Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a Global South famine?

By Michael Hudson and posted with the author’s permission

Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis for food- and oil-deficit countries?

Many more people are likely to die of famine and economic disruption than on the Ukrainian battlefield. It thus is appropriate to ask whether what appeared to be the Ukraine proxy war is part of a larger strategy to lock in U.S. control over international trade and payments. We are seeing a financially weaponized power grab by the U.S. Dollar Area over the Global South as well as over Western Europe. Without dollar credit from the United States and its IMF subsidiary, how can countries stay afloat? How hard will the U.S. act to block them from de-dollarizing, opting out of the U.S. economic orbit?

U.S. Cold War strategy is not alone in thinking how to benefit from provoking a famine, oil and balance-of-payments crisis. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist (the customary euphemism for rentier monopolist) Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.” His lobbying foundation’s 2018 “Goalkeepers” report warned: “According to U.N. data, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050,” with “more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people … in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.”^[1]

Gates advocates cutting this projected population increase by 30 percent by improving access to birth control and expanding education to “enable more girls and women to stay in school longer, have children later.” But how can that be afforded with this summer’s looming food and oil squeeze on government budgets?

South Americans and some Asian countries are subject to the same jump in import prices resulting from NATO’s demands to isolate Russia. JPMorgan Chase head Jamie Dimon recently warned attendees at a Wall Street investor conference that the sanctions will cause a global “economic hurricane.”^[2] He echoed the warning by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in April that, “To put it simply: we are facing a crisis on top of a crisis.” Pointing out that the Covid pandemic has been capped by inflation as the war in Ukraine has made matters “much worse, and threatens to further increase inequality” she concluded that: “The economic consequences from the war spread fast and far, to neighbors and beyond, hitting hardest the world’s most vulnerable people. Hundreds of millions of families were already struggling with lower incomes and higher energy and food prices.”^[3]

The Biden administration blames Russia for “unprovoked aggression.” But it is his administration’s pressure on NATO and other Dollar Area satellites that has blocked Russian exports of grain, oil and gas. But many oil- and food-deficit countries see themselves as the primary victims of “collateral damage” caused by US/NATO pressure.

Is world famine and balance-of-payments crisis a deliberate US/NATO policy?

On June 3, African Union Chairperson Macky Sall, President of Senegal, went to Moscow to plan how to avoid a disruption in Africa’s food and oil trade by refusing to become pawns in the US/NATO sanctions. So far in 2022, President Putin noted: “Our trade is growing. In the first months of this year it grew by 34 percent.”^[4] But Senegal’s President Sall worried that: “Anti-Russia sanctions have made this situation worse and now we do not have access to grain from Russia, primarily to wheat. And, most importantly, we do not have access to fertilizer.”

U.S. diplomats are forcing countries to choose whether, in George W. Bush’s words, “you are either for us or against us.” The litmus test is whether they are willing to force their populations to starve and shut down their economies for lack of food and oil by stopping trade with the world’s Eurasian core of China, Russia, India, Iran and their neighbors.

Mainstream Western media describe the logic behind these sanctions as promoting a regime change in Russia. The hope was that blocking it from selling its oil and gas, food or other exports would drive down the ruble’s exchange rate and “make Russia scream” (as the U.S. tried to do to Allende’s Chile to set the stage for is backing of the Pinochet military coup). Exclusion from the SWIFT bank-clearing system was supposed to disrupt Russia’s payment system and sales, while seizing Russia’s $300 billion om foreign-currency reserves held in the West was expected to collapse the ruble, preventing Russian consumers from buying the Western goods to which they had become accustomed. The idea (and it seems so silly in retrospect) was that Russia’s population would rise in rebellion to protest against how much more Western luxury imports cost. But the ruble soared rather than sunk, and Russia quickly replaced SWIFT with its own system linked to that of China. And Russia’s population began to turn away from the West’s aggressive enmity.

Evidently some major dimensions are missing from the U.S. national-security think-tank models. But when it comes to global famine, was a more covert and even lager strategy at work? It is now looking like the major aim of the U.S. war in Ukraine all along was merely to serve as a catalyst, an excuse to impose sanctions that would disrupt the world’s food and energy trade, and to manage this crisis in a way that would afford U.S. diplomats an opportunity to confront Global South countries with the choice “Your loyalty and neoliberal dependency or your life – and, in the process, to “thin out” the world’s non-white populations that so worried Mr. Dimon and the WEF?

There must have been the following calculation: Russia accounts for 40% of the world’s grain trade and 25 percent of the world fertilizer market (45 percent if Belarus is included). Any scenario would have included a calculation that if so large a volume of grain and fertilizer was withdrawn from the market, prices would soar, just as they have done for oil and gas.

Adding to the disruption in the balance-of-payments of countries having to import these commodities, the price is rising for buying dollars to pay their foreign bondholders and banks for debts falling due. The Federal Reserve’s tightening of interest rates has caused a rising premium for U.S. dollars over euros, sterling and Global South currencies.

It is inconceivable that the consequences of this on countries outside of Europe and the United States were not taken into account, because the global economy is an interconnected system. Most disruptions are in the 2 to 5 percent range, but today’s US/NATO sanctions are so far off the historical track that price increases will soar substantially above the historic range. Nothing like this has happened in recent times.

This suggests that what appeared in February to be a war between Ukrainians and Russia is really a trigger intended to restructure the world economy – and to do so in a way to lock U.S. control over the Global South. Geopolitically, the proxy war in Ukraine has been a handy excuse for America’s to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The choice confronting Global South countries: to starve by paying their foreign bondholders and bankers, or to announce, as a basic principle of international law: “As sovereign countries, we put our survival above the aim of enriching foreign creditors who have made loans that have gone bad as a result of their choice to wage a new Cold War. As for the destructive neoliberal advice that the IMF and World Bank have given us, their austerity plans were destructive instead of helpful. Therefore, their loans have gone bad. As such, they have become odious.”

NATO policy has given Global South countries no choice but to reject its attempt to establish a U.S. food stranglehold on the Global South by blocking any competition from Russia, thereby monopolizing the world’s grain and energy trade. The major grain exporter was the heavily subsidized U.S. farm sector, followed by Europe’s highly subsidized Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These were the main grain exporters before Russia entered the picture. The US/NATO demand is to roll back the clock to restore dependency on the Dollar Area and its eurozone satellites.

The implicit Russian and Chinese counterplan

What is needed for the world’s non-US/NATO population to survive is a new world trade and financial system. The alternative is world famine for much of the world. More people will die of the sanctions than have died on the Ukrainian battlefield. Financial and trade sanctions are as destructive as military attack. So the Global South is morally justified in putting its sovereign interests above those of the wielders of international financial and trade weaponry.

First, reject the sanctions and reorient trade to Russia, China, India, Iran and their fellow members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The problem is how to pay for imports from these countries, especially if U.S. diplomats extend sanctions against such commerce.

There is no way that Global South countries can pay for oil, fertilizer and food from these countries and also pay the dollar debts that are the legacy of U.S.-sponsored neoliberal trade policy subject to U.S. and eurozone protectionism. Therefore, the second need is to declare a debt moratorium – in effect, a repudiation – of the debts that represent loans gone bad. This act would be analogous to the 1931 suspension of German reparations and Inter-Ally debts owed to the United States. Quite simply, today’s Global South debts cannot be paid without subjecting debtor countries to famine and austerity.

A third corollary that follows from these economic imperatives is to replace the World Bank and its pro-U.S. policies of trade dependency and underdevelopment with a genuine Bank for Economic Acceleration. Along with this institution is a fourth corollary in the form of the new bank’s sibling: a replacement for the IMF free of austerity junk economics and subsidy of America’s client oligarchies coupled with currency raids on countries resisting U.S. privatization and financialization takeovers.

The fifth requirement is for countries to protect themselves by joining a military alliance as an alternative to NATO, to avoid being turned into another Afghanistan, another Libya, another Iraq or Syria or Ukraine.

The main deterrent to this strategy is not U.S. power, for it has shown itself to be a paper tiger. The problem is one of economic consciousness and will.

“Bill Gates has a warning about population growth,” World Economic Forum/Reuters, September 19, 2018. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/africas-rapid-population-growth-puts-poverty-progress-at-risk-says-gates. ↑
Lananh Nguyen, “‘It’s a hurricane.’ Bank chiefs warn of a weakening economy,” The New York Times, June 1, 2022. ↑
Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director, “Facing Crisis Upon Crisis: How the World Can RespondApril 14, 2022. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/04/14/sp041422-curtain-raiser-sm2022. ↑
“Putin meets with African Union Chairperson at Sochi, June 3, 2022.” President Sall was accompanied by Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of the African Union Commission. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68564. For a elated discussion on the sanctions see https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/sanctions-now-weapons-of-mass-starvation.html. ↑

Billy on June 07, 2022 · at 6:03 am EST/EDT

Every financial asset held in a portfolio must be offset by a financial liability on another portfolio. The Fed’s reserve deposits are assets held by banks, offset by the Fed’s liability; the Fed’s notes are held as assets by banks, households, firms, and foreigners and are offset by the Fed’s liability.

Our word “to pay” comes from “pacify”, reflecting payment of Wergild fines owed to victims in order to avoid blood feuds. When you “pay” taxes, you “pacify” the treasury so that Elliott Ness doesn’t come gunning for you. How do you pacify the treasury? Well, the treasury can name what it will accept in tax payment, but historically it has accepted its own liabilities. Today, tax payments take the form of debits to bank reserves and credits to the treasury’s deposit account at the Fed. The US treasury no longer issues its own liabilities when it spends, relying instead on its banker, the Fed.

It wasn’t always so, of course. The Fed was created in 1913. Many of our debt-free money folk want to return to the old days—when the treasury spent by issuing its own notes. Many of them refer to the era of Greenbacks. Fine and dandy. It would be quite inconvenient and inefficient. But it could be done. However, it would not change the fact that currency is still debt.

Whether the currency is issued by the central bank or the treasury, it is a debt that must be redeemed. Let’s look at a specific historical example.

Fortunately, Farley Grubb has authored a very nice paper on American colonial currency. Farley is a, or perhaps the, expert on the topic.

https://www.udel.edu/faculty-staff/experts/farley-grubb/

The colonies were prohibited by England from issuing coin, so as to protect the King’s monopoly of coinage. The colonies obtained coin from export, but of course as a major mercantilist power, England wanted to limit exports to the raw materials she needed. The colonies had to import finished goods, shipping the coins back to England. The King wanted to limit expenditures on its empire, so the colonies were largely responsible for funding their expenses, which included fighting wars with the French, the Canadians, and Native Americans. Colonial governments were chronically short of coins, obtained through taxes such as poll taxes and taxes on imports of slaves and tobacco.

To increase fiscal capacity, the colonial governments began to issue paper money. According to Grubb, “Virginia referred to its paper money as treasury notes. Other colonies referred to their paper monies as bills of credit…. [Virginia’s] treasury notes were the same as bills of credit..”

Virginia’s colonial government passed a number of acts to authorize the issue of treasury notes. The law would include the total value of notes (denominated in Virginia pounds) to be issued. It would also set a date for final “redemption” (the term used by Farley as well as by the lawmakers). And, interestingly, the law would impose a new set of taxes at the time of the note issue:

“Every paper money act included additional new taxes, typically a land tax and a poll tax, that were operative for a number of years. The number of years over which these new additional taxes were operative was chosen so as to generate enough funds to fully redeem the notes authorized by each respective paper money act. The date in each paper money act set for the final redemption of the notes authorized by that act closely matched the end to the taxing period set by that act…. From 1755 through 1769, the taxes imposed by the paper money acts included a poll tax, a land tax, a slave import duty, and a tobacco export duty.”

The Paper Money Acts that allowed the treasury to issue notes also imposed new taxes that would be of sufficient size and over a period long enough so that all the notes would be redeemed? Does it sound like maybe, just maybe, the colonial government understood that the purpose of the taxes was to “redeem” the currency, by accepting that paper money in payment of taxes?

Well, let us see. The answer will depend on the colonial government’s use of the term “redemption”.

Colonial paper money could be “redeemed” (remember, this is the term used by the Acts) in two ways: payment of taxes or presentation for payment in (British) coins. The treasury would spend the new issue paper money into the economy. Those receiving the treasury notes could use it to pay taxes, or spend it, or submit it to the Treasury in exchange for coin.

What did the Treasury do with the notes it received in tax payment? Grubb reports that the “notes were removed and burned.” Yep. Burned:

“Most redemption taxes were collected in the fall, and so notes reported in the Journals of the House of Burgesses as burned were likely removed via tax payments in the prior year.”

Grubb’s careful research shows that most taxes were paid using the paper money, and most paper money was “redeemed” in tax payment:

Were redemption taxes paid in notes or in specie? The treasury accounts provide some evidence to answer this question. The clearest statement in the treasury accounts was made on 15 June 1770: ‘It appears to your Committee, that the Balance in the Treasurer’s Hands of Cash received of the several Collectors for Taxes appropriated to the Redemption of the old Treasury Notes [those issued before 1769], amount to Ten Thousand Three Hundred and Twenty-six Pounds Eleven Shillings, of which they have burnt and destroyed Seven Thousand Eight hundred Pounds, and have left in the Treasury, on that Account, in Specie, a Balance of Two Thousand Five Hundred and Twenty-six Pounds Eleven Shillings to be exchanged for old Treasury Notes.’

From this evidence, Grubb concludes (emphasis added):

A redemption tax of 10,327£VA was collected, of which 2,527£VA was in specie that was explicitly set aside in a dedicated account to be used to redeem notes brought to the treasury. The rest of the tax payments were burnt, implying that those tax payments were made in notes. Therefore, 76 percent of this tax was paid in notes, and 24 percent was paid in specie.

So, three-quarters of taxes were paid by “redeeming” the notes.

The specie (coins) received in tax payments could be used to “redeem” the notes that were not “redeemed” in tax payments. What about the notes that were not “redeemed” by either method? They continued to circulate. Grubb asks, “Were Virginia’s notes used as a circulating medium of exchange? The denominational structure is consistent with such usage. Virginia’s notes were issued in relatively small denominations, small enough to make paying yearly tax assessments easy with said notes, and small enough to make it an easy domestic circulating medium of exchange in terms of being able to make change with said notes.” He concludes:

The above analysis establishes that redemption taxes generated specie sums that were to be held in the treasury until the final redemption date legislated for each paper money act, at which time holders of those notes could cash them in at face value for the specie held in the treasury for that purpose. However, at the final redemption date holders of the respective notes did not rush to the treasury to exchange them for specie. The notes continued in circulation and note holders could cash them in at the treasury at their leisure. Robert Nicholas Carter, Virginia treasurer after 1766, noted this behavior, Most of the Merchants as well as others, … preferred them [Virginia’s treasury notes] either to Gold or Silver, as being more convenient for transacting the internal Business of the Country.” (William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 1912, p. 235)

Adam Smith had argued that if the colonies were careful to ensure they did not create too much paper money relative to taxes, it would not depreciate in value (indeed it might even circulate at a premium, he argued). Redemption of the notes in tax payment would remove them from circulation—keeping them scarce. Grubb argues that this was well-recognized by the colonial government:

The Virginia legislature took note redemption and its effect on controlling the value of its paper money seriously. Such is illustrated in the March 1760 paper money act which stated, ‘And whereas it is of the greatest importance to preserve the credit of the paper currency of this colony, and nothing can contribute more to that end than a due care to satisfy the publick that the paper bills of credit, or treasury-notes, are properly sunk, according to the true intent and meaning of the several acts of assembly passed for emitting the same; and the establishing a regular method for this purpose may prevent
difficulties and confusion in settling the publick accounts,… Be it therefore enacted, by the authority aforesaid, That Peyton Randolph, esquire, Robert Carter Nicholas, Benjamin Waller, Lewis Burwell and George Wythe, gentleman, or any three of them, be, and they are hereby appointed a committee, to examine at least twice in every year (and oftener, if thereto desired by the treasurer for the time being) all such bills of credit, or treasury-notes, redeemable on the first day of March, one thousand seven hundred and
sixty five, as have been or shall be paid into the treasury, in discharge of the duties and taxes imposed by any former act of assembly; and upon receipt of the said bills or notes, the said committee shall give to the treasurer for the time being a certificate of the amount thereof, which shall avail the said treasurer in the settlements of his accounts as effectually, at all intents and purposes, as if he produced the said bills or notes themselves: And the said committee are hereby required and directed, so soon as they have given such certificate, to cause all such bills or notes to be burnt and destroyed.’ (Hening 1969, v. 7, p. 353)

Yep, to protect the value of the government’s paper currency, you’ve got to redeem it in taxes and burn the revenues generated.

Central banks used to burn the notes they received in taxes now they just shred them and you can actually buy the shredded bank notes.

https://www.ebay.com/b/Shredded-Money/3412/bn_7023247756?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&campid=5336728181&customid=&toolid=10001

Yet, so many fools still believe in the taxpayer money myth.

135 Comments

bonbon on June 06, 2022 · at 9:19 am EST/EDT

The utterly, irredeemably, bankrupt Transatlantic must be put through bankruptcy reorganization.
That means splitting off the speculator segment – Glass-Steagall, as the USA’s FDR did with the 1934 Banking Act, repealed in 1999 by Clinton. This means WallStreet, City-of-London, ECB et al.

Only then will a good idea like a Bank for Accelerated Economic Development work. And what an economic platform beckons – the EAEU, SCO, ADB, BRI, a world vastly larger than 1934 for a vastly larger Great Depression.

All of this is non-romantic, physical economic consciousness and requires the public will.
Mary on June 06, 2022 · at 9:36 am EST/EDT

The US is not only imposing sanctions on Russia. It is imposing sanctions on itself.

US rail lines inexplicably put an embargo on diesel & diesel exhaust fluid. Producers are facing shortages as a result. Eastern half of the US is running low on reserves of diesel & expects diesel rationing to begin over the summer.

We are not exempt from our glorious government’s & WEF depopulation program.
- Tobysgirl on June 06, 2022 · at 5:48 pm EST/EDT
  
  Just read The Real Anthony Fauci to grasp that. These psychopaths have no problem with mass murder.
- Ben Sampson on June 06, 2022 · at 6:42 pm EST/EDT
  
  exactly! Removed. Mod.
  
  The hegemon is Zionist. You can tell by the fact that he is depopulating all peoples playing no favorites save himself.
  
  It is time they rise up and save themselves now! They must overturn those hegemonic right wing revolutions, follow Hudson’s advice to repudiate their debts.
  
  The same principle underpins it all: The coups, the WB/IMF western advice and debts, all were calculated to destroy the global south. Now proven it is evidence for the ordinary people of the global south to move, disposses their elites for treason, try them in the courts then lose them in jail while they reo-orient their nations for survival
  
  the global south has sunshine and water, loads and loads of organic manure that they can keep increasing and collecting and using to replace or reduce dependence on inorganic fertilizers.
  
  The global south can make focused, emergency agricultural reoriening programs that could produce millions of tons of corn in less than 6 months. Same with rice and other tropical cereals that would make any food shortage a limited issue, employing the people intensively at many points directly where machinery and technology have been used in developed countries, to eliminate eliminate unemployment at the same time, along with high ost and dependency on foreign inputs
  
  It would take no more than a year at most for all of the global south to become self suffiicient in food production, with good government, self reliant, labour intensive and cost efficient programs of food production. They must take the opportunity to break completely with the hegemon. Repudiate his criminal debts, political manipulation and bribery, become as self reliant as possible, making deals for what they must be import with cross-global south producers of the articles with their own systems of payment they develop as they go
  
  The Hegemon cant invade the entire global. And I dont think his military is as reliable as it may have been in the. The old structure and of imperial oligarchic oriented governments and brianwashed ways of economic thinking are the problems in the global south. It is time for the people to rise up and correct it all with a heavy dose of nationalist self relaince
  - kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 8:20 pm EST/EDT
    
    – the global south has sunshine and water, loads and loads of organic manure that they can keep increasing and collecting and using to replace or reduce dependence on inorganic fertilizers.
    
    The green parts of the world is not South, but US and China latitude.
    Ireland is lush vegetation https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1588963940468-9e6e4d202209?ixlib=rb-1.2.1&ixid=MnwxMjA3fDB8MHxzZWFyY2h8MTl8fGlyZWxhbmR8ZW58MHx8MHx8&auto=format&fit=crop&w=500&q=60
    while South of Portugal is almost inhabitable https://cdn.travel-in-portugal.com/sites/default/files/styles/x_large/public/beaches/praia-do-tonel.jpg
    - Ben Sampson on June 07, 2022 · at 6:02 pm EST/EDT
      
      I am from the global south and we did fine.
      
      We burnt wood to make charcoal to cook and used the ashes for plant food. Our kitchen produced at least 25 pounds of compost a week from left overs, vegetable peels and piths, seeds etc. Lots more from the garden itself particularly at harvest time. We fed ourselves and it cost us our physical labor nothing else. We save all our seed from season to season.
      
      I have lived in North America for a long time and even now though my famil has grown up and I live alone I generate tons of compost same way as I did when my family started and I bought a house and had a backyard garden all those years from food left overs and ood preparation as well as from mowing the lawn
      
      I had good blenders always so I ground/grind the kitchen compost which help the composting process in the ground greatly. I improved the soil all the time never spent much on fertilizers
      
      As one commenter has pointed out below 100% of Africa fed itself when it became ‘independent’! Now few if any of them are. That self sufficiency did not require much if any artificial fertilizer input. Africa had lots of water and manure, more than enough to meet their self-sufficiency. Artifical fertilizers became necessary in African agriculture with the introduction of plantation monocultures for export, which based industrial manufacture and big jobs in the hegemon’s countries…
      
      African, Caribbean, Latin American mechanized coffee plantations which requires lots of fertilizer input, suppports A Tim Hortons on every north American corner, while it has produced hungry and unemployed people in the global south
      - Rubicon on June 08, 2022 · at 7:42 pm EST/EDT
        
        Thank you for your information. It’s as we surmised, Africa and many parts of Latin American farmlands were destroyed by the US Hegemon and others.
        They first bought off all those politicians which enforced slave labor pay, then in came the behemoth US plants: Dole and others and farmed bananas, other many fruit – with 97% profits going their CEOS & Wall Street, with profits laid aside for the wealthy few in those nations.
        
        Let’s hope the predatory nature of US/EU Capitalism ends ASAP. Let’s renew those many impoverished millions with an opportunity in becoming self sufficient.
David Parker on June 06, 2022 · at 10:00 am EST/EDT

I quote https://www.garynorth.com/public/department29.cfm :

“The much-publicized rate, the Federal Funds rate, is in fact a publicly stated target rate. The real Federal Funds rate is the rate at which banks lend to each other overnight. The free market sets this rate, and it is rarely quoted or even mentioned. What gets quoted is the Federal Open Market Committee’s target rate.

When commercial banks have legally excess reserves, they have no need to borrow overnight. That has been the case ever since December 2008, when the Federal Reserve began paying interest on excess reserves. Thus, the FedFunds rate has only one purpose today: to serve as a smokescreen for Federal Reserve announcements. It has a political purpose, but it has no economic purpose.

To see the recent actual daily FedFunds rates, see this page:
( https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/reference-rates/effr )

Free Market Federal Funds Rate
To achieve this rate, the Federal Open Market Committee, on behalf of the Federal Reserve System, buys or sells securities. It uses about 20 large firms to execute these trades. The list is here:

Primary Dealers
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_dealer )”
When Dr. North mentioned “free market”, he did not mean to imply that a free market exists in the united States. He meant only that the Wall Street stock market is sufficiently volatile that it is beyond strict FOMC or immediate government control. For example, the SEC can intervene to sanction traders but it cannot directly control trade, its interference in the market is a delayed effect.

My point is that the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) controls only one interest rate directly and that is the interest paid on “excess reserves” or that part of the trillions handed to the “too big to fail banks” (TBTFB) which are the federal reserve system member banks and those “banks” that have survived so far on Wall Street that is deposited with the fed to keep it away from lenders and so act to control the inflation that creating those trillions causes. The Fed pays interest on those 23 or so trillions handed to the TBTFBs by the Fed that are in turn deposited with the Fed. The interest rate paid to the TBTFBs is lucrative enough for the TBTFBs to keep the trillions deposited with the Fed and out of the lending market where they would cause massive inflation. Congress, but pushing trillion dollar budgets over the last five or six years is undoing what the Fed is attempting to do to control the inflation that its printing press “money creation” causes.

The late Gary North perfectly understood the workings of the Federal Reserve System and fiat money and worked to educate the American public that the boom-bust cycle is directly caused by a craven Congress who handed their money management responsibility to the paper printing Federal Reserve System.

The responsibilities that our craven and completely immoral Congress evades by pretending the Jew-created and operated Fed is beyond its control. Fort Knox has never been audited and indeed no one in Congress even knows who has any authority to enter and audit Fort Knox and the New York Fed that somehow managed to transfer gold from Fort Knox into its very own vault – that is if that gold was not immediately spirited out of the US and into a Rothschild vault:

“The Seven Money Clauses

1. Congress shall have power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. ~ Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 2.
2. Congress shall have power to coin money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures. ~ Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 5.
3. Congress shall have power to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States. ~ Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 6.
4. No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law. ~ Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 7.
5. The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person. ~ Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 1.
6. No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ~ Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1.
7. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved. ~ Amdt. VII.

The Constitution’s Five Monetary Rules

Read in conjunction with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the obligation-of-contracts clause (Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1), we can identify five monetary policies that are constitutionally requisite in the United States:

1. The basic unit is the dollar, a silver coin containing 371.25 grains of pure silver.
2. Only gold or silver coins and currency (specie-backed banknotes) can be legal tender.
3. No state may issue coins or currency.
4. No one may counterfeit U.S. Government-issued coins or currency.
5. Fiat money notes (‘bills of credit’) are forbidden.”

https://deanclancy.com/the-constitutions-seven-money-clauses/
- John Stone on June 06, 2022 · at 1:45 pm EST/EDT
  
  What has always been subject to question is whether the federal government can issue money, usually but not always framed as whether the federal gov can charter a bank. Lincoln did it without a bank when he issued his “green backs.” They were literally printed with green ink on one side.
  
  The constitution prohibits the states from issuing money. But the constitution does not prohibit the states from chartering private banks. These banks are free to issue money as coinage or bills of credit (paper currency). The prohibition is that the state can not declare the money legal tender. (“tender in payment of debts”) That is, they can’t force people to take the bank issued money in the payment of debts.
  
  There have been thousands of private banks in the United States, and there is one private bank that has been in continuous operation for longer than there has been a United States. The bank was formed by the Continental Congress and was called the Bank of North America. When it lost its national charter, it was chartered by Pennsylvania as (I think) the Bank of Pennsylvania. In the last few decades it was bought out by a larger bank, so the name may or may not still be around. But most likely the lot upon which the bank sits has had a bank on it for longer than the country has been a country.
  - Richard on June 06, 2022 · at 4:23 pm EST/EDT
    
    Greenbacks we’re redeemable in gold.
    - East Indian on June 07, 2022 · at 3:12 am EST/EDT
      
      Not initially. Subsequently the bankers were terrified at the prospect of government creating currency without their “help”, and forced the government to make greenbacks redeemable in gold.
    - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 5:02 am EST/EDT
      
      Wikipedia
      – In 1862, the greenback declined against gold until by December, gold had become at a 29% premium. By spring of 1863, the greenback declined further, to 152 against 100 dollars in gold. However, after the Union victory at Gettysburg, the greenback recovered to 131 dollars to 100 in gold. In 1864, it declined again, as Grant was making little progress against Lee, who held strong in Richmond throughout most of the war. The greenback’s low point came in July that year, with 258 greenbacks equal to 100 gold. When the war ended in April 1865 the greenback made another remarkable recovery to 150.[8] The recovery began when Congress limited the total issue of greenback dollars to $450 million. The greenbacks rose in value until December 1878, when they became on par with gold. Greenbacks then became freely convertible into gold.[citation needed]
      
      Without being pegged to gold, greenback appreciated
  - Alabama on June 06, 2022 · at 9:08 pm EST/EDT
    
    And likewise, the lot upon which the church sits has had a church on it for longer than the country has been a country.
    
    Forget the bank, now wouldn’t you like to own that church?
- Billy on June 07, 2022 · at 5:46 am EST/EDT
  
  The FED funds rate targets the overnight interest rate. So the central bank can hit it’s target.
  
  This will help
  
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=quhkjLAXFGs
John Neal Spangler on June 06, 2022 · at 10:06 am EST/EDT

Well it seems like the depopulation agenda is in place. Don;t forget about all the food processing plants burned down recently in US. Whether this is some strategic plan of overpopulation obsessed US elites, Gates Warren Buffet Ted Turner all think we must reduce population drastically, or the trend that Western “Civilization” has taken to Sadism and Necrophilia, I can’t say, There is Epstein’s island, Pizzagate, and the whole transgender agenda in the schools. So I don’t know if it is a strategy or is a form of self destruction.
- Polynikes on June 06, 2022 · at 4:03 pm EST/EDT
  
  German Nazism was a convenient boogeyman for Zionism. Nazi’s had an agreed upon objective to scare Askenazi/non-semite Jews into their “homeland” of Palestine. They both practice genocide and eugenics. The often touted high IQ of Jews is a red flag that Jews culled their own herd. This is now the plan of the Neocons – cull your own herd and the world at large. Russians and this forum have only identified 1/2 of their enemy. Zionism created Nazism.
  - tomo on June 07, 2022 · at 3:24 pm EST/EDT
    
    I have met at least a hundred jews and studied with and befriended many at some of world’s ‘best’ unis (i.e. Imperial College)
    and I have never met an very intelligent jew – the ones with a lot of money (billionaires and children of very famous actors, producers, lawyers, politicians) all inherited their wealth.
    At Imperial College the most intelligent student on my group was my fellow Serb (with a Croat mother) and another very dark skinned African student.
    Jews especially in LA are good at creating myths about their fake superiority – in reality the ones I know (some are very famous) tend to be mentally average – NYT is their god they read it as soon as they wake up loudly at the dinner table. This tells you all you need to know about their intelligence
    It’s just a myth as is everything about this particular group of predatory psychopaths masqueraded into fake victims.
- Tobysgirl on June 06, 2022 · at 5:52 pm EST/EDT
  
  Don’t they fit in nicely together? Read about the sadistic and death-dealing actions of our National Institutes of Health when it came to developing a so-called AIDS vaccine. I think these crazies see the decrease in population from pandemics, sterilizing children through transgenderism, subjecting Africans to “vaccine” trials, as just the frosting on the cake while delighting in mutilating and killing people.
Dan Lynch on June 06, 2022 · at 10:36 am EST/EDT

While the war in Ukraine may indeed spike food prices and lead to starvation in poor countries, let’s not jump to the conclusion that it is a conspiracy. Conspiracies require careful planning, and planning requires brains, which Western leaders do not have.

No, it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just incompetence and selfishness.
- Blue Pilgrim on June 06, 2022 · at 11:52 am EST/EDT
  
  I know of no natural law or or process precluding stupid, incompetent, short-sighted conspirators. There is also such a thing as a “structural conspiracy” which results not from conscious planning but arising from a defective world view or ideology, and/or simple ignorance. There are multiple ways to screw everything up, and they can work simultaneously. Take Biden as just one case study.
- kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 12:39 pm EST/EDT
  
  Trying to pin down geopolitics today into:
  
  – The US/NATO demand is to roll back the clock to restore dependency on the Dollar Area and its eurozone satellites.
  
  is of course pure marxism. Maybe some students will buy it. They understand what profit means, when they have reached teenage
  - Michael Hudson on June 06, 2022 · at 3:10 pm EST/EDT
    
    Well, at what point does depopulation policy become “conscious.”?
    Take the Baltics. Since 1991 their population has declined by over 20% — mainly the working-age population, which has gone to work in the rest of Europe. The demographic plunge is much like that of Ukraine. Neoliberal policy kills — as we saw in Russia after 1991.
    I grant that the neoliberal “models” don’t show a demographic plunge. But the tendency is so universal and similar that of course it is part of the “collateral damage” of U.S. policy. Let’s call it “benign neglect.”
    I agree that the Africa Union is not a policy-making body. Such a body will require a critical mass, and that means that it will have to come from China and Russia. US/NATO pressure is on them, almost forcing them to make an institutional response along the five lines that I’ve described.
    - kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 3:34 pm EST/EDT
      
      The world is run by humans, not “laws”. The starting point for Karl Marx was to hide that part of reality, and how banking works = real life economy
      - kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 5:07 pm EST/EDT
        
        Thanks to Karl Marx it was not made public before 2012 how money was created. Then BoE informed the British Parliament one weekend (- forget everything you have learned) how money is created, and Parliament understood nothing of it.
        Thank you Karl Marx for making us stupid.
      - Blue Pilgrim on June 06, 2022 · at 6:54 pm EST/EDT
        
        Humans may think they run the world, but there are more universal principles often ignored to our detriment. ‘Local optimization’ as is spoken of in evolutionary theory: a species in a particular niche adapts to local conditions, such as such eating only a local food source, and if something happens so that source is becomes unavailable the species goes extinct if it can’t re-adapt.
        
        Consider this in relation to US policy, values, and ideology. The US depends on its money, the dollar hegemony, it’s military bases, and the various political pressures it can exert, which depends on there being no good alternatives for the world. However, now the real economy, including the power of barter and alternative currencies become more important, it’s military has met it’s match from Russia and China, and even from smaller, more flexible military resources such as swarms of drones and increased non-symmetrical actions by ‘extremists’ and guerillas. New political alliances are becoming effective. And overall US decline in production of real goods, industrial and technological have made it more dependent on other countries. The local optimization of colonialism and the exceptionalism bubble is going away and US rulers and many people are not up to task of re-adapting. Such things predate Marx and can be seen in the collapse of many species, and empires.
        
        The great value of Prof. Hudson is not only his understanding of economics, but of history.
        
        kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 7:46 pm EST/EDT
        
        All the time – 1867 till 2014 they – the Marxists have managed to falsify reality, like:
        “The owner of the means of production is able to claim the right to this surplus value because they are legally protected by the ruling regime through property rights”.
        
        Karl Marx did not tell the truth about Money. He made the world look in wrong direction
        
        British Parliament
        – The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks:
        
        kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 8:37 pm EST/EDT
        
        – The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found …
        I have not seen any youtube video presenting money creation correctly. It is all “central banks” and “thin air”. All over the net we find Austrians or Marxist promoting their misconceptions. No different in Russia I presume – having a world record in interest rate burdens (when farmers interest rate was 1.5-2.0% in EU it was 20% in Russia (?))
        
        kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 7:59 pm EST/EDT
        
        The first settlers in Israel were communists:
        
        – Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism.[3] In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatized and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle.
        
        These Karl Marx inspired Kibbutz did not make people rich, as Karl Marx taught.
        
        kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 6:11 am EST/EDT
        
        Blue Pilgrim
        – Humans may think they run the world,
        
        Micheal Hudson
        – Although the United States remained highly protectionist, it diplomats sought to block foreign governments from supplying credit to arguculture and industry on concessionary terms.
        
        Micheal Hudson is admitting this is policy by design -> the world is run by humans. There is one principle for US domestically, and then the priciple is reversing for 3rd world.
        John Perkins is on spot how the world is constructed. Forget Das Kapital. This is a Protocol world, and the Leninist agenteurs were Protocolists, hating being exposed by Sergei Nilus.
    - Amerikanski on June 06, 2022 · at 3:58 pm EST/EDT
      
      As I believe you said in 2008 or so, “Where is the Pecora Commission?” … and the PTB simply continued to supply grease for the slippery slope.
      
      But to answer your question, there are a number of short video clips of the movers and shakers of the WEF talking about population, and strategies for reducing it. There is one from several years ago, with Gates talking about his vaccination programs, saying he hopes for “a ten or fifteen percent reduction”, and just recently there is one of Albert Bourla which appears to forecast a fifty percent lower population in a near-future year. I believe the policy is already a conscious one, at least among some participants of the WEF. For obvious reasons, they rarely talk about it. I don’t know the context of the video clips, as they were short and out of context. But Gates and Bourla have clearly enunciated English sentences stating that they hope, or expect, population to declline in the near term, and not a century from now.
      
      They may be incompetent, but I am not inclined to rule out malice.
      
      By the way, I love your work. Thank you for the clear concise explanations of the workings of the finance ‘industry’!
      - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 3:56 am EST/EDT
        
        Micheal Hudson
        – foreign central banks [buying US treasure bonds] has enabled USA to cut its
        own tax rates (at least for the wealthy), freeing savings to be invested into the
        stock market and property boom.
        —
        
        Here Micheal Hudson promotes savings -> deposits.
        That is a the opposite of modern banking, where credit -> deposits (the core of the money creation process)
      - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 4:11 am EST/EDT
        
        – Thank you for the clear concise explanations of the workings of the finance ‘industry’!
        
        The Hudson model of the world presented (in my Hudson quote) is
        
        3rd world -> buying US treasuries -> dollar savings in US banks
        
        not
        
        US banks -> credit to 3rd world -> dollar deposits in US banks
        (and creating money in the same process)
    - Karl luck on June 07, 2022 · at 12:47 am EST/EDT
      
      Mr Hudson, it is an honor to say something to you. Truth has almost become extinct and you still are determined to show it. They are so few others.
      
      It is a demographic fact that White population is becoming more sparse. Years ago, all Western governments used to win a platform on anti- immigration. That has changed as the reality is that people are needed to pay the pensions of the older folks. Since most western Europeans are actually better off in benefits, lifestyle and balance of work, north America must rely on coloured immigrants. That will never be admitted.
      
      The west accumulated all of their wealth off of other countries that they invaded. In those days, it was called colonialism/ imperialism or religion.whatever.
      After WW2, Europe had no choice but to acquiesce to America, who basically picked up the mantle of white supremecy.
      
      In the late fifties and sixties, there was liberalism, where women’s rights and workers were acknowledged. We made real progress to the emancipation of all people and George Orwell would have been proud of the progress.
      
      But then the financial masters, who had replaced the king’s and queens put they’re foot down. Regan and Thatcher started dismantling unions and everything that a just society should aspire to.
      
      America being the enforcer went around the world bullying, bribing, overthrowing anything in it’s way.
      The globalization recommend by the financial masters, and being full of white superiority, turned to China to make more fortunes and keep down Russia.
      
      Nobody in north America is ever taught actual history, only how good, decent and best we are. Well that bullsh.t is coming to fruition.
      
      The Chinese had many empires in their past history and the people suffered and died as slaves. China beat the financial empire at there own games, but largely give back the accumulated wealth to their people.
      
      Everyday, I skim many websites and can’t help but see the Chinese people being happy and smiling even in remote villages. Their clean roads. Bullet trains, and infrastructure to die for. I can’t help but see the decay of Western civilization, the crumbling infrastructure, homelessness, gun violence and so much more.
      
      Yet we still think that we have the arrogance to tell others how to live.
      - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 2:38 am EST/EDT
        
        “Capitalism” is the core of Chinese mindset. The Chinese are the natural anti-Das Kapital people. Saving rate are like 30% of income I have read.
    - Dr NG Maroudas on June 07, 2022 · at 2:47 am EST/EDT
      
      @MH: “US/NATO pressure is on them [the “Global South”] almost forcing them to make an institutional response along the five lines that I’ve described.”
      
      Which is why African Leaders are now visiting Putin. We are seeing history made.
    - David from Alaska on June 07, 2022 · at 3:03 pm EST/EDT
      
      Thanks as ever for your ongoing work, Professor Hudson. Being less polite than you, I would only amend “Let’s call it “benign neglect” to ‘amoral neglect.’
- Bonami on June 06, 2022 · at 8:52 pm EST/EDT
  
  The western leaders you disparage, and rightfully so, are not the real leaders, they are bought and paid for minions. They do what they are told when they are told, witness the common call to disarm the populations of Canada and the US occurring days after the latest World Captains of Evil meeting.
  
  Never attribute to incompetency the workings of organized Evil. When all the results of a group’s actions lead in one direction and one direction only, you are seeing a Plan in progress, not serendipity.
  
  These people are out to rule the world and to kill off most of us, they told you so. Believe them.
  - Rubicon on June 08, 2022 · at 8:15 pm EST/EDT
    
    Bonami stated: “The western leaders you disparage, and rightfully so, are not the real leaders, they are bought and paid for” by the extremely wealthy in the Western World. Gates, Soros, and the like.
    
    Sadly, this point never understood by most Americans…..making them blame either the Republicans or the Democrats. They miss the point, entirely. It’s pathetic.
    
    At least millions of Western Europeans are waking up to this fact.
    Look at the millions of French folks who refused to vote either for Le Pen.
- Ajax General @Gettr on June 07, 2022 · at 7:54 am EST/EDT
  
  You don’t know a thing about the World Economic Forum then.
  They have said plainly what their plans are.
  The conspiracy is already in play.
  Do not be so naive.
Silvio Siefke on June 06, 2022 · at 10:39 am EST/EDT

Aren’t the countries themselves to blame here? If I understand correctly, the sanctions are illegal. With Russia, everyone can act and every country must decide what is the way. People who are fed or the US / EU regimes. So when people go hungry, the states themselves are to blame.

Africa in particular, what had they from Europe and the USA? Russia can still protect its ship transports by military. So, in the end, it’s up to each country itself?
- Margie Nieuwkerk on June 06, 2022 · at 1:28 pm EST/EDT
  
  The problem is what are you speaking about when you say “Every country”? I can genuinely say that a huge portion of the population where I live is not in agreement with the sanctions, however, the population doesn’t have a say. The corrupt politicians decide. And it doesn’t matter who gets voted for, just about all the politicians get sucked into the corrupt USA/NATO system. There are a few exceptions, like Orban, Putin, I dunno who else. So people go hungry because they don’t have control, at the moment anyway. I think that possibly could change when things get really bad and people have nothing left to lose and they go after the politicians, oligarchs, etc.
Tommy Jensen on June 06, 2022 · at 10:48 am EST/EDT

Africa has plenty of resources to host and feed 2 billion Africans in 2050, but the universe has not enough resources to feed a golden billion of Amerifatties and Eurocafe’o’leitties. (free after Ghandi).
ostro on June 06, 2022 · at 10:53 am EST/EDT

What happens, when the famine is about to hit, the Global South is offered wheat and so on at highly discounted prices by Russia? And, a part of them free?
- Tommy Jensen on June 07, 2022 · at 9:06 am EST/EDT
  
  Simple, regime change until all food are denied to cross the border.
Uncle Bob on June 06, 2022 · at 11:30 am EST/EDT

This related story I think will be appreciated. Normally I wouldn’t post comments on a story. But there are some, too priceless not to post a few of them:

“Let’s hope for the poles’ sake they don’t have bears in their woods”

“Lol…gona be long winter”

“Didn’t they say they don’t care if Russia cuts off the gas because they were already prepared, and the contracts were ending this year anyways? Now they are foraging for wood. How prepared is that? lol clowns”

“Wow . . . “Those wishing to gather wood must first ‘undergo training and obtain permission from the local forestry unit.” . . . . all those Polish jokes I heard as a child . . . . I never took them seriously . . . until now. . .”

“Next they are going to be told to hunt for squirrels”

“Poles told to forage for wood to heat homes” – what next? Will the poles be told to “Beg for Food” ?

“Europeans need to follow the polish model, but instead I think burning politicians rather than “branches of wood” may work better at getting their homes heated”.(my favorite)

Poles told to forage for wood to heat homes
Citizens are given permission to collect branches from forests amid soaring energy costs
https://www.rt.com/business/556674-poland-firewood-heat-homes/
- Alabama on June 06, 2022 · at 9:14 pm EST/EDT
  
  But the pollocks (as my granny would have said) cant afford to clean their chimney and have no domestic fire insurance should the house burn down, could be an interesting winter, which really begins in some places in just a few months.
- A.Deplorable on June 07, 2022 · at 2:55 am EST/EDT
  
  @Uncle Bob: “all those Polish jokes I heard as a child . . . . I never took them seriously . . . until now. . .”
  
  And now all of us are Poles. How many Europeans does it take to open a gas tap?
  - Tommy Jensen on June 07, 2022 · at 9:01 am EST/EDT
    
    500 million Europeans. The problem is the Europeans will kill each other in quarrels, meetings, discussions and fights for power, position and leverage until one man is left who will phone the White House and ask for permission to do it which will then be denied.
bonbon on June 06, 2022 · at 11:50 am EST/EDT

Biden’s solution – more bio-ethanol for gasoline. I.E. burn food.
This got well into gear already with Obama.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-mandates-more-ethanol-gasoline-expect-many-negative-repercussions
Mats on June 06, 2022 · at 12:06 pm EST/EDT

Even without this crisis the South will repopulate North. The new birth numbers of Africa are now 5 times higher than in Europe and will be 10 times higher in mid 21st century. Yes they will come anyway. There will be several autumn 2015 kind refugee crisis but between them silent but steady growing immigration wave after wave not much talked about. According very realistic studies 25% of Swedes will be Muslims and their offspring in 2050. Numbers based on same size immigration than in 1990-2019 but now more and more of immigrants coming from Western Asia and Africa, not so much no more from Eastern Europe (whose tank of labour is becoming empty)
- Oscar de Caracas on June 06, 2022 · at 6:00 pm EST/EDT
  
  Is there a plan to depopulate Africa? I hope not… Why does the USA have bio-laboratories in Nigeria? In Lagos or in the outskirts.
  - A.Deplorable, PhD on June 07, 2022 · at 3:06 am EST/EDT
    
    @Oscar.
    
    The U$ DOD has Bio-Weapons Labs in Nigeria to develope Monkey-Pox viruses and MP-Vax. Same as U$ Bio-Weapons Labs in Ukraine. See report by Russian MOD recently published in Saker Vineyard.
Arek on June 06, 2022 · at 12:15 pm EST/EDT

“………………Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.”

This evil man and in general the rest of the so called Davos crowd they’re not embarrassed by the audience anymore. They just fly the new political-professional code and feel fu…king healthy. The infamous PSEC equation and his reaction……watch 4:25 through 4:50…..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I
- Arshan on June 06, 2022 · at 1:06 pm EST/EDT
  
  The monster is on everyone’s list.
VZ on June 06, 2022 · at 12:45 pm EST/EDT

I think Mr. Hudson is placing too much hope in India. The Indian PM is a Davos puppet financed by the West & able to win elections on the back of the Dominion electronic voting machines. He had no problems starving tens of thousands of his own countrymen during the pandemic by imposing the most brutal of lockdowns at the behest of his masters at the WEF & WHO. He will not hesitate to starve tens of thousands more on the orders of his puppet masters. He will cozy a bit up to the Russians just to get enough oil & gas to prevent an open uprising against him but make no mistake, that his entire cabinet & bureaucracy is infested with the WEF young global leader types. Russia would do well not to depend on India, when push comes to shove.
- Karl luck on June 07, 2022 · at 1:03 am EST/EDT
  
  You are absolutely correct. Indian is run by oligarchs who wannabe whites. The problem is that they are cowards and will ultimately back down when faced with being destroyed.
  
  Instead of looking after their 90% poor, they look up to the sh.t that controls them and Bollywood, much like America and Hollywood.
kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 1:01 pm EST/EDT

(posted on Zerohedge, but now 404)

– “Who are these people? This is not America,” Navarro said during his arraignment, adding: “I was with distinguished public servants for four years. Nobody ever questioned my ethics.”

– Outside, the 72-year-old explained that he’d been hauled in and shackled.

“Instead of coming to my door where I live – which by the way, is right next to the FBI. Instead of calling me and saying ‘hey, we need you down at court, we’ve got a warrant for you’ – I’d have gladly come. What did they do? They intercepted me getting on a plane, and then they put me in handcuffs, they bring me here, they put me in leg irons, they stick me in a cell … that’s punitive.”

I.e. STASI rule = nazism

Michael Hudson does not know reality. He is more like a state funded professor, reading NYT
- Amerikanski on June 06, 2022 · at 2:32 pm EST/EDT
  
  Still there .. ZH does sometimes delete an articles lately, an annoying trend. But sometimes they move an article to another section, or archive it. Found it with a search (which doesn’t work very well on ZH)
  
  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-enraged-peter-navarro-describes-being-arrested-and-shackled-over-misdemeanor-j6
  
  And I would say Michael Hudson has better contact with reality than your average wokester these days. His politics run left-ish, but he very well understands the economy and the parasites who are currently wrecking it.
  - kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 3:54 pm EST/EDT
    
    From todays news: US STASI (STASI is a no-no for marxists)
    
    First story: (Main priority for FBI is to hide surveillance of Americans)
    
    [STASI] – It was January 2014, and I was an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times focusing on national security. The FBI wanted to stop me from obtaining documents that I’d been told would reveal the details of massive spying operations by the National Security Agency. The FBI was convinced that I was in contact with someone they had secretly nicknamed the “second Snowden,” who was about to give me an archive that they feared could go far beyond what former NSA contractor Edward Snowden had leaked about the agency’s spying operations the year before.
    
    [PEDOS] – Tesla CEO Elon Musk has accused the Department of Justice (DOJ) of covering up the powerful names on deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s client list.
    
    [STASI] – Former Obama Official Pleads Guilty To Charges He Illegally Tried to Influence Trump Administration A former
    
    [STASI] – Obama administration official pleaded guilty to federal charges on Friday for his involvement in a secretive effort to unduly influence the Trump administration.
    
    [STASI] – DHS and Intel Community Media Outlets Proactively Move to Defend Dominion Voting Systems Ahead of Report on Electronic Election Hardware Issues Coming This Week The timing is not
    
    [STASI] – Judicial Watch announced today that a federal court has ordered the FBI to disclose additional details about FBI and other officials “cc-ed” on the memo used to justify launching the “Crossfire Hurricane” spy operation against President Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign.
    
    [STASI] – WATCH: Hero Uvalde Mom Who Rushed Inside School To Save Her Kids Says Police Threatened Her With Probation Violation If She Spoke To Media
Zahra on June 06, 2022 · at 1:03 pm EST/EDT

The Equation for Africa and Africans is simple. It is “Our children will not starve to make someone else happy.”
Rohan on June 06, 2022 · at 1:26 pm EST/EDT

Dear Michael, please please please make your books available in electronic format.rather than just hardcover.
- tomo on June 06, 2022 · at 2:04 pm EST/EDT
  
  his Killing the Host is available on Kindle
tomo on June 06, 2022 · at 1:58 pm EST/EDT

“…Evidently some major dimensions are missing from the U.S. national-security think-tank models….”

Psychopaths find it very hard to understand or imagine that other people )i.e. their intended victims) have honor, conscience, care for others and for other things than money and competition (the only things which occupy psychopaths’ mind).
for the same reason people who are blind from birth have heard of others who are able to see, but it’s impossible for them to imagine what seeing clearly seems like.

it’s a similar kind of mental/physical defect our psychocracy suffers from
Uncle Bob on June 06, 2022 · at 1:59 pm EST/EDT

The answer should be clear to the African states. Refuse to bow to the West in their attack on Russia. What is the West going to do to them. They can’t do without in many cases the resources Africa sends to the West. As for African imports,there is nothing gotten from the West they can’t get from China or Russia.And the debts owed to the West can be handled using the Russian model,pay in your own currency. If the Western banks don’t like that they can pound sand.This is the historic time for the developing countries to break free from Western control. Take this once in a lifetime chance to do so,or lose what may be your only opportunity to do it.

As for the sometimes talked about coming famine in Ukraine.That is just Western propaganda. With the food supplies already in Ukraine. Added to the new planted crops there will be no famine. And even if there was any shortfall with those planted crops. Russia would make up any shortage. There will be no food shortages in the liberated territory first of all. And Russia wouldn’t even let there be a famine in the Ukie held territory.Though they might be tempted to hesitate for a while there as an incentive for the Ukrainians in those areas to surrender and become part of the well feed liberated regions. All the “worry” of a Ukrainian famine is pure propaganda.
- Tommy Jensen on June 07, 2022 · at 10:50 am EST/EDT
  
  I should advice Africa not to enter into direct confrontation with West. Just see how hard it is for Russia and even China.
  No, the secret is information.
  If Africans become aware of the exploitation, spy systems, regime change concepts, the fake media, the terrorist concept, blame the victim tool and the perception management techniques they use, Africa is much more and better weaponized to withstand the psychological operations defend itself against the violence that the Colonial Empire employs.
  - Zil on June 14, 2022 · at 11:01 am EST/EDT
    
    Michael Hudson shows what is happening and what needs to be done in the ‘global south’ (or Third World). Now, I believe that there are two factors it is important to make the global south understand, as Hudson said: “The problem is one of economic consciousness and will.”
    
    Many countries of the global south are controlled by local elites who will not easily opt for the end of their access to western luxuries… Thus, it is up to the peoples to make changes of leadership.
    
    My view is that this is ‘possible’; but it may take time. The fear of famine — and general deprivation — in the global south may give expression to social uprivals and internal replacement of leadership; but the western military control of those countries must be eliminated before it happens — that is, the revolts to come must be genuine grassroot movements, not colour revolutions directed from above. Russia and China will have to support the changes with military supremacy in the global south to stop western interference in the process. Is there enough will for this?
Blair T. Longley on June 06, 2022 · at 2:01 pm EST/EDT

“According to U.N. data, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050,” with “more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people … in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.”

This is what the ordinary Americans will get:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/asylum-seekers-overwhelm-shelters-portland-maine

“Where Are the Asylum Seekers Coming From?

The vast majority of the new arrivals at the family shelter in Portland have come from Angola and the Congo in Africa, with some coming from Haiti in the Caribbean.”

Global demographics are Idiocracy incarnate.

Rather than any more rational political economy and human ecology, worsening eruptions of the irrational are to be expected. There is a long list of possible megadisaster events, that are unprecedented in known human history, which may be caused by nature and/or humans, that are plausible, and growing in apparent probability, and which, if one or more of those megadisaster events happened, would wipe out our current frame-of-reference regarding political problems. Since everything is connected, one would expect nature to go nuts at the same times as civilization gets crazier.

For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihwoIlxHI3Q

THE Earth Disaster Documentary

There is an entire playlist there, presented by someone extremely intelligent and hard-working, Ben Davidson of Supicious0bservers. Generally speaking, 99% of the public are not adequately prepared for any kinds of significant disasters, while the about 1% that have attempted to become prepared are not really, since they would be overwhelmed by the other 99% who are not prepared, if anything significant ever happened to disrupt the operations of the mostly monopolized systems that almost everyone has become dependent upon.

One bad luck solar flare hits Earth, or, eventually, there is surely some mininova event, and the consequences become such that some people in Africa are perhaps better able to survive than those whose lives have become totally dependent upon electricity.
Kouros on June 06, 2022 · at 2:33 pm EST/EDT

The problem is bribery and corruption in the higher echelon of Global South countries….
- Dr NG Maroudas on June 07, 2022 · at 3:16 am EST/EDT
  
  @Kouros.
  
  And even more, in the Global North. As witness, British Prime Minister Tony B.Liar, responsible for more than a million deaths in Serbia, Iraq and Libya. Rewarded with “a modest fortune” of $100M and jobs in 3 Rothschild companies: Goldman-Sachs, Carlyle Finance and House of Rothschild: the last being the highest reward ever bestowed on a retired British PM.
Al Seaquist on June 06, 2022 · at 2:45 pm EST/EDT

The best of our world’s economists speaks the Geo-economic Historic Truth.
Frankie on June 06, 2022 · at 2:55 pm EST/EDT

The whole population bomb myth was revealed over 40 years ago. Bill Gates is heating old stale soap. Africans are no different people. They are moving to urban areas, having less kids than in village life. We have seen the same great change former in Iran, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico. In Addis Abeba urban area the fertily rate is now 1,9 children per woman. Not much higher than in western Europe.

Let’s check how fertility rates have gone down in some African countries:

Kenya: 7.64 (1980), 5.35 (2000), 3.52 (2020)
Rwanda: 8.43 (1980), 5.90 (2000), 4.10 (2020)
Etiophia: 7.18 (1980), 6.83 (2000), 4.30 (2020)
Uganda: 6.95 (2000), 6.38 (2010), 5.01 (2020)
S. Africa: 5.01 (1980), 2.88 (2000), 2.41 (2020)

It’s just pretext. Club of Rome created Malthusian kind scaremongering theory 50 years ago. After that literally almost all 3rd world countries with Africa as only slow exception have moved to urban low fertility. African population bomb will be later another dud explosive.
- kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 4:43 pm EST/EDT
  
  Club of Rome office = “Villa Farnesina”
  “The villa became the property of the Farnese family in 1577 (hence the name of Farnesina).”
  
  Then let us move to “Villa Farnese”
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Palazzo_Farnese_Alto.jpg/525px-Palazzo_Farnese_Alto.jpg
  Villa Farnese is early Pentagon
  
  Club of Rome was about: – How do we justify One World Order?
Uncle Davy on June 06, 2022 · at 3:14 pm EST/EDT

For those who still don’t think there’s a worldwide recession looming … then remember the old adage when ‘America sneezes, Europe catches a cold’

Americans are cutting back, and Walmart is finding itself in unfamiliar territory

Walmart’s Troubles Should Have Everyone on High Alert
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-21/walmart-s-troubles-signal-tough-times-for-entire-us-economy-l3ftjppn
- Mary on June 06, 2022 · at 3:42 pm EST/EDT
  
  Maybe, maybe not. Haven’t they been hit hard by supply chain issues? Empty shelves?
  - AHH on June 06, 2022 · at 4:41 pm EST/EDT
    
    Yes, supply chain issues are huge, both with continuing California ports shenanigans as well as decreased output from China. Skyrocketing gas prices affect operability of truckers with some parking their trucks, feeding the shortage cycle as most goods are trucked within the USA. Decreased driving by Americans is also being seen, and may soon result in 1970s empty highways vistas. A huge ongoing wave of layoffs is leading to many only able to afford essentials too.
    
    (1) https://youtu.be/jBb0E_EoeAU
    
    (2) https://youtu.be/DFR2ZuaTeck
    
    Note (2) was 4 months ago in South Carolina. On a positive note, as what remains of SMEs die off and individual mobility becomes quite limited, and with projected future lockdowns, Walmart’s future should get brighter in the coming consolidation. Copter-drone home deliveries planned too, as a convenience perk, per the Metaverse.. will Walmart stock be the Apple stock of the future? Just be careful of the supplied shrink wrapped “meat”, courtesy of Gates Farms ©.
Judith L Osterman on June 06, 2022 · at 3:53 pm EST/EDT

Yes, there’s a purpose to their madness and seeming incompetence. Europe, too, is well along on the path to dystopia and privation. The question is, what plans have they made for the inevitable uprisings of the victims of starvation and cold? Don’t ever think that this eventuality has not been fed into Think Tank computers.
Another thing- America has perhaps 900 military bases throughout the world. Not all their personnel will have been incapacitated by the Jabs.
Gerry on June 06, 2022 · at 5:19 pm EST/EDT

Last week I had a troubling encounter while waiting in line for the till at a store. I over heard a conversation where the lady in front of me said to other said that her son who works for a farm, lower mainland of BC, heard news from the farmers that Trudeau told the farmers to stop growing food. I jumped in and asked for a little more info and she reiterated what I heard the first time and then said the farmers told him to shove it the very thought to stop growing food?

To say I am alarmed by this is of course an understatement. Add the fires at processing plants and Gates buying up farms leaves me remembering a quote:

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
— Henry Kissinger

Depopulation? I doubt very much that as much as they want either a plague of some kind or a war it is really just about control of the masses.

Do they know something we don’t?

They want centralization and globalism period and it may turn ugly as in they’ll follow when there is no other choice?
- Bonami on June 06, 2022 · at 9:56 pm EST/EDT
  
  Their first step is famine, the purpose of said famine is to introduce step two; a guaranteed income, a very minimal one you can be sure. It will be tied to vaccines, to a social credit score, access to food, to housing. It is Feudalism back with a roar, the Mark of the Beast writ large.
  
  The US govt has been offering US farmers twice what they would be paid for their crops if they don’t grow them or if they plow them under, this has been going on since day one of the Biden admin. The shortage of fertilizer, the fires at food processing plants, the cull of chickens, turkeys, the surge in prices, the high cost of fuel, all part of the plan.
  
  They will kill you if they can, they prefer you dead rather than having to go through the weary exercise of getting you to accept the NWO.
  
  Wake up, wake up, wake up.
Cookie on June 06, 2022 · at 6:10 pm EST/EDT

What has to happen fast is Ukrainians have to realize the U.S is not a friend and is destroying their country for U.S continued hegemony?

Russia never wanted to tell Ukrainians how to live but they were greatly concerned with the company they kept.

If Ukraine is going to get out of this intact then its time for Zelensky to be removed and negotiaters replace generals to come to some agreement to get the grain out before it rots.

The clock is ticking.
Citizenfitz on June 06, 2022 · at 6:41 pm EST/EDT

Outstanding analysis! The elitist’s cult clearly thinks there are too many of us peasants and want very much to do something about it. They’ve been mulling it over for a long time and appear to believe *now* is that time. War, plague and famine:

https://www.facts-are-facts.com/article/illuminati-one-billion-is-enough
- kjell108 on June 06, 2022 · at 7:35 pm EST/EDT
  
  Nice website
  
  – The multi-billionaire and former media czar Ted Turner—more on him later—expressed even more severe views that same year. In an interview given in 1996 to the magazine of the American conservation organisation The Audubon Society, Turner explained: “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95 percent decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
  
  Then biggest scumbag of them all – Ted Turner
  - Citizenfitz on June 07, 2022 · at 2:16 am EST/EDT
    
    Ted Turner? That’s saying a lot too. Funny how so many of the overpopulation catastrophists, Turner, Ehrlich, Soros, Buffett, Kissinger… are well into their 70’s, 80’s, 90’s….
frankie p on June 06, 2022 · at 8:58 pm EST/EDT

Michael Hudson,

I have read your work for some years now and I agree with most of your analysis of macroeconomics, debt, and the usefulness of the study of history as a guide to setting policy regarding debt, specifically the idea of jubilee or debt forgiveness.

I have a question. I also agree with you that the US Globalist Empire is using the Ukraine situation as a tool to consolidate power and influence among the global south and poor countries. Does this not also present an opportunity for Russia and China to gain influence among these countries by providing the grain and fertilizer that they require as a part of a system that might include deferred payments or other negotiated payment agreements that would allow them to avoid the heavy handed, strong US$ system? This seems to me to be an excellent investment for goodwill and friendship, building strong relations with future allies.
- Dr NG Maroudas on June 07, 2022 · at 3:25 am EST/EDT
  
  @Frankie: “Does this not also present an opportunity for Russia and China to gain influence among these countries by providing the grain and fertilizer”
  
  Agreed. Leaders from Africa are meeting Putin right now. We might be seeing History in the making.
Gerry on June 06, 2022 · at 9:07 pm EST/EDT

Some great math?

Paradise Stolen – Episode 3 -The Myth of Overpopulation

https://youtu.be/_lIboR9Wtg8
Gerry on June 06, 2022 · at 9:46 pm EST/EDT

I remember reading a story from the 1700’s, the age of discovery. Some sailors abroad one of the sailing ships making its way across the ocean came to a dead stop in the water. To far from any land to think they run aground they became alarmed and scared not knowing what to make of this oddity. The wind was still filling the sails trying to move the vessel but to no avail. This caused a number of the sailors to look overbroad to find out what was going on and to their amazement fish for as far as the eye could see. They ran smuck into the middle of a gigantic school of fish which caused so much friction that the wind could no longer push the boat.

Where one must ask today could any find anything similar?

Our industrialization coupled with greed has raped the ocean and imagine what the ocean floor must look like? Imagine if one were to remove all the water what would we be looking at but a gigantic garbage patch? Sin coupled with industrialization has done us all immense harm.

Talk about over population means little to me we are most likely done. Simply turn to the teachings of Christ who spoke about a period of time that never existed in all of human history and after that time period will never again be! I’d say that is speaking of us today, surely!

Good news though is everything is written including our future. We know what the end will be and it is glorious. The early apostles knew the secret because He lives we shall live also.

And Climate Change Dr. Hudson has got nothing to do with industrial pollution and everything to do with Divine Communication.
Leyca on June 07, 2022 · at 12:22 am EST/EDT

In 1961 every nation in Africa produced more than 100% of its own food supply, today almost none of them.

What happened?

Many African countries gained independence around that time. They were abandoned and nobody taught them how to manage their countries effectively so they suffer endless wars and poverty. Sociologiocal response to heightened threat for many species including homo sapiens is increased procreation which creates self-feeding circle, population growth increases poverty and poverty increases population growth.

WEF is completely wrong here, the famine will not fix population growth but will make it worse. Guarantee people decent lives and enough food and they will stop making 10 children per family.
- karlof1 on June 07, 2022 · at 1:07 am EST/EDT
  
  No, they were hit upside the head by the IMF and World Bank. Their neocolonial policies began in the late 1950s as part of US foreign policy design which was formalized in 1948. France still expropriates most of its former African colonies. Russia and China are very welcome in Africa for very good reasons.
- Dr NG Maroudas on June 07, 2022 · at 3:31 am EST/EDT
  
  @Leyca: “Guarantee people decent lives and enough food and they will stop making 10 children per family.”
  
  Reminds me of a Spanish proverb from the old days of poverty and ignorance, “Una niña no es niña” (One child is no child).
Ulfr on June 07, 2022 · at 1:10 am EST/EDT

The WEF project and the need for a great reset is only a sham of global high finance identical to that of the Club of Rome in the 1970s, which usurped the environmental cause for purely economic interests.
The voluntary simplicity lifestyle is probably a necessity and can eventualy lead to an ecological dictatorship but the actors cannot be the very ones who contributed to the destruction of the planet.
There are good and bad dictators, those of the WEF are the worst.

https://zorosko.blogspot.com/2015/03/pentti-linkola-finds-it-almost.html?m=1
Dr NG Maroudas on June 07, 2022 · at 1:41 am EST/EDT

I think the “affluent West” (aka “advanced North”) is in for a global famine. The sheeple who have been softened up by Con-19 (aka Covid-19) betray all the characteristics of primitive superstition and unthinking acquiescence to hierarchical and arbitrary authority which made the “primitive South” such easy pickings for the “advanced North”. Covid-19 made far fewer inroads into the “Global South”: fewer “Covid cases” and fewer “Covid deaths”. The self-inflicted economic suicide of Europe by idiotic ban on NordStream-2 and similar anti-Russian, anti-Chinese “sanctions” shows that “Western” sheeple are ready for fleecing.

I think the “Global South” will be OK if they stick to Russia and China, trade in yuan, roubles or their own currency, barter and, above all, avoid the eurodollar.
maskazer on June 07, 2022 · at 2:05 am EST/EDT

Thank you for the excellent article. Explaining the best course of action for the countries of the South led by Russia and China. We’ve been told that Mr. Sergei Glazyev – Head of the Eurasian Commission and Economic Union, is working on this particular issue. Hope he’ll come up with a working plan so that a whole range of countries may join the group and finally be able to get rid of the current neoliberal casino design. Also it seems Biden Administration is letting Venezuela and Iran export their oil now that the western economies are in dire situation. They want put pressure on Russia – economically – for its triumphant operation in the Ukraine. However, it would be absolutely silly for Iran – Venezuela to just go ahead start selling their oils with the dollar or even the Euro, all over again. By doing it they would be looking forward at some quick regime changes – although this time successful – happening in both countries and frankly they deserve it. For now – it’s crucial if Iranian and Venezuelan oil hit the global market, they be processed in Russian Ruble and through Gazprom bank, while the new Eurasian currency and banking mechanism is being conjured up…
mario2 on June 07, 2022 · at 2:58 am EST/EDT

Can Russian oil be replaced with oil from Iran and Venezuela?
I read that is the latest plan of The West.
- A.Deplorable on June 07, 2022 · at 3:37 am EST/EDT
  
  Mario, I think your question has already been answered, by Maskazer’s post just above yours.
  
  Iran and Venezuela will not sell oil in eurodollars; not if they know what’s good for them — and I think those two governments have shown that they know what is good for their people.
  - maskazer on June 07, 2022 · at 7:37 am EST/EDT
    
    A.Deplorable,
    Hope you’re right. But I am not too sure, anymore. I can’t speak about Venezuela but here in Iran there’s a whole business class of elites inside and outside the government that keep their personal assets such as apartments, mansions, cash and … others owned and invested domestically or in the neighboring countries like Turkey, UAE, Qatar…based on the US dollar. They simply won’t allow their wealth lose value versus the local currency Rial, because the so much higher exchange rate guarantees their elitist social status while the little Iranian guy with Rials in his worn pockets is struggling to put simple food on the table. Of course, that’s not the case with our elite whose earnings are measured in dollar. For him life becomes even more exciting and full of fun. Therefore, it’s hard to say if they will be ready to sacrifice their own personal gains by doing what’s beneficial to the nation. There must have been similar problems in Russia mostly before the launch of the SMO. Fortunately, in Russia – to some extend – they were able to stop this ominous trend. I think, both Venezuela and Iran need to be constantly reminded about the importance of ditching the US dollar asap, if they really want to respect their own independence. Selling their oil in Ruble and through Russian banking system would be the best course of action for these two oil-rich countries as a starting point of throwing away the US dollar.
  - mario2 on June 07, 2022 · at 7:54 am EST/EDT
    
    >Iran and Venezuela will not sell oil in eurodollar
    How can you be so sure?
tranquilocomp on June 07, 2022 · at 3:48 am EST/EDT

“Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a Global South famine?”

I think if you believe in “free memberships” for all, you don’t wish for global famine at the same time, nor that you believe in free memberships into NATO for the sake of producing famine. Proof is needed for things like this.

“There must have been the following calculation:”

They said that Ukraine defeats Russia. Now they say a stalemate is possible. They don’t calculate well.

“It is inconceivable that the consequences of this on countries outside of Europe and the United States were not taken into account”

Many conceivable things were not conceived, however.

“This suggests that what appeared in February to be a war between Ukrainians and Russia is really a trigger intended to restructure the world economy”

Proof is needed about something so big for meaning. Absent proof, one must see it as a “war between Ukrainians and Russians” to stay normal.

“First, reject the sanctions and reorient trade to Russia…” “The main deterrent to this strategy is not U.S. power, for it has shown itself to be a paper tiger. The problem is one of economic consciousness and will.”

It could be too scary to seek to destroy the economy of so many countries through famine, because the consequences must be unforeseeable.

I think the article should have all except the accusation about wanting to produce a famine and that the SMO was provoked for the sake of producing famine.
Chris on June 07, 2022 · at 4:03 am EST/EDT

Another fantastic article and I couldn’t agree more. The economic landscape is exactly as the article lays out. There is a choice to be made – debt servicing or sovereignty/feeding the country. Although, sadly, I do think things are going to get seriously difficult, I do think this is the death throes of a crippled US empire for the following reasons.

First, as the US policymaking elite are well-aware, the vast majority of the world’s most important resources are in Eurasia, most of them in Russia and former Soviet states, who have effectively kicked out the US and its NGO parasites in recent years. Another, less tangible factor in all this is the prestige with which other countries, particularly those of the Global South, will hold Russia on account of its intervention in Syria and its overwhelming military dominance in the Ukraine. The Russians fought and defeated very much the same body of militants, trained by the same people, funded by the same groups in Syria as they are doing now, just this time on a far larger scale.

The Ukrainian army was by no means ill-equipped in comparison with other European countries. It is far more likely that administrations in developing countries would do something overtly against the interests of the US (understood to be, as you put it, the constituting the interests of FIRE sectors), than they would in a time of obvious unipolarity as had Gaddafi and others, given the acts carried out by Russia against the West, and the fact that the economic engines of world growth (China, India, Brazil etc.) simply will not support sanctions. The statements made by Chinese foreign minister, for example, have at times been as staggering as those made by Lavrov and Zakharova. I think nations refusing to tow the line empowers other nations to do so. Reneging on obligations to the US is something developing nations could readily do, if most of them do it, simply because the US cannot militarily control them all. The second thing to say, with respect to this point, is that Russia has seized control of pretty much 90% of the, frankly, impressive Ukrainian industrial base. We are probably concerned with farmland given the coming famine, but the Ukraine’s goose looks pretty much cooked.

Another factor is the interesting developments in the Middle East since improvements in relations between Saudi Arabia and Russia and the latter’s involvement in OPEC+. My own take on this is that at some point the US is going to need resources from somewhere if it is going to threaten the global south with carnage and it looks like those with the largest reserves of strategically important resources are showing US diplomats the door, probably on account of years of color revolutions and meddling in the domestic affairs of sovereign states.

It is interesting that your talk about the rentier monopolists (such as better phrase than “elites”, given there is nothing ‘elite’ about them). Events in Taiwan are a point of interest for me because I think it is reasonable to assume that US neocon attention will turn towards these straits when it realizes the Ukrainian game is over and the novelty wears off in the Western mainstream media. If China does manage to reunify, then my own understanding is that would mean that China could cut the US and other ‘unfriendlies’ off from semiconductors – there is no Schwabbian “fourth industrial revolution” without semiconductors.

The US cannot finance any of this without dollar supremacy and even with it, it does not have military superiority over other countries. Provided there is another mechanism for international trade, then developing countries will have every right to consider their debt obligations to the West null and void given their seizure of assets and flagrant violation of property rights of individuals for arbitrary reasons. (Or perhaps I’m being naiive.) Nonetheless, if there is a non-US currency of trade, why would any country worry about repaying debts to a country that cannot do anything about it? The last thing they have is coercion through denying countries vital resources. Rising economies need to rapidly expedite the export of grain and fertilizers to nations in need and provide the world with an alternative platform for trade. Sadly, I don’t believe this is going to happen without serious losses and its heartbreaking.

A final point is pushing countries to leave the dollar zone would be Russian revelations about biolabs in the Ukraine and elsewhere. They say they have water-tight evidence. The Western media won’t report it (at first) but the developing nations, particularly those in Africa, having had experience previously with Gates, will.

What concerns me, and it is all speculation, is whether or not these groups understand that it is finished. And that the goal here is not domination at all, but just destruction.
- Kapricorn4 on June 07, 2022 · at 7:37 am EST/EDT
  
  @Billy
  
  “The process by which money is created is so simple, that the mind is repelled.”
  
  John Kenneth Galbraith
  - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 9:38 am EST/EDT
    
    British Parliament
    – The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks:
    
    Those who try to find out about it will face a mountain of disinformation about “fractional banking”
  - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 9:50 am EST/EDT
    
    BOE
    – Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits. (We have always believed 2+2=4. Not true they tell)
    
    https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf?la=en&hash=9A8788FD44A62D8BB927123544205CE476E01654
Rhys Jaggar on June 07, 2022 · at 4:16 am EST/EDT

Maybe what the Global South needs to do is to do what Russia did after 2008 sanctions and become increasingly self-sufficient in food production?

Whingeing about dependency on this or that supplier fails to address the root cause: why isn’t the Global South growing its own food properly?
- Dr NG Maroudas on June 07, 2022 · at 5:54 am EST/EDT
  
  @Rhys, ask the Irish and the Indians under the British Raj.
  I think you might find also fin an answer to your question in a book called “Food First”: countries exporting Cash Crops in the same ships that bring them Food Aid.
- Zil on June 14, 2022 · at 12:23 pm EST/EDT
  
  In Brazil, years ago, the whole country started using RoundUp and GMO seeds to make bigger crops. This destroyed the small, self-sustaining farms (similar occurrencies happened in India). Monsanto also bought enormous amount of land for its GMO crops. The whole country is now deeply involved in glyphosato agro-business — for BIG profit –, and food for the people comes second, and it is poisoned anyway. This is the same bussiness people who supported the coup d’etat against the Workers Party president Dilma Rousseff. The traitor vice-president at the time, Temer, sold most of our natural resources and technology/energy in the first year (he should be hanged for this). Brazil is a lost country now, and certainly India and South Africa can see what has happened to us.
  
  Yes, ex-president Lula is now presidential candidate for next October elections. He will almost certainly win. What will he be able to do? Are the many privatizations in the last 6 years reversible? Brazil was NOT in such situation when he was first president in 2003…
  
  In the grand scheme of things, Brazil had to be the great loser of the last 7-8 years, so the Eastern world could ascend to the top as it is now happening. I just hope that the last 6 years of misery were worth it, somehow, and that now the Eastern world looks at South America as well — not just Africa –, as our misery is very similar to the African misery… Indeed, imperialism sucks. It is time to change the system.
Billy on June 07, 2022 · at 6:03 am EST/EDT

Every financial asset held in a portfolio must be offset by a financial liability on another portfolio. The Fed’s reserve deposits are assets held by banks, offset by the Fed’s liability; the Fed’s notes are held as assets by banks, households, firms, and foreigners and are offset by the Fed’s liability.

Our word “to pay” comes from “pacify”, reflecting payment of Wergild fines owed to victims in order to avoid blood feuds. When you “pay” taxes, you “pacify” the treasury so that Elliott Ness doesn’t come gunning for you. How do you pacify the treasury? Well, the treasury can name what it will accept in tax payment, but historically it has accepted its own liabilities. Today, tax payments take the form of debits to bank reserves and credits to the treasury’s deposit account at the Fed. The US treasury no longer issues its own liabilities when it spends, relying instead on its banker, the Fed.

It wasn’t always so, of course. The Fed was created in 1913. Many of our debt-free money folk want to return to the old days—when the treasury spent by issuing its own notes. Many of them refer to the era of Greenbacks. Fine and dandy. It would be quite inconvenient and inefficient. But it could be done. However, it would not change the fact that currency is still debt.

Whether the currency is issued by the central bank or the treasury, it is a debt that must be redeemed. Let’s look at a specific historical example.

Fortunately, Farley Grubb has authored a very nice paper on American colonial currency. Farley is a, or perhaps the, expert on the topic.

https://www.udel.edu/faculty-staff/experts/farley-grubb/

The colonies were prohibited by England from issuing coin, so as to protect the King’s monopoly of coinage. The colonies obtained coin from export, but of course as a major mercantilist power, England wanted to limit exports to the raw materials she needed. The colonies had to import finished goods, shipping the coins back to England. The King wanted to limit expenditures on its empire, so the colonies were largely responsible for funding their expenses, which included fighting wars with the French, the Canadians, and Native Americans. Colonial governments were chronically short of coins, obtained through taxes such as poll taxes and taxes on imports of slaves and tobacco.

To increase fiscal capacity, the colonial governments began to issue paper money. According to Grubb, “Virginia referred to its paper money as treasury notes. Other colonies referred to their paper monies as bills of credit…. [Virginia’s] treasury notes were the same as bills of credit..”

Virginia’s colonial government passed a number of acts to authorize the issue of treasury notes. The law would include the total value of notes (denominated in Virginia pounds) to be issued. It would also set a date for final “redemption” (the term used by Farley as well as by the lawmakers). And, interestingly, the law would impose a new set of taxes at the time of the note issue:

“Every paper money act included additional new taxes, typically a land tax and a poll tax, that were operative for a number of years. The number of years over which these new additional taxes were operative was chosen so as to generate enough funds to fully redeem the notes authorized by each respective paper money act. The date in each paper money act set for the final redemption of the notes authorized by that act closely matched the end to the taxing period set by that act…. From 1755 through 1769, the taxes imposed by the paper money acts included a poll tax, a land tax, a slave import duty, and a tobacco export duty.”

The Paper Money Acts that allowed the treasury to issue notes also imposed new taxes that would be of sufficient size and over a period long enough so that all the notes would be redeemed? Does it sound like maybe, just maybe, the colonial government understood that the purpose of the taxes was to “redeem” the currency, by accepting that paper money in payment of taxes?

Well, let us see. The answer will depend on the colonial government’s use of the term “redemption”.

Colonial paper money could be “redeemed” (remember, this is the term used by the Acts) in two ways: payment of taxes or presentation for payment in (British) coins. The treasury would spend the new issue paper money into the economy. Those receiving the treasury notes could use it to pay taxes, or spend it, or submit it to the Treasury in exchange for coin.

What did the Treasury do with the notes it received in tax payment? Grubb reports that the “notes were removed and burned.” Yep. Burned:

“Most redemption taxes were collected in the fall, and so notes reported in the Journals of the House of Burgesses as burned were likely removed via tax payments in the prior year.”

Grubb’s careful research shows that most taxes were paid using the paper money, and most paper money was “redeemed” in tax payment:

Were redemption taxes paid in notes or in specie? The treasury accounts provide some evidence to answer this question. The clearest statement in the treasury accounts was made on 15 June 1770: ‘It appears to your Committee, that the Balance in the Treasurer’s Hands of Cash received of the several Collectors for Taxes appropriated to the Redemption of the old Treasury Notes [those issued before 1769], amount to Ten Thousand Three Hundred and Twenty-six Pounds Eleven Shillings, of which they have burnt and destroyed Seven Thousand Eight hundred Pounds, and have left in the Treasury, on that Account, in Specie, a Balance of Two Thousand Five Hundred and Twenty-six Pounds Eleven Shillings to be exchanged for old Treasury Notes.’

From this evidence, Grubb concludes (emphasis added):

A redemption tax of 10,327£VA was collected, of which 2,527£VA was in specie that was explicitly set aside in a dedicated account to be used to redeem notes brought to the treasury. The rest of the tax payments were burnt, implying that those tax payments were made in notes. Therefore, 76 percent of this tax was paid in notes, and 24 percent was paid in specie.

So, three-quarters of taxes were paid by “redeeming” the notes.

The specie (coins) received in tax payments could be used to “redeem” the notes that were not “redeemed” in tax payments. What about the notes that were not “redeemed” by either method? They continued to circulate. Grubb asks, “Were Virginia’s notes used as a circulating medium of exchange? The denominational structure is consistent with such usage. Virginia’s notes were issued in relatively small denominations, small enough to make paying yearly tax assessments easy with said notes, and small enough to make it an easy domestic circulating medium of exchange in terms of being able to make change with said notes.” He concludes:

The above analysis establishes that redemption taxes generated specie sums that were to be held in the treasury until the final redemption date legislated for each paper money act, at which time holders of those notes could cash them in at face value for the specie held in the treasury for that purpose. However, at the final redemption date holders of the respective notes did not rush to the treasury to exchange them for specie. The notes continued in circulation and note holders could cash them in at the treasury at their leisure. Robert Nicholas Carter, Virginia treasurer after 1766, noted this behavior, Most of the Merchants as well as others, … preferred them [Virginia’s treasury notes] either to Gold or Silver, as being more convenient for transacting the internal Business of the Country.” (William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 1912, p. 235)

Adam Smith had argued that if the colonies were careful to ensure they did not create too much paper money relative to taxes, it would not depreciate in value (indeed it might even circulate at a premium, he argued). Redemption of the notes in tax payment would remove them from circulation—keeping them scarce. Grubb argues that this was well-recognized by the colonial government:

The Virginia legislature took note redemption and its effect on controlling the value of its paper money seriously. Such is illustrated in the March 1760 paper money act which stated, ‘And whereas it is of the greatest importance to preserve the credit of the paper currency of this colony, and nothing can contribute more to that end than a due care to satisfy the publick that the paper bills of credit, or treasury-notes, are properly sunk, according to the true intent and meaning of the several acts of assembly passed for emitting the same; and the establishing a regular method for this purpose may prevent
difficulties and confusion in settling the publick accounts,… Be it therefore enacted, by the authority aforesaid, That Peyton Randolph, esquire, Robert Carter Nicholas, Benjamin Waller, Lewis Burwell and George Wythe, gentleman, or any three of them, be, and they are hereby appointed a committee, to examine at least twice in every year (and oftener, if thereto desired by the treasurer for the time being) all such bills of credit, or treasury-notes, redeemable on the first day of March, one thousand seven hundred and
sixty five, as have been or shall be paid into the treasury, in discharge of the duties and taxes imposed by any former act of assembly; and upon receipt of the said bills or notes, the said committee shall give to the treasurer for the time being a certificate of the amount thereof, which shall avail the said treasurer in the settlements of his accounts as effectually, at all intents and purposes, as if he produced the said bills or notes themselves: And the said committee are hereby required and directed, so soon as they have given such certificate, to cause all such bills or notes to be burnt and destroyed.’ (Hening 1969, v. 7, p. 353)

Yep, to protect the value of the government’s paper currency, you’ve got to redeem it in taxes and burn the revenues generated.

Central banks used to burn the notes they received in taxes now they just shred them and you can actually buy the shredded bank notes.

https://www.ebay.com/b/Shredded-Money/3412/bn_7023247756?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&campid=5336728181&customid=&toolid=10001

Yet, so many fools still believe in the taxpayer money myth.
- Kapricorn4 on June 07, 2022 · at 9:33 am EST/EDT
  
  @Billy
  
  A poll by Positive money reveals a worrying lack of understanding of the UK’s money and banking system across the House of Commons. The poll finds that only 15% of MPs are aware of how most money is created in the modern economy.
  
  They commissioned polling company, Dods, to give a cross-section of MPs four statements about the UK’s money and banking system and to ask whether they’re true or false.
  
  Only 15% of MPs were aware that new money is created when banks make loans, and existing money is destroyed when members of the public repay loans. 62% thought this was false, while 23% responded ‘don’t know’. Conservative (Tory) MPs seemed to have a slightly better idea, with 19% answering correctly, compared to only 5% of Labour MPs.
  
  As report published by the Bank of England in 2014, most money takes the form of bank deposits, which are mostly created through commercial banks making loans: “Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates (electronically) a matching deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money.” The most recent figures suggest that 97% of money exists as bank deposits, with only 3% created by the Bank of England and Royal Mint as cash.
  
  There is, in fact, a ‘magic money tree’, but it’s in the hands of commercial banks, such as Barclays, HSBC and RBS, who create money whenever they make loans. Unfortunately, this privilege is used in ways which don’t benefit most of UK society. [Edited extract from Positive Money 17 Oct 2017]
- kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 12:48 pm EST/EDT
  
  – It wasn’t always so, of course. The Fed was created in 1913. Many of our debt-free money folk want to return to the old days—when the treasury spent by issuing its own notes.
  
  (I stopped reading here) What you are saying is false (in my interpretation – as you are in line with Hudson) as banks create money routinely every day at no interest cost (to the central bank – this is done outside central banking). This is confirmed by Bank of England to British Parliament – among other places.
  - Billy on June 07, 2022 · at 4:30 pm EST/EDT
    
    Kapricorn4
    
    Yes, that is how bank lending works.
    
    Here with diagrams
    
    https://gimms.org.uk/2022/06/05/mmt-banking-primer/
  - Billy on June 07, 2022 · at 4:37 pm EST/EDT
    
    kjell108,
    
    Please forgive me but What is the point you are making ?
    
    That banks create state money also by applying for a licence from the state ?
    
    That They also issue state money as it is written on the front of every bank note ?
    
    What are you going to do about it ?
    
    Here’s what we plan to do about it under the heading BANKS
    
    https://new-wayland.com/blog/running-a-modern-money-economy/
    - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 5:55 pm EST/EDT
      
      the source https://gimms.org.uk/2022/06/05/mmt-banking-primer/
      is NOT how money is creates.
      
      Commercial banks are the main actor for creating money. Every mortgage is creating money. They put up mortgage as asset on balance sheet, and put same amount (created money) on another account
      
      The banks DON’T lend out money they have. They create money to lend out.
    - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 6:10 pm EST/EDT
      
      Micheal Hudson promotes savings -> deposits.
      That is a the opposite of actual banking: credit -> deposits
      (This is not a theory about banking works, like “MMT”. This is HOW banking works – every day)
    - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 6:20 pm EST/EDT
      
      – Most people believe that only the Bank of England can create money. Many people also believe that high street banks can only lend money if they have enough savers’ deposits to lend from. But as I’ll explain shortly, both views are mistaken.
      
      – It’s true that once upon a time that’s how things worked.
      
      – This isn’t how money works in the UK economy today. The reality is stranger than intuition would suggest. I certainly wouldn’t have believed the mechanics either had I not read a full account of the process in a 2014 bulletin published by the Bank of England itself.
      
      https://michaeltefula.medium.com/the-surprising-reality-of-how-money-is-created-in-the-uk-3e31a66b5a9e
    - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 6:26 pm EST/EDT
      
      from same source
      
      – Commercial (or high street) banks
      – This is all the banks you know, such as Monzo, RBS, Lloyds, Barclays and others. They are formally designated as ‘credit institutions’ and have permission from regulators to take deposits, make loans, and create new money.
      
      The commercial banks Creates Money. Unlike what people are taught … that the banks have money, and can lend out their money … the banks do not have money to lend out
- Gerry on June 07, 2022 · at 4:22 pm EST/EDT
  
  These bags of shredded money are toxic. I still have one somewhere that I received after attending a money conference some 30 years ago here in Canada. The guy giving the conference said the Government of Canada has a very difficult time with old used bills. To toxic for the garbage and can’t burn due to the ink and other chemicals that make up the bills. So they shred. Just another reason as to why everything needs to go digital. Canada however, now has plastic money. You can’t rip some of these blasted bills so I guess they just get melted down to be reused somehow until the day finally arrives when it all goes digital. Another argument for the pros of a cashless society. They get to do away with the messy business of bills altogether. You’ll be just a number in a great cog in the Big Brother society. Glazyev’s ‘electronic concentration camp?’
- tranquilocomp on June 08, 2022 · at 2:13 am EST/EDT
  
  “Yep, to protect the value of the government’s paper currency, you’ve got to redeem it in taxes”
  
  I don’t know what taxes Farley Grupp talks about being passed in Virginia between 1755 and 1769 to redeem their paper money emission. Maybe you can provide a link to that paper he wrote on colonial paper money.
  
  “Grubb’s careful research shows that […] most paper money was “redeemed” in tax payment”.
  
  With all due respect to him as a university professor, he is not a major scholar. I don’t know if you cited him correctly, but I reckon those are direct quotes. Murray N. Rothbard was a libertarian scholar who wrote many books including one in four tomes on U.S. colonial history, besides one of the only two or three general treatises of economics that exist, “Man, Economy, and State” (1962). He indicates that Virginia was the last to issue “fiat paper money” (“fiat” is non-redeemable just in case). He writes: “By 1740, every colony but Virginia had followed suit in fiat paper money issues, and Virginia succumbed in the late 1750s in trying to finance part of the French and Indian War against the French.” (“A History of Money and Banking in the United States”, page 53.) On why this was done by fiat with no redemption, I think the explanation he gives for the “Continental paper” issued later, in 1775, applies: “The state governments were supposed to collect taxes to retire the Continental notes […] But opposition by Americans to taxation was too great, and most states levied no taxes at all until 1780.”
  
  “Grubb’s careful research shows that most taxes were paid using the paper money, and most paper money was “redeemed” in tax payment”. “So, three-quarters of taxes were paid by “redeeming” the notes.”
  
  Naturally, they were used to pay taxes too. Rothbard points to the results of the fiat money: “…dramatic inflation, shortage of specie, massive depreciation despite compulsory par laws – ensued in each colony.” “Shortage of specie” because the depreciation of the paper money led to a rise in the value of specie or silver, and to ‘bad money chasing good money’ (Gresham’s law), or in other words to hoarding specie.
  
  “What did the (Colonial) Treasury do with the notes it received in tax payment? Grubb reports that the “notes were removed and burned.” Yep. Burned” “So, three-quarters of taxes were paid by “redeeming” the notes.”
  
  Sounds funny. This went on for more than a year. It’s hard to imagine anyone burning paper money while it’s still money. Anyway, the fact is that the “value of the government’s paper currency” was not protected.
  
  That fiat system, whether it be good or bad, creates money as from thin air. That’s the bottom line and using terms like “debts” and “liability” offsets confuses this issue; fiat money creators add a veneer of ‘respectability’ and ‘seriousness’ with those terms. Had the Romans and the Greeks, who used specie-metallic money, been told about fiat paper money, they might have mocked this system (“I thought about buying a big farm with just sticks or stones from the ground, ha, ha”).
Englishman on June 07, 2022 · at 6:11 am EST/EDT

The French Rep at the UN had the brass balls to blame Russia for the food crisis,the SOB sat their and lied his head off,but what new from these scumbags?
Ajax General @Gettr on June 07, 2022 · at 7:45 am EST/EDT

Underestimate America if you want to, but you will find out the hard way.
The illegitimate biden regime will not survive long. Trump will be back.
We the People have awakened to the criminal cabal that has stolen our country.t
We will eliminate them. The Sleeping Dragon has awoken.
- mario2 on June 07, 2022 · at 10:42 am EST/EDT
  
  Democrats in US control MSM so firmly hat I think Trup has no chance.
  Furthermore, the general population is politically blind yo understand anything.
  - kjell108 on June 07, 2022 · at 12:52 pm EST/EDT
    
    If we get famine in US you are finished. State will collaps and US will disintegrate into several parts.
Elmer Fudd on June 07, 2022 · at 10:38 am EST/EDT

Just FYI, the United States will NOT be riding to the rescue by feeding the Third World while Ukrainian and Russian grain exports are sidelined by the war and sanctions. Senile Sock Puppet President Biden’s Green New Deal will mandate burning fuel for food:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/06/06/biden-administration-declare-national-emergency-for-clean-energy-production-invokes-defense-production-act-to-facilitate-faster-transformation-of-energy-economy-away-from-fossil-fuels/

The insane tyranny of the US is so onerous that we are now praying for a nuclear 9-11.
- Tommy Jensen on June 07, 2022 · at 10:55 am EST/EDT
  
  “Burning food for fuel ;-). Please Lord allow a couple of Sarmats being fired”. Fixed.
Magpie Lark on June 07, 2022 · at 3:09 pm EST/EDT

Italian, Jewish and Irish gangs at the start of prohibition didn’t conspire with each other to get into bootleg liquor. It was an business opportunity and all seeing how much money there was to made hopped on the wagon. However, as bootlegging was illegal, the gangs who practiced “omerta” best won out and best organised to have assess to self serving corrupt state officials won out.

Same here with nations. Many state officials couldn’t give a crap about their people, but that they keep them in office and give them a wealthy lifestyle they wouldn’t have otherwise. Would sell their own supporters/people/country out for a bigger and better deal for themselves in a heartbeat.
Truthsayer on June 08, 2022 · at 12:31 am EST/EDT

Yet even after reading this will have the trumpie cult whining and bitching about the poor Americans…
- kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 1:56 am EST/EDT
  
  Micheal Hudson is telling his students?: – You are such son-of-a-bitch privileged people.
  
  (To be an economist today means having to use retirement age to rewrite pre-2014 books.)
- kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 2:12 am EST/EDT
  
  Micheal Hudson
  – foreign central banks [buying US treasure bonds] has enabled USA to cut its own tax rates (at least for the wealthy), freeing savings to be invested into the stock market and property boom
  
  Micheal Hudson promotes credit in US is created by domestic savings + savings from 3rd world [i.e. the Americans are having a free ride] … while reality is 90% of dollar deposits in the world is created by US dollar credit [= new money]. This follows from 90-97% (see above) of money in US is created by commercial banks [ordinary loan activity]
  - tranquilocomp on June 08, 2022 · at 2:40 am EST/EDT
    
    What Hudson is saying there makes sense, though. Governments finance things through taxes or else by borrowing (getting into debt), like when foreign central banks buy “US treasure bonds.” If you get into debt with China, you can then afford to cut taxes to the wealthy who use that “saving” to invest in “the stock market and property boom.”
    - kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 3:06 am EST/EDT
      
      Updated February 15, 2022
      – China holds more than $1 trillion of the U.S. national debt. … The rest of the $29 trillion national debt is owned by either people in the U.S. or by the U.S. government itself.
      https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-to-china-how-much-does-it-own-3306355
      
      Isn’t that interesting. $1 trillion out of $29 trillion = 3%
      
      Using that as a fact: It is a myth China is financing Americans. But all Liberals have learned China is financing the cars American households have?
      - tranquilocomp on June 08, 2022 · at 7:19 pm EST/EDT
        
        Hudson said, “Central Banks.” I mentioned China as an example. The point was that if a government borrows money like the U.S. government did, it may then cut taxes for the wealthy too. Trump did that. Then the govt. borrowed more money to spend. Then the wealthy whose money was not taxed invested it in the stocks boom and in the “property boom.” (You objected to the term “savings.” I think “savings” there could be the money that was not taxed and so was used to buy more stocks and property.)
    - kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 3:45 am EST/EDT
      
      While China is lending money to US, $1+ trillion, it is opposite: US (and US institutions) is a net lender of money to the world, at the level a of dozen $trillion? (reaseach on that needed)
      In case of Portugal: EU is lending Portugal 150% of GDP.
      If Portugal was lending to EU 5% of Portugal GDP, Hudson will call that “financing EU”. It is rather by EU lending Portugal money EU makes good income stream.
    - kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 4:25 am EST/EDT
      
      – What Hudson is saying there makes sense,
      Exactly. People, and all of British Parliament used what was “intuitive true” – that the banks must have some money to lend out. But what was “intuitive true” was not how banking worked. Even when BoE explained banking to them, British Parliament could not grasp it.
- kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 2:44 am EST/EDT
  
  “SHOCKING – Federal Reserve Bank admits they lost 9 Trillion Dollars!”
  (the largest African state – 20% of Africa – Nigeria has GDP = $475 billion (2019 est.)
  
  FED lost an African GDP * 4 somewhere (?)
Ric G on June 08, 2022 · at 3:57 am EST/EDT

@kjell108

The commercial banks have licenses to create bank credit, by monetising customer collateral. Their main banking trick is to transfer the Titles to the customer’s collateral, to the banks, before the banks apply their ‘magic credit card’. This allows the banks to create the loan capital, as bank assets, and as customer debts.

Welcome to the greatest banking heist in human history, where customer treasure is converted into financial poison, and our nation’s monetary supply arises as debts, the money for slaves!
- kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 9:30 am EST/EDT
  
  All the Peter Schiff’ers have messed it is FED who creates money, and 100 out of 100 economy professors has taught the same to their students.
kjell108 on June 08, 2022 · at 2:25 pm EST/EDT

Every day The Saker readers are mislead about money is created

Example
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-war-in-ukraine-marks-the-end-of-the-american-century/

– The real reason the dollar has remained the world’s premier currency is because of the cartelization of Central Banking. The Western Central Banks are a de facto monopoly run by a small cabal of inter-breeding bottom-feeders who coordinate and collude on monetary policy in order to preserve their maniacal death-grip on the financial markets and the global economy

MIKE WHITNEY is making up or recirculating Wikipedia “facts”
- Zil on June 14, 2022 · at 12:38 pm EST/EDT
  
  Well, this is exactly what Karl Marx said would happen to capitalism — extreme concentration of capital in a few hands.