U.S. industrial companies have aimed more at “creating wealth” by increasing the price of their stocks by using over 90 percent of their profits for stock buybacks and dividend payouts instead of investing in new production facilities and hiring more labor. The result of slower capital investment is to dismantle and financially cannibalize corporate industry in order to produce financial gains. And to the extent that companies do employ labor and set up new production, it is done abroad where labor is cheaper.
Most Asian labor can afford to work for lower wages because it has much lower housing costs and does not have to pay education debt. Health care is a public right, not a financialized market transaction, and pensions are not paid for in advance by wage-earners and employers but are public. The aim in China in particular is to prevent the rentier Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector from becoming a burdensome overhead whose economic interests differ from those of a socialist government.
China treats money and banking as a public utility, to be created, spent and lent for purposes that help increase productivity and living standards (and increasingly to preserve the environment). It rejects the U.S.-sponsored neoliberal model imposed by the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization.
The global economic fracturing goes far beyond NATO’s conflict with Russia in Ukraine. By the time the Biden administration took office at the start of 2021, Russia and China already had been discussing the need to de-dollarize their foreign trade and investment, using their own currencies.[4] That involves the quantum leap of organizing a new payments-clearing institution. Planning had not progressed beyond broad outlines of how such a system would work, but the U.S. confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves made such planning urgent, starting with a BRICS-plus bank. A Eurasian alternative to the IMF will remove its ability to impose neoliberal austerity “conditionalities” to force countries to lower payments to labor and give priority to paying their foreign creditors above feeding themselves and developing their own economies. Instead of new international credit being extended mainly to pay dollar debts, it will be part of a process of new mutual investment in basic infrastructure designed to accelerate economic growth and living standards. Other institutions are being designed as China, Russia, Iran, India and their prospective allies represent a large enough critical mass to “go it alone,” based on their own mineral wealth and manufacturing power.
The basic U.S. policy has been to threaten to destabilize countries and perhaps bomb them until they agree to adopt neoliberal policies and privatize their public domain. But taking on Russia, China and Iran is a much higher order of magnitude. NATO has disarmed itself of the ability to wage conventional warfare by handing over its supply of weaponry – admittedly largely outdated – to be devoured in Ukraine. In any case, no democracy in today’s world can impose a military draft to wage a conventional land warfare against a significant/major adversary. The protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s ended the U.S. military draft, and the only way to really conquer a country is to occupy it in land warfare. This logic also implies that Russia is no more in a position to invade Western Europe than NATO countries are to send conscripts to fight Russia.
That leaves Western democracies with the ability to fight only one kind of war: atomic war – or at least, bombing at a distance, as was done in Afghanistan and the Near East, without requiring Western manpower. This is not diplomacy at all. It is merely acting the role of wrecker. But that is the only tactic that remains available to the United States and NATO Europe. It is strikingly like the dynamic of Greek tragedy, where power leads to hubris that is injurious to others and therefore ultimately anti-social – and self-destructive in the end.
How then can the United States maintain its world dominance? It has deindustrialized and run up foreign official debt far beyond any foreseeable way to be paid. Meanwhile, its banks and bondholders are demanding that the Global South and other countries pay foreign dollar bondholders in the face of their own trade crisis resulting from the soaring energy and food prices caused by America’s anti-Russian and anti-China belligerence. This double standard is a basic internal contradiction that goes to the core of today’s neoliberal Western worldview.
I have described the possible scenarios to resolve this conflict in my recent book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. It has now also been issued in e-book form by Counterpunch Books.
- “Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with RT television, Sputnik agency and Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, Moscow, July 20, 2022,” Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry, July 20, 2022. https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1822901/. From Johnson’s Russia List, July 21, 2022, #5. ↑
- International Maritime Organization, “Maritime Security and Safety in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov,” https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/MaritimeSecurityandSafetyintheBlackSeaandSeaofAzov.aspx. See Yves Smith, Some Implications of the UN’s Ukraine Grain and Russia Fertilizer/Food Agreements,” Naked Capitalism, July 25, 2022, and Lavrov’s July 24 speech to the Arab League. ↑
- My Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (3rd ed., 2021) describes how the Treasury-bill standard has provided America with a free ride and enabled it to run balance-of-payments deficits without constraint, including the costs of its overseas military spending. ↑
- Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson (2021), “Beyond Dollar Creditocracy: A Geopolitical Economy,” Valdai Club Paper No. 116. Moscow: Valdai Club, 7 July, reprinted in Real World Economic Review (97), https://rwer.wordpress.com/2021/09/23. ↑
this comment has been flagged as of little/no value (possibly troll) by the saker
Such huge mistakes can only be made by the Zionists who created the United States in 1776, and control it as a superpower that was supposed to impose NWO hegemony on the whole world. Not American hegeminy, but Zionists hegemony who use Americans as cannon fodder. Any other people or ethnic group would never have made such suicidal mistakes, because they do not cultivate the millennial madness of Zionism of wanting to be the one and only people worthy of being called such and therefore of being on the face of the earth. In fact it is committing suicide, unfortunately dragging countless other peoples with it, presumably to Hell to contemplate their horrific god lucifer for ever and ever. Amen.
Note: This is not a wish, which would be even crazier, but a terrible reality.
“… a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society.”
It’s even more fundamental than that. It’s a fight to determine whether the planning and implementation of the world’s economy and society will reflect the broad human needs and wants of its various populations generally, or only the very narrow interests of those Mammon worshipping few who have risen to the pinnacle of material wealth through greed alone. Sector involvement and control in that fundamental issue must be regarded and understood as merely the means to an end rather than a goal in itself.
Vladimir Soloviev (genius) saw clearly what was going to happen in Europe in the 21st century 122 years of his time. Despair, social chaos, hunger after a hypothetical war of Russia against the West and China would open the doors to the son of iniquity.
“Three short accounts of the antichrist 1900”
The Europe of the 21st century appears as the union of a greater or lesser number of democratic states: “The Union of the States of Europe”. The successful advance of culture, sometimes interrupted by the Asian invasion and liberation struggle, quickly resumed its course.
He lived at that time, among the few who still believed in spiritualism, a man of exceptional gifts – many called him a superman – who was far from being a child in both mind and heart. He was still young but, thanks to his extraordinary genius, at the age of thirty-three he achieved fame as an exceptional thinker, writer and social reformer. Aware of his great spiritual power, he was always a convinced spiritualist and his clear intelligence always pointed out to him the truth of what he should believe in: the good, God, the Messiah. He believed in this, but he only loved himself. He believed in God, but deep in his soul, unconsciously and involuntarily, he preferred himself.
He justified his selfish preference for himself and not for Christ with the following reasoning: “Christ, preaching and practicing moral goodness in his life, was the reformer of humanity; I, on the other hand, am destined to be the benefactor of this same humanity, in partly reformed and partly incorrigible. I will give everyone whatever they need. Christ, as a moralist, divided humanity into good and bad, but I instead will unite everyone with the necessary goods; for both the good and the bad. I will be the true representative of that God who makes the sun shine on the good and the bad and makes it rain on the just and the unjust. Christ brought the sword and I will bring peace. He threatened the earth with the terrible final judgment but I will be the last judge, and my judgment will be not only of justice but of mercy. In my judgment there will also be justice, but it will not be a retributive justice but a distributive one. I will judge everyone and give to each according to his needs.”
@ Oscar de Caracas
Wow, thank you very much!!! There you have it a comment that sums up everything except the how of it all to which if Soloviev saw our world and the technological wonders of computer tech and how it has funneled all of us into a number system we would have the answer to ‘here is the mind that has wisdom’ about our worlds last economic system. Please pay attention to what is here!!!!!
/the-special-relationship-how-the-british-reconquered-the-united-states-and-established-an-anglo-american-empire/#comment-1128769
Again, thank you O so very much Oscar de Caracas. HOOORAY TO YOU OSCAR Smiles all around!!!
Cheers
Russia never felt comfortable with her neighbour China. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation reached out for the West in search for an ally. That offer was arrogantly ignored, because the usual suspects were more interested in Russias collaterals and therefore busy with looting the country. When Putin came into power, he put an end to the looting, but he still opted for a cooperation with the West. He even suggested to join NATO, since a great part of Russian territory is still defined as Europe, geographically. Alas, the usual suspects chose to snub him. They just couldn’t forgive the fact that he had prevented them from stripping his country to the bone. That way, out of arrogance and greed, and without strategic thinking, the West turned down their natural ally, forcing Russia to side up with the children of the Dragon. That wasn’t merely dumb, it was a capital, and maybe fatal, mistake.
it was Kruschev and the post – Stalin / anti Stalin nomeklatura that turned Russia away from China. Krushchev the Ukrainian Europhile . It was temporary. There seems to be an irresistible historical force at work
Agree. Also remember it was Khrushchev, the Ukrainian, who transferred the control of Crimea with its warm-water port of Sevastopol to Ukraine, I think in 1954. At that time he got away with it because both Russia and Ukraine were part of the USSR.
Mr. Hudson,
I do appreciate much of Your clear sight of reality. As far as motives and intentions of the U.S. neocons ant their industries are concerned, You hit the point. Also, the undoubtable failure of those sanctions are described correctly.
But as somebody apparently from the left spectrum, You make the mistake to attribute this behavior of those entities to “neoliberalism”. It isn’t. It’s just plain criminal. Whichever businessman that collaborates with the State to further his own goals is not a capitalist or neoliberal, but in a way a socialist. And whichever politician that works in favor of any branch or firm is a socialist, too. Both groups act illegally.
The whole political system of the U.S. (and almost every other so-called “democratic” country, too) is faulty. The basic problem lies in the idea “one man, one vote”. Not everybody is able to understand what it’s all about. Only those who can prove to a basic political knowledge should be allowed a vote. Also, people who liv on public welfare can’t vote, either, since that is like two wolves and a sheep voting on the evening dinner.
People on the payroll of the state must not vote, either. If about the 10% intelligent of the 20% of net-net-taxpayers could vote, we could do without those ridiculous costly campaigns for office. People would vote for competence. All members of Congress or Senate should be limited to 2 terms. Politics must be a service and not an occupation.
You have an interesting point of view. While I agree somewhat with your premise the whole political system is faulty, I think the why has to be looked at, not at the who should be limited to vote.
Why is the voting system faulty? It takes capital to become elected to any position; the more visibility or the higher the hierarchical position the more capital it takes. Each level from city manager, to governor, to president requires more capital because in order to reach the appropriate level of office requires more exposure. That means more media exposure, more travel, more campaigning, etc. Pac’s and Superpac’s enable a candidate to run for higher office. It doesn’t mean the qualifications of that person are necessarily suitable for that position, only that he had the means to try for that position.
To say that you should disqualify people from voting on the basis of intellect or state of personal income is simplistic. You cannot exclude people based on welfare because while the perception may be that they don’t need it, many people may need it. I have a disabled son and the requirements to receive assistance are a very high bar. That does not make them less deserving to cast a vote. To say one is not intelligent enough to vote becomes a question of what intelligence level is acceptable. I have two highly intelligent children, one with no common sense, and one with severe learning disabilities. We have robust political debates in this family and no matter the level of difficulty of subject matter, they can all comprehend the issues and independently draw their own conclusions about the topic. Whether they choose to vote is up to them.
Excluding people from voting based on whether they are or are not employed by the state, places the choice of the winner in a smaller pool of people, over a pool of people who pay taxes that ultimately supports that political position. Certainly that describes the most severe form of inequity.
What you’re describing sounds like a Darwinian type of representational govt to me. The brightest, best, wealthiest get to have power over the lesser. Sound familiar? No thanks.
“What you’re describing sounds like a Darwinian type of representational govt to me. The brightest, best, wealthiest get to have power over the lesser”.
Although that is a good thumbnail summary of what has been called “Social Darwinism”, it is very peripheral to (if indeed not completely beyond) anything that Darwin said.
His theory was mainly about the survival or otherwise of whole species as environments changed. Those species that adapted most successfully tended to survive; others didn’t.
Species that survive do so for various reasons. Sharks, crocodiles, cockroaches, ants, and wasps have existed since long before the first dinosaurs; and they still do pretty well today. Why? Sharks and crocodiles are large, swift, tough, extremely ferocious eating machines that have one extra big advantage: they live in the water. That is a more surviveable environment, and is rich in food. Cockroaches, ants, and wasps all have very efficient ways of feeding and reproducing; especially, they reproduce in very large numbers and also live communally.
Human beings are apes, which have created a new kind of environment for themselves that allowed their numbers to increase extraordinarily – although it is not yet clear whether those huge numbers can be maintained. But humans, almost as much as ants and bees, are social animals and cannot survive, let alone prosper, individually.
Thus “Social Darwinism” is a false trail, which if followed consistently would lead to utter disaster. It is a gospel of selfishness that goes directly against everything that has helped humans to survive and prosper. In Darwinian terms, the enemies of humans are never other humans, but other species and harsh environments.
“Social Darwinism”, like its successor neo-whatever, was a synthetic doctrine cooked up by well-paid tame academics to justify and glorify the rich by identifying their wealth and power with merit. Such people, however, only attain social success by parastically battening on the work of others, whom they successfully cheat.
Yes. You are right. I was loosely using “Social Darwinism” as an analogy to the perceived elitist type of representative govt we have right now. Yes, I agree it’s a synthetic doctrine but it does seem to describe how those who want to control our govts perceive themselves: set above others.
Democracies only last till the masses realize they can vote themselves money out of the public till.
I disagree, Social Darwinism, is a real and easily observable phenomenon. I suggest you read some of the fiction of John Fowles, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, “Daniel Martin”, etc.
Fowles was a biologist by training, and brilliantly applied Darwin’s theories to the human social and psychological sphere. Those who adapt to changing times succeed, reactionaries are crushed.
I will check out those books. Thanks. Just because something is fiction doesn’t mean it’s not tied to truth. However, adapting to changing times has been going on forever. That’s different than evolution of a species. Removed contents on covid.
Mod – please remember, per this site’s moderation rules, covid posts are off-topic and subject to moderation. Please choose another example. Thank you for your understanding.
Neoliberalism as well as original liberalism is a completely immoral philosophy which may be summarised as ‘Do what thou wilt’ . Libertaryan may be influenced by Adam Smith’s marketing of liberalism using false premisses never intended to be applied by Smiths imperial bosses.
“The U.S. drive to retain its unipolar power to impose “America First” financial, trade and military policies on the world involves an inherent hostility toward all countries seeking to follow their own national interests.”
As I see it, this statement is sort of misleading as there is really nothing “America First” about the policies of the psychopaths that run the U.S. “government.” Put simply, the U.S. “government” does what it does because it is the embodiment of pure Satanic evil.
In essence the U.S. “government” tries to impose destructive policies on other countries because a greater evil cannot coexist with a lesser evil. This is because a lesser evil will generally always outperform a greater evil in every meaningful way and make it look bad by comparison. So as America crumbles from within (as it must, because it has been corrupted beyond redemption – which was a necessary precondition for the cult’s rise to power in America), the Satanists, if they are to accomplish the spiritual goal set forth in Isaiah 14:13,14, need to make sure the rest of the world suffers a similar fate.
To put it another way, the cult of demon-possessed theistic Satanists that run the U.S. “government” seeks to rise to the top of the world and to stay there by bringing everyone else down; that is, to do to the whole world what Satan did to Eve, and any country which cannot be so deceived, corrupted and manipulated into destroying itself (as we see Europe doing to itself right now), must be physically destroyed with kinetic warfare. So the Satanic cult must do to Russia, China and Iran what Cain did to Abel.
The guy knows his stuff! The most astute economist now living in the western world. His economic analysis is very well researched and thought out, principled, and forward looking. He’s no shill. As he says: the Powers that be that run the US are indeed strangling Europe and driving the global South and Eurasia to line up behind BRICS+. This is what is happening presently in realtime and is a sign of the times.
In his articles, he knows how to write in a more popular language.
His book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism gives the options of what is to unfold.
I have the hardcopy. Although more technical, it’s really a touchstone for what to expect.
Best wishes
If you ever have any doubts on if Michael Hudson is correct, just remember that when Super Imperialism was first published, instead of socialists buying the book, it was the US State Department who had purchased 2000 copies for its employees and offered Michael Hudson an $85,000 grant to teach the imperialists on how to be imperialists!
I prefer to read Hudson alongside Stiglitz and Piketty. Stiglitz has spent time inside the World Bank and has come away extremely critical of the methods and operation. I find these three men to be of a similar vein in looking towards a new way of operating an economy. All sit firmly opposed to what Hudson highlights as the FIRE + MIC economic model. Between the three we have the past, present and future of alternative economic function.
I wanted to ask if someone could share a copy of the ebook to read for free, I don’t want to harm Dr. Hudson’s business, I just want to read it, but I can’t pay $12. I live in Argentina, no job, no credit card, that money today is not within my reach. Thank you very much.
Ah! You break my heart. A poor scholars dilemma: How to get books needed for one’s education? A struggle. I had the same problem — now it is easier for me, so I was fortunate.
I don’t Mr. Hudson is in it for the money. And if truth be told, all education should be free, especially for those who show promise. All scholars depend upon previous scholars for their learning, so its a social thing. Books should be free, costs to a minimum.
With Hudson’s book, the trouble is there is no kindle edition. There are outlets that have books digitally for free, such as the Internet Archive which has all books in the public domain, as well as newer books foe loan. There are sites also, one in particular which I am afraid to name, that has newer books for free. How they get away with it, or who is behind it, I do not know.
If it is permitted, leave your email, and I can perhaps get back to you.
@eernesto I sympathize. I often go to Z-Library and Library Genesis for hard-to-find books. In this case, you may wish to try Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=michael%20hudson&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22
They have _Killing the Host_, for example. You can borrow books from them for a limited time (renewable) if you set up a free account. It is basically a virtual library.
And there goes the Green Energy Wonderplan and Green Party – to garbage. Actually whole Green Idea was just puppet on a string. Hegemony is what matters. And Greens were always controlled by Deep State.
Liberals are always ready to shift 180 degrees for a couple of dollares. Always useful idiots for dark forces as they have a backbone as a smashed worm.
The coal story can be used for do-gooder global cooling off global warming. Fixed.
“the effect of American diplomacy”
The Americans have never done “diplomacy”, unless one considers either low-forehead schoolyard bullying or petulant isolationism to be “diplomacy”.
Because of their two huge moats and a bunch of frankly sad-sack nearest neighbors, the US has never had the need nor desire to develop any statecraft, and resorts to the same three tactics every time: bomb ’em, bribe ’em, or attempt to shun ’em.
Michael Hudson: “But today there is only the belligerent diplomacy of threatening to hurt nations whose SOCIALIST governments reject America’s neoliberal drive to privatize and sell off their natural resources and public infrastructure.”
Michael, do you honestly think the governments in opposition to the NATO pack are SOCIALIST? Are the means of production collectively controlled in them?
In Iran??? It’s a theocracy. India??? It’s a communal society prone to inter-religious violence. China??? The Chinese communist party is not a democratically controlled organization, for all its attempts to lessen inequality there.
Even if the BRICS, SCO, and all the other acronymic orgs manage to cobble an opposition, it will be unstable until the internationally organized workers of the world control the resources on behalf of humanity. The NATO rump and their “opposition” will not give up warring until they understand the levers are out of their hands completely.
@LindaJ
You need to be atleast partly ‘Socialist’ if you want to develop your productive sector up to par with the leading countries. India, Iran etc. are developing countries, even Russia is – just – because of it’s potential.
The least they have to achieve is to subsidize partly those classes which are doing the mass-work – so they have a stable life AND a future ahead of them – there is no other way !
One can even go further and say that in a fully developed productive sector, the amount of labor (per unit) becomes so small that it becomes impossible to sustain an equilibrium state of no further growth – and by this being confronted with a contradiction which can only be resolved consciously by inter-State settlements – and PLANNING – of course !
To direct a System towards an end (one of many), one needs understanding, foreseight and controlled action – and no magic at all ! Thus a planned economy is the only form of economy there is and was, atleast after one has removed all the sand from the eyes…
Thus put the isms where they belong.. to the graveyard they are not needed anymore.
Most western capitalist oriented nations are at least partly socialist. Military is socialism. Gov funded. Medicare in most places is socialist. Canada… public roads…. fire dept. any intent to not completely open your country to amaercan corporate capture is considered socialist by us state dept and they will try to destroy you for that. So yes. Socialist sorta…
You are far too doctrinaire. with too many preconceived notions. If your notions of socialism came to the fore they would be totalitarian. Organized socialist groups, the US think tanks and etc., have never produced squat in terms of anything helpful. Read Rahmin Mazaheri on the socialist characteristics of the Govt. of Iran. Read Jeff Brown on the highly democratic nature of the CCP. An ‘international’ body of organized workers is a pipe dream, careful what you are smoking.
I think I’m quoting Star wars but “the tighter you grip the more will slip through your fingers” seems apt
“They are openly lying to us that this is not true, and that it is up to Russia alone. This is foul play”.
People who practice systematic mass murder for long enough eventually become so wicked that they occasionally lie. I am reminded of this:
“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination”.
-Thomas De Quincey
“U.S. diplomacy is driving Russia, China, India and Iran together…”
That’s because the USA has no diplomacy – arguably it never has throughout its existence. What passes for US “diplomacy” consists of threats, sedition, assassination, sanctions, and outright war.
Russia, China and Iran were stealing our intellectual property of the Mackinder heartland theory without paying a dime back to innocent Western citizens. Its as simple as that. It was criminality, International criminality!
What we call intellectual property is a way of fencing off for private benefit the full extent of human knowledge – nothing new is created without access to an enormous history of collective human knowledge, so who owns “new” ideas? Also, as many have pointed out before, the rise of western Europe owed a lot to ideas and technology “stolen” from the rest of the world.
Does Michael Hudson equate “Industrial Capitalism” with the core tenants of the tradition 19th Century “American System of Political Economy”, which was the basis for the worlds most successful development? Why not identify it precisely and correctly? It appears that he is not fully informed or covering for a hidden agenda.
Hmmm? Would it have something to do with what Gail Tverberg argues in this piece by saying in her conclusion:
Virtually no one looks at the economy from a physics point of view. For one thing, the result is too distressing to explain to citizens. For another, it is fashionable for scientists of all types to produce papers and have them peer reviewed by others within their own ivory towers. Economists, politicians and central bankers don’t care about the physics of the situation. Even those basing their analysis on Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) tend to focus on only a narrow portion of what I explained in Section [1]. Once researchers have invested a huge amount of time and effort in one direction, they cannot consider the possibility that their approach may be seriously incomplete.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/07/28/the-worlds-self-organizing-economy-can-be-expected-to-act-strangely-as-energy-supplies-deplete/
What I would really like to know is Dr. Hudson’s thoughts on a comment by CTG. Here is his third paragraph:
“The elites will enjoy their life in the world as 90% of the population dies off. They will enjoy the conveniences of modern society. The oligarch’s dream comes true.” Some big issues though
1. The oligarchs know nothing about manufacturing and are they are like the G4 cats. Coddled.
2. Without the masses, there will be no economies of scale for manufacturing. The factories will not even be opened for business if they make one million capacitors per year.
3. Without population, who would do the mining, fishing and agriculture? The 10% of the people that did not die? Do they have the knowledge to do agriculture? Who will train them? Like the cats in my back alley, who will train the G4 cats on how to avoid humans as they might harm them? They were already so dumbed down that I have to avoid stepping on them when I walk.
NomandicBeer… correct me if I misinterpreted what you mean.
The rich think they can continue their life as though nothing happened? That is not possible. In Avengers movie, Thanos snapped a finger, 50% died and the movie shows that life goes on as usual on earth. That is just a movie. If 50% dies, the other 50% dies with days. Who will drive the trucks to transport food. Do you think an organization will function if 50% of the people die? Do you think a farm or an oil rig will produce if 50% of the workers die? This movie gave the whole world a wrong impression that the world will function if 50% die off.
I highly suggest reading the entire piece.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/07/28/the-worlds-self-organizing-economy-can-be-expected-to-act-strangely-as-energy-supplies-deplete/comment-page-2/#comment-379763
Well spotted Gerry. An awful lot of truth summed up there
Back in history we have been 10%. So its possible. Specialists will handle the automation, robots will collect raw materials, 3-D printing will make products. But what an extreme boring world.
And who fixes the robots, automation and 3d printers? Who changes the oil in the transformers, unblocks the shit pump? Who make the feedstock for those 3 D printers? Who fixes stuff that needs fixing all the way along the massively complex and very fragile supply chain that supports modern humanity? The one that has recently shit itself as a result of a completely mismanaged virus outbreak.
All that stuff is the result of extremely cheap energy in EROEI terms. Especially that complex, very long supply chain. On the back slope of that curve lies a world of painful change. Dreaming of an ecotechnoical future where we get to keep all our toys won’t work.
Time to wake up.
Thank you, Professor Hudson! I admire so much your ability to ‘cut to the chase’ in financial matters as you have done so well in comparisons between the US and China as we non-economists struggled with the seeming complexities of the issues affecting our lives and that of our families in general. Debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid – it is as simple as that.
This now is a widening of that horizon, and all I can say is – repeating myself – thank you!
Dr. Hudson seems seems to be saying that the US Financial Hegemony is stonewalling Russia with the costs of “insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign port….:”
“It took us a lot of time to explain to them (Russia) that, although food and fertilizer are not subject to sanctions, the first and second packages of Western restrictions affected freight costs, insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign ports and those for foreign ships taking on the same consignments at Russian harbours.”
This seems ominous. Do you interpret this differently?
Europe doesn’t exist, it was colonized and pulled apart long ago.
The leadership are just corporation whores whose job is to manage the province and to pay tribute to the Empire through high priced food and goods from the Empires “shop fronts.”
The European -because of two wars- cannot find it in himself to fight another for the benefit of his people and their future.
The white races of Europe and the end of enlightenment seems to be here, unless they can find a Joan of Arc or a equivalent self confidence then I see no future.
Professor, I have several questions that I hope you will address.
1- the $200+ trillion governments debt and $800-2000 hedge fund casino will collapse at some point. Is there a possible scenerio for soft landing? Is the sudden crash of banking system, caused by “Russian cyber attack” avoidable?
2- can multipolar world, independent sovern nations, and privately owned central banks- RedShields, Rockefellers, Morgan’s, Warburgs, Pope, Queen of England- coexist?
3- is it fair to say that 1913 federal reserve act and 16th amendment were the turning point for transition from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism in US?
4- what will happen to China after financial, dollar collapse?
Thank you.
@Doe.
Four very good questions for Prof.Hudson to answer. Meanwhile, here are my attempts:
1. No soft landing. But maybe a new FDR New Deal to restore prosperity.
2. No. Private banks swallow public services.
3. Yes. A good example of 2 above.
4. China will be celebrating its 6th Millenium.
One of the points I think do not receive sufficent attention is the west’s abandonment of a moral standard. This started with the horrors of the first world War leading to the “death of God”. Philosophically this led to the abandonment of a system of values through neglect and/or redefinition.
Trust that a delivery will be made on payment (or the other way round) drives the whole modern economy. Once a country can rob the foreign assets of another trade/economy colapse.
The same we see in the social disasters of modern values as manifested by the LGTBetc, grievance culture, cancel culture etc. All this translates to the return of the values of cavemen where the strongest take all.
Brilliant and tragic my life time has been book ended by the rise and fall of the USA
Excellent read. I need to get his latest book.
The article implicitly raises an important point: the Americans believe that the only way that they can maintain their global dictatorship is by deploying their instinctive imperial divide-and-conquer tactics to subjugate Eurasia.
In fact, this has been the Anglo American agenda for centuries … from the British Evil Empire of the past to its benighted spawn, the American Evil Empire of today.
As such, the Americans sponsor terrorism; regime change sovereign governments; economically strangle nations by sanctions; and bomb or invade multiple countries throughout the world from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya to Syria.
All the while, the Americans spew Goebbellsian propaganda to invert reality and masquerade as innocent virtuous people who are selflessly “defending Freedom and Democracy” for the world.
Historically, the Anglo Americans even covertly sponsored the rise of the Nazi Third Reich as a geopolitical stratagem to foment conflict between Germany and Russia and thus prevent the rise of a Eurasian geopolitical bloc to challenge Anglo-American world domination.
Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich
https://ia802205.us.archive.org/1/items/BooksPamphletsAcademicScholarlyHistoricalPdfs-VariousText1/ConjuringHitler-HowBritainAndAmericaMadeTheThirdReichguidoGiacomoPreparata.pdf
This American divide-and-colonize strategy against Eurasia continues to this very day and demonstrates there are no limits to the crimes and deceptions that the American Empire of Lies will resort to.
Battle of the Ages to stop Eurasian integration
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52870.htm
“How Britain And America Made The Third Reich” has been censored from the site.
available on amazon.com … mod
Michael Hudson
Bravo Michael… what a tremendous tour de force exposing this entire sordid debacle.
It’s as if all of the Western lunatics who pull these strings operate in a vacuum of brain cells, let alone any awareness of history or diplomacy. No wonder the Zone A Natostan construct is self-destructing into imminent irrelevance.
Just 2 days ago I wrote an expose in a NZ blog site on this very subject highlighting some of the absolute idiocy and misinformation that our country’s two most prominent ex-central Bankers are pedalling…
[Don Brash 9th Governor of Nz’s central bank 1988-2002 and 30th leader of the opposition plus10th Leader of the National Party]
[John Key, ex Prime Minister and ex-representative for Merrily Lynched on the FEC of the New York Federal Reserve]
[Interviewer…Rodney Hide ex Govt Minister and leader of the Act party]
Don Brash and Rodney Hide still to this day enthusiastically support this zombie kleptocratic construct, and yet neither of them even bothered to respond when I tore their bullshit to pieces on their very own blog site.
For anyone interested you will find the expose entitled “A Journey to Jekyll Island and beyond”… in the link below…
https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/…/rodney-hide-talks…
I had a good go at arch-bankster John Key [ANZ Chair] at the same time… exposing one of his completely idiotic observations.
And not so much a peep out of any of them…apparently they hope that I will just simply disappear into the night… we’ll see about that!
My life mission now is to expose the rapacious and parasitic behaviour of the western banking cabal and the fact that they underwrite, and with Mr Global, orchestrate, more than 90% of all global turmoil.
This includes the global military machine, general world security, societal terrorism, deliberately predatory financial entrapment, the current health and Ukraine crises, and now the highly volatile Taiwan situation on top of all of this.
If we do not expose the financial reality behind Mr Global’s agenda once and for all, we might as well abandon our freedom fight and just trot off into the giant sheep pens they are busily constructing for us.
The article points out many very uncomfortable truths and LSM-generated misconceptions, including the fact that global debt now stands at around 350% of GDP. This figure alone, by definition, basically means the Zone A world financial situation is effectively a zombie construct.
It also highlights that using a PPP calculation, China achieved parity with US
annual GDP back in 2014. Now at $30 trillion it is about half as big again as the US’s output. The West knows they have lost this battle and so plan B is unleashing everything they can to nobble the new emerging financial block.
And what a tragedy of missed opportunities that could have transformed the globe into a prosperous and cooperative economy if only humanity had been able to implement the plans of these visionaries, some of whom were 150 years ahead of their time.
Here Gilpin is referencing the plan for a landbridge that would span from Lisbon to New York via Russia, the Bering straight via a tunnel to Alaska, Canada, and the US…quote…
“The cosmopolitan railway will make the whole world one community. It will reduce the separate nations to families of our great nation… From extended intercommunication will arise a wider intercourse of human ideas and as the result, logical and philosophical reciprocities, which will become the germs for innumerable new developments; for in the track of intercommunication, enterprise and invention invariably follow and whatever facilitates one stimulates every other agency of progress.” … William Gilpin
Michael… I am soon to be launching a new NZ blog site on this very subject and would be hugely honoured if I could possibly Zoom interview you as the very first guest for the new site. If you need to contact me Amarynth has my contact details.
Cheers and very warm regards to all from the Antipodes
Col
What and where can I find this new blog? I am also in NZ .
Cheers!
Hi Kiwi5
The blog is still being built but should be up and running in August.
Domain name booked… nzflocked.com
Cheers
Col
I enjoy the Saker and greater Saker community. I read Michael Hudson so to gain insight and understanding. I see this conflict and an extension of the “root cause”, the age old battle of the sovereign individual vs. The Elite Powers That Be.” It is the transfer of power, control, and wealth from the “wealth creating class” and their respective local communities, to the “wealth holding class” and their gated/secure enclaves. Think – corporate/government gangsters. (RIP – JFK) The working people need to wake-up to that reality, not the pseudo reality created by Big Media, Big Tech, and Big Entertainment.
“Yet the only opposition to renewed military spending is coming from right-wing parties and the German Linke party. Europe’s Social Democratic, Socialist and Labour parties share American neoliberal ideology.”
That is the core of the problem: Communism has been culturally genocided in the EU$A. Glad to hear that the Linke party still exists, and that it is joined by patriotic forces on the right (both of them now smeared as “extreme” Left and “extreme” Right).
Excellent summary of the current geoeconomic / geopolitical situation by Mr Hudson.
As we speak the US economy has gone into technical recession, i.e. defined as two quarters of economic contraction, annualized a 1.6% reduction. (The Biden regime are seeking to re-define the definition of “recession”) With gas (petrol) prices spiking & interest rates (now 6%) squeezing out the middle class, the Dems are on a hiding to nothing in the November Mid-term elections.
Also, given the confiscation of Venezuela’s gold, Afghanistan & now Russia’s $US reserves – both Japan & China are offloading US Treasuries at an accelerating rate each month.
Biden’s regime in appointing ambassadors to Suriname, Guyana & Trinidad & Tobago are seeking to secure control of those countries oil & gas reserves for US corporations – which smacks of desperation.
We need to watch the rapprochement between Colombia & Venezuela to see what happens to Venezuela’s oil reserves.
The highly trained-to-NATO standards AFU had numerical superiority,
were on their home territory, were trained and prepared for several
years and so had control of the terrain and were highly motivated as
they were defending their home territory – west of The Eastern Provinces
which they themselves were attacking- along with a fanatical hatred of
Russians. Results count. They have lost.
This is a loss for the US, NATO and UK war planners and intelligence agency tacticians. A Ukraine loss will dwarf failures in Afghanistan.
Interestingly, Afghanistan stands as the United States’ longest war.
In The West, it receives no attention by the Mainstream Media and thus
constitutes a media blackout. Parochial affairs and talk back radio
from the know nothing class act to crowd out otherwise serious analysis
by professionals.
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-proxy-war-67b
Bigger problem is that we are dealing w/people who take one win and its all good until the next win, loss’s don’t count, and its a big country.
And here is a win they been riding for a February month .
https://www.energy.gov/articles/ukraine-launches-electricity-exports-european-union-support-us-department-energy
Describing US diplomacy, such as it is, as a tragic drama is generous and polite.
They are constructed and wicked – entirely self serving of their interests.
They have this left – a blitzkrieg of propaganda, courtesy of Vogue Magazine, a deft manipulation that the world’s media reproduced. Deft indeed.
To those dedicated followers of fashion magazines. This one’s for them.
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-proxy-war-67b
Warning – difficult photos.
The US is following the British system of economy to its ruin.
High time to get back to the American System of Political Economy.
After all, China and Russia have taken Friedrich List seriously :
The National System of Political Economy : Friedrich List : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/NationalSystemOfPoliticalEconomyFriedrichList/mode/2up
FDR demonstrated in 1934 just what can be done to those out of control banks with his Banking Act and Reconstruction Finance Corp. Tried and tested, needed on a vast scale right now.
It is a good analysis but what is described is a problem with zero solution. Europe is walking on a road to Hell. Its leaders, in the hands of Washington, are betraying their population. They are trying to sell all the perverse ideologies coming from the US. Russia knows that they are fighting a war of civilization against the US. India and China have suffured in the past from the US and UK meddling, they will never allow the return of such humiliation. The US is bond to loose this poker game and they may start a nuclear war when they will realized that they have lost. Such a war would lead the world to the Apocalypse which may not be far away
It’s worth pointing out that Hudson begins his book Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism with the first chapter on the dynamics of the present-day situation in geoeconomics. That is, the dynamics of the world economic situation, with all its ramifications on personal freedom.
The importance of this dynamic is not just relevant to economics, it extends to all other areas, due to the fact that the hidden powers of control, i.e. deep state, or financial elite, are attempting complete control over the world economics, over all nation states, so that, in due course they can make debt slaves and behavior-modified zombies of us all.
It is that stark!
This is done through Finance Capitalism. “Real estate, stocks and bonds constitute the bulk of wealth in today’s economies…” This is turn is made into “financialized assets, all support by tax favoritism.”
The 1 percent of the population of course own most of these “financialized assets” and use them to create a high overhead for doing business, which, of course, they benefit the most from.
In the end, through ever trick and maneuver the 1 percent come to own more and more of everything.
And their lackeys, the manager class, paid off by this ill-begotten wealth, sets out to subject everyone to poverty and slave status, using institutional and technocratic means.
Welcome to the struggle
Thank you for the concise summary. Very helpful.
Report – Kiev’s military burning Churches systematically
https://gorthodox.com/en/news-item/ukrainian-military-burning-down-churches-complaints-from-local-townspeople
Please post news links to the “Non MSM News” (New RSS Feeds) section of this blog. Further posts in specific articles without relevant comment to the article will be trashed, Mod
«pave the way for the United States and NATO Europe […] to spur its population to support a regime change, an American-sponsored “color revolution.” The dream is to promote a Yeltsin-like leader friendly to the neoliberal “therapy” that dismantled Russia’s economy in the 1990s.»
If I were an USA political strategist the latter would just be a nice side goal, the primary goal would be to get “invited” by the new “yeltsinized” regime to establish a set of DOD/CIA bases on the chinese borders, because the real target is China. Sorry for all the patriotic russians and other RF fans, but in itself the RF is not important enough to be a target for the USA oligarchs, just like Ukraine was not important enough, just a domino in “domino theory”.
«Amazing as it may seem, U.S. strategists did not anticipate the obvious response by countries finding themselves together in the crosshairs of US/NATO military and economic threats.»
All these countries for the USA political strategists are essentially irrelevant non-player characters. The USA oligarchs are only afraid of China as a rival; also in part of Germany and Russia, and in rather smaller part of Japan (the japanese state is formidable, but utterly dependent on foreign imports that the USA Navy can switch off at will).
«Dividing the world into two monetary blocs will limit Dollar Diplomacy to its NATO allies and satellites»
The USE political strategists see three options:
* A single globalized world market increasingly dominated by the PRC with the USA relegated to second or third position.
* A larger USA sphere of influence and a smaller PRC one if they manage to split them now.
* A smaller USA sphere of influence and a larger PRC one if the split is delayed.
The big question in realpolitik is pretty simple: are the riling elites of the european and other developed or developing countries more afraid of USA “sanctions” or PRC (or RF) “sanctions”?
* Right now it is obvious: they are far more afraid of losing access the the USA market and the markets in the USA sphere of influence. For them losing access to RF oil, gas, fertilizer, cereals is painful but far less painful than losing access to the USA sphere of influences.
* In a few decades it may have become worse for the ruling elites of european states etc. to lose access to the PRC and RF sphere of influence than the to the USA ones, so for the USA it is important to get them to commit to USA-controlled technologies, supply chains, standards, now rather than later.
The european etc. oligarchs are not stupid or suicidal at all: their choices are not whether to comply with USA sanctions to the RF or reject them, their choice is whether to comply with USA sanctions to the RF or have their own states and businesses sanctioned by the USA (plus being targeted by USA sponsored “regime change” operations).
Do the states ever run out of bullets over there, or does digital money trump bullets?
I dunno how many times you’ve said this or who else has said it too, but I’m glad to not be the only one to think this. It makes me wonder why many readers of e.g. RT haven’t thought of it yet – I’d hate to call them ‘stupid’ or anything (as if that solved anything), but if the US could impose ‘regime change’ to Chile, Iraq and Libya, then what makes them think that they wouldn’t do the same to Europe as well?
«what makes them think that they wouldn’t do the same to Europe as well?»
It has been done and continues to be done in western Europe (and eastern Europe) too, on a massive scale, even if not through overt coups or obvious “color revolutions”.
In most european countries “everybody knows” that the USA ambassador, the CIA head, the DOD general for that area have huge slush funds with which they fund “friendly” politicians, academics, intellectuals or “sponsor” attacks against “unaligned” deviants.
Then there are more clandestine programs like the various “stay behind” organizations
If someone like Scholz decided to become an “unaligned” deviant, quite a few of his party’s elites would get interesting calls about “help” for their future career prospects as his replacement.
Note: in most european countries “everybody knows” that the communist and socialist parties were also (much less lavishly) “sponsored” by the CPSU (more than by the USSR as a state), but the RF is no longer doing “active operations” except perhaps in the “near abroad”.
I see. I kinda thought at first that, if more people were aware of the CIA influence, there wouldn’t be so much impugning of the intelligence of the average European, although I can’t be sure that there’d be a correlation, let alone a negative one.
«if more people were aware of the CIA influence, there wouldn’t be so much impugning of the intelligence of the average European»
Most people in Europe are well aware of CIA’s influence etc., and most know and don’t object to their countries being only semi-independent and subject to USA vassalage, I guess for various reasons:
* They are well aware that all european countries lost WW2, and that only USA credit and exports allowed recovery after that, and that the USA are still very powerful and not so nice to disobedient countries (e.g. among many the lesson given to Yugoslavia).
* USA vassalage for developed countries with few natural resources is not as brutal as for “banana republics”, underdeveloped countries rich in natural resources, where the usual USA corporate prescription is a nasty dictatorship (e.g. Saudi) or a corrupt quasi-failed state (e.g. Nigeria, Argentina) rather than a “managed” representative democracy.
* Regardless they are well aware that all small countries must have a “roof” (if they are lucky!) and there is simply no alternative to the USA for Europe: the RF is too weak, the PRC is too distant, and many european countries would rather be vassals to the USA than to be together and more independent but led by another european country (like Germany or France).
* Not many europeans, whether ruling elites or servant classes, want to get their country targeted by an USA economic boycott or blockade (as to that even the iranians would rather not, and have been trying appeasement, but Saudi and Israel are relentless in pressuring the USA to “sanction” them).
Well done! I am a Canadian senior who once believed in the western system, slowly that has changed. Your article is clear, poignant and truthful, i salute you for your bravery in illustrating the truth! But will they understand?
Wow: what a brilliant article!
It ties together so many issues: social, economic, monetary, geopolitical…
Thank you Michael Hudson!!!
it is always with great anticipation that I see your picture in the header of The Saker, Professor Hudson. And I am never disappointed as your wisdom flows forth on the page like no other contemporary authority of the wheres and whys of our history. To sum it, you have all of the pertinent bases covered in all that you write and this makes your pieces such a joy to read. You remove the malevolent mists surrounding our true history like nobody else writing on these subjects today.
I will continue to believe you worthy of a world treasure designation and believe your works are worthy enough to be referred to in centuries to come—if indeed they do with a civilizational thread remaining to connect the the future present with the past.
Cheers!
We never hear about bottom up wealth creation and ownership by SME entrepreneurs from the ‘economic advisors’ for their socialist brave new world. We do hear a lot about central economic planning from powerful and large democratically elected governments that love the little people and would never sell them out to aspiring oligarchs. And of course the taxes, regulations and bureaucracy that puts it’s foot on the neck of open market rewarded meritorious and self reliant individuals is all nonsensense. There is no point in trying to explain what ‘socialism can’t calculate’ means or why Socialism is the Road to Serfdom to a socialist. And their intellectuals will always find a willing ear in those unsophisticated in the ways of real freedom. But a world truly free from centralized global fascism (modern word for serfdom) which Russia envisions frees sovereign nations to diversity their systems. Eventually this will spawn a nation where laissez-faire capitalism with a very small government is the overall ruling system and redistributive systems like socialism and communism are voluntary affairs between club members who choose to pool their resources and cannot coerce the unwilling to fund them. And oligarchs born in a free open market earned by their merit cannot morph into organized tyrants if they do not have overly powerful governments to leverage to fascist purposes. Until the hoi polloi learn that in this world there are no free lunches and socialists learn that charity cannot be coerced, serfdom in it’s various manifestations will rule the day.
Europe is toast, soon to be burnt toast.
What amazes me today is the near total inability of people to ponder and debate any topic. Consider the USA demand of 2% x GDP for any member of Natostan. GDP is a fictitious number, a fictitious substance. Show me anywhere I can find or buy 1 unit of GDP.
Consider France as an example.
France total government revenue 1994-2021 averaged $136 billion. The max for a single year was $326bn.
France GDP for 2020 was $2,900 billion.
Thus 2% of GDP = $58bn.
THEREFORE, FRANCE’S NATO BURDEN IS 43% OF AVERAGE GOVERNMENT REVENUES.
(58/136=0.43)
How is 43% to be paid? From what? Taxpayers? The only means is debt.
One needs not to be a rocket scientist to realise the consequences, or does one? Given the appalling level of indoctrination and ignorance in this woke world the Yanks are forcing upon us, I am not at all optimistic the average person will take action before the entire world collapses into war and chaos.
You needed to start prepping hard about 5 years ago in order to survive the economic tsunami I see the pinnacle of right now.
It’s is well known fact that Chinese leaders appreciated Stalin but disdained Kruschev. And they had very good reasons for that.
A couple observations/questions:
1. Dr. Hudson states that both Germany and Italy have blocked all Nord Stream 2 gas imports. According to our educated friends in Italy – both have countries have not blocked NS 2 gas. Instead, they have slowed down the amount of Nord Stream’s gas from Russia.
2. Dr. Hudson notes that Black Sea grain transport payments to Russia has been blocked. Is that true, or have events evolved into solutions for Russia?
3. Dr. Hudson states that there will be more social programs cut in the US? What “social programs? We can not think of even one functioning social program in the US. Can you?
@Rubicon
Social Security introduced by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935
Medicare put in place by President Johnson in 1965
This is such an important article wide ranging in its scope and depth of analysis but his prescient reference to Rosa Luxemburg’s famous quote “socialism or barbarism” riveted my attention and I thought needed some explanation. I include below a relevant description by Kees Van Der Pijl posted by War is not a Solution NL :
The dilemma of socialism or barbarism is still relevant today. If there is no attempt to bring about a real change in society in the socialist sense, or as Gramsci puts it, ‘a society richer in collective values’, then barbarism is the alternative, because capitalist relations can only be maintained by force. In the Middle East and Africa, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, everywhere the spectre of war haunts, the ‘witches’ sabbath of anarchy’. NATO’s provocations on Russia’s borders, which could provoke nuclear war, are also the “ultimate consequence” of the period of world wars that Rosa Luxemburg says began when the Socialists expressed their unsolicited consent to the war.
The European docility to the American policy of confrontation against Russia and China also goes back to the fatal choice that was made in August 1914. Therein lies the topicality of ‘socialism or barbarism’.
“U.S. national interests are diverging sharply from those of its NATO satellites.
America’s military-industrial complex, oil and agriculture sectors are benefiting, while European industrial interests are suffering. ”
The US has no real allies.
It has only minions, debt slaves, co-conspirators and prey.
And none of them are really all that happy about the situation.
They were doing fine before the war in Ukraine and they’re not happy about the way the US created that war or the way they were compelled to sacrifice their own economic interests to adhere to policies they never wanted.
I believe we shall soon see Europe rebel against being ridden by the US.
And I think the US will be totally surprised when it happens.
They think European nations like being treated like stooges.
“That leaves Western democracies with the ability to fight only one kind of war:
atomic war – or at least, bombing at a distance, as was done in Afghanistan….”
There’s another option that the US seems to prefer… proxy wars, using either mercenaries disguised as terrorists or desperate weaker nations lured by promises of wealth and recognition into sacrificing their own interests to secure those of the US.
The problem with this strategy is that the proxies soon wake up and realize that they are being sacrificed, and they don’t like it at all.