Interview: Renegade Inc and Michael Hudson (posted by special permission)
Ross Welcome to Renegade Inc. With China’s increasing wealth, Western investors want some of the action. One of those investors is a bullish gentleman called George Soros. However, the Chinese are acutely aware that with Western investment comes inequality. So as Beijing begins to rethink how to do proper economic growth, we ask, will China learn from Western mistakes?
Ross Michael Hudson, always great to have you back on Renegade Inc.
Michael Hudson It’s good to be back here. Thanks for having me.
Ross Michael, we join you at a time where a lot of people think the unipolar world could have maintained its supremacy. Turns out it hasn’t. Multipolar world is here to stay. You of late have been quite vocal about George Soros, no less. Mr. Soros has been casting aspersions about various things, but one of them is talking about the Chinese economy and why Black Rock, amongst others, should be allowed to invest there, because ultimately it’s going to undo American interests. Can you unpack that for us because it seems very complicated?
Michael Hudson Well, George Soros’ dream is that China would do what Yeltsin did to Russia – that it would privatise the economy, carve it up and let US investors buy control of the most profitable heights. In that way, the foreign investors would be able to sort of get the profits of Chinese industry, Chinese labour, and it would become the darling stock market of the world, just like Russia’s stock market was the leading booming stock market of 1994-96. China would be run to benefit US investment bankers. Soros is furious that China is not following the neoliberal policy that the United States is following. It’s following a socialist policy wanting to keep its economic surplus at home to benefit its own citizens, not American financial investors. For Soros, this is a clash of civilisations. His proposed strategy is to stifle the Chinese economy by putting sanctions against it, to stop investing in it so as to force it to do to itself what Yeltsin did to Russia.
Ross Let’s hear it in his words. He says: ‘The BlackRock initiative imperils the national security interests of the US and other democracies because the money invested in China will help prop up President Xi’s regime, which is repressive at home and aggressive abroad. Congress should pass legislation empowering the Securities and Exchange Commission to limit the flow of funds to China. The effort ought to enjoy bipartisan support’. He’s not mincing his words, is he?
Michael Hudson He thinks that China actually needs American dollars to build its factories and invest. He thinks that somehow China’s balance of payments is going to fall apart without the US market, without US investors telling President Xi what to do. The Chinese government won’t have a clue as to what to invest in and how to let the ‘free market’, meaning George Soros and BlackRock and other companies, operate. So he’s living in a dream world where other people need us. It’s like a guy who doesn’t realise his girlfriend doesn’t need him anymore.
Ross There seems to me to be a distinction here that the Chinese are acutely aware of, and it’s between the classical economists and the neoclassical economists. The classical economists have understood the idea of unearned wealth, unearned income. The neoclassical economists actively chase unearned wealth, unearned income, because that is central to their playbook. Can you just expand on those two ideas? And is it the case that that’s why you talk about a clash of civilisations?
Michael Hudson Well, you put your finger on it, Ross. People think that China’s advantage is its abundant, low priced labour force, or the government building infrastructure. But what’s guiding this is an understanding of the kind of economics that goes back even beyond Marx, to Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill and the other classical economists. They realise that there’s a difference between earning income and creating wealth by employing labour to produce goods, to sell at a profit and then reinvest these profits and more capital formation, in contrast to simply buying a rent-yielding property, buying land and letting it rise in price without the landlord doing anything, buying a monopoly and just raising the price – charging monopoly prices like the US pharmaceutical companies are doing. China understands the difference between earned income and unearned income, between productive investment and unproductive investment.
In the United States, if they do recognise this difference, they realise that via unearned income you can make wealth by parasitically much quicker than you can actually create real wealth. It’s cheaper to be a parasite than a host. And so most of the financial strategy of Wall Street involves how to get something for nothing. How can we get a free lunch? Well, to do that as a major policy, we have to begin by telling people what Milton Friedman said: There is no such thing as a free lunch. But the whole of Wall Street is looking for a free lunch. They’re looking to grab Chinese assets on the cheap, like Soros has grabbed post-Soviet assets. They’re looking for monopoly rights. They’re looking for lending money and letting China do the work, to pay the interest to the Americans that are going to be providing it with money that the Federal Reserve ends up creating on its computers, or that George Soros already has saved largely by how he got the free lunch from the Bank of England betting against that and driving Sterling down.
Ross Some people call it the free world. Others call it a democracy. Others, for America, call it an advanced oligarchy. Do you think that the Chinese have looked at America and the wider West, understood that privatising all that rent has ultimately led to societal decline?
Michael Hudson They’re beginning to look at it that way. Most Chinese Marxists focused on Volume 1 of Capital, which is about employers hiring workers and putting them to work and making a profit off the mark-up. Only in the last couple of years have Volumes 2 and Volume 3 of Capital moved into central discussion in China. And it’s Volumes 2 and 3 that talk about economic rent. And so China has come to realise that the United States is not an industrial economy. We’re not going to understand what’s happening in the United States, in England or Europe by looking only at what Marx wrote in Volume 1 of Capital, because they’re not making money industrially anymore. They’re making money by being a rentier economy, by landlordism, by monopolies and by bank credit, which Marx discussed in Volume 2 and 3.
So they’re now broadening the discussion. For the first time, you’re having, especially in the last month, China asking, “Do we want to let Chinese investors make money, financially, by buying housing, becoming absentee landlords and hoping that there is going to be a housing price inflation like you have in the United States? Or, do we want to keep housing low priced and not to bid it up by credit creation and finance?” They’re now realising that to keep China’s cost of living low, you have to keep the price of housing low. That means that you don’t want housing to become a commodity, an investment vehicle for absentee owners and landlords to make money. You want housing to be for Chinese people to live in. That means low-priced housing, not debt-leveraged housing as they’re seeing in the United States.
Ross I know somebody who works on the life boat on the Thames and they get a view each night that no one else would ever get. And they go up and down the Thames and they see all these high rises, which are oversupply of property, real estate. And there isn’t one light on in any of them. The reason, foreign investors, predominately the Chinese, have come bought them, clingfilmed the whole place, locked the door and then they chip off back to China – sit and wait, basically allow that land value to go up and cash out 10 years later. You can see what that does to local communities, schools, shops, infrastructure, services and all the rest of it – this absenteeism. Do you think that those foreign investors, the leadership in Beijing, has seen this model around the world and thought, yep, fine, we can do it over there, and yet we need to repatriate some money because of some of the liquidity issues that we’ve got over here. But we’re not having that as a central business model or a central economic model to our economies? Do you think that that light has gone on?
Michael Hudson Well, they’ve been discussing this regarding Hong Kong for the last 10 years. Hong Kong is the typical example of multi, multi-billionaires in real estate. They think that a socialist economy is not one that gets rich by creating absentee landlords. There’s been a large outflow of Chinese investment to the West. You have it in New York City on the west side, all very dark apartments with no lights on at night because they’re absentee-owned. Thorstein Veblen in 1923 wrote a book, Absentee Ownership, saying that housing should really be for living, not a speculative vehicle. But in America, real estate is all about civic development. It’s about how to increase real estate prices and create a bubble for speculators to find someone to flip the property to. I’m not sure it’s going to happen much longer and in London now that Brexit has occurred. But I think that what China is trying to do is asking how to create a domestic economy where Chinese people make money productively. They can not only afford a house of their own, but if they invest, they can invest in making China richer, not in buying income-yielding, rent-yielding, assets in America, England or Europe.
Ross Do you think that the pictures that we’ve recently seen on social media of the huge tower blocks that haven’t been finished, residential, that haven’t been finished for eight years and now they’ve just put semtex under them and raised the whole thing to the ground? Do you think that’s a real world example of the scar tissue, if you like, that private debt creates and in another sense, a Minsky moment? Blowing all these things up means that you get rid of all of that oversupply, which means that that inventory isn’t in the market and isn’t their to be flipped and speculated on.
Michael Hudson These are buildings where they wanted to pre-plan for what they thought was going to be a rural exodus, but the rural exodus didn’t occur into these cities. Right now, China is focusing, I think for the first time in quite a few years, much more on rural development. China is primarily a still a rural economy, a village economy. Most people don’t realise that. When you think of China, you think of Shanghai and Shenzhen and Beijing and even Wuhan. But the fact is that much of China’s rural and there can’t really be a rural exodus to the cities because you have a kind of passport plan in China. In order to live in Beijing, you have to have a permit to live in Beijing so the city won’t become even more overcrowded than it is now. They’re having to re-focus development much more on the rural areas that have not kept pace with the heavy industrial factory areas that have occurred. So they wanted to do a lot of building, not only to employ labour and to do construction, but to think just in case they needed this housing for the rural exodus, they needed it in place. Now they realise, OK, we’re not following that particular central planning idea. Central planning really is very hard. It’s very hard to build whole small cities in advance with nobody there. It’s much easier to wait until they’re actually economic forces leading you to develop. So in that sense, China’s becoming more market oriented in its planning. But at the same time, it shapes the market, increasingly, to create domestic prosperity and earning opportunities, not unearned rent-extracting opportunities, but productive earning opportunities. This is an ongoing process of re-evaluating, restructuring, fixing up and improving the economy.
Ross Michael Hudson, welcome back. Great to have you for the second half.
Michael Hudson Thanks.
Ross Michael, we said right at the top of this programme that there is, let’s say, a tug of war between the unipolar and the multipolar. China have looked at the West and they must conclude now, the Russians also, must conclude, that the Western economic model is fatally flawed. In many ways, what you’ve got in America is an advanced oligarchy. Across Europe, you’ve got a zombie banking system. And basically the model for the last certainly 30, 40 years has been to extract as much rent as possible and pass it off as an economic miracle. To avoid all that, this fork in the road has crystallised. What do you think will be the decisions coming out of Beijing when they look at the economy in a more holistic way and they realise that they want to better the lot of the average Chinese citizen?
Michael Hudson Well, as I pointed out, their concept of the economy realises the distinction between earned income and unearned income, between rent and profits. It wants to make profits, not economic rents. And it also sees that the United States is trying to prevent it from going along this socialist road, and that’s really the new Cold War. You mentioned unipolar versus multipolar. It’s actually not so much that China, Russia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, along with Kazakhstan and Iran and now the other groups are pulling away. It’s the United States that’s trying to force them to follow the US neoliberal model by imposing sanctions and special penalties and military threats, not to mention ISIS terrorism. The United States is driving Europe, Asia and now Africa as well, into a unified, consolidated unit outside of itself. It’s very self-destructive. It thinks like George Soros, that if we stop investing in Asia and other countries, that will force them to knuckle under to the US. But what it’s doing is it’s driving them altogether into the Belt and Road Initiative.
What China’s doing is creating a precondition for a profitable industrial economy over a large area to benefit from. It’s participants are going to need transportation. You’re going to need ports. You’re going to need roads. You’re going to need pipelines and is focusing on the interconnections, on the infrastructure.
America doesn’t build infrastructure these days unless it’s monopolised. This is the political fight going on in the United States now. President Biden has a infrastructure plan that he’s scaled down from six and a half trillion to three and a half trillion. And essentially the bulk of the Democratic and Republican Party said if we can’t privatise infrastructure and make it a rent-extracting monopoly, we’re not going to do it, and we’re going to block the government from doing it. So in the United States, they’re going to have high priced infrastructure, high-priced health care and high-priced education while China is going to have low-priced transportation, low-cost infrastructure, free education, public health care. And you’re going to have a very high-cost United States unable to compete with the rest of the world. All it can do is make military threats or financial threats. If it tries to impose sanctions as it’s imposed on Russia, China and other countries, these are going to serve as protective tariffs for foreign countries.
When President Trump put sanctions on agricultural exports to Russia, it was a windfall for Russia. They developed their own agriculture and Russia is now the largest grain exporter in the world. Senator McCain characterised Russia as a gas station of atom bombs, but it’s a gas station with the largest farm sector in the world, and is developing an industrial integration with China and the rest of Asia. It’s a Eurasian world island as Mackinder called it a century ago, and it is becoming the economic focus of the world, leaving the United States as the high cost economy with no visible means of support, because we’re not doing our own industry anymore. We’re not competing with China. We’re letting China do all of the industry, and all of a sudden we’re dependent on it. This does not bode good for prosperity in the United States or Europe and other areas that are satellites of the US economy.
Ross What is the probability of the West going, hang on, we have taken a detour here, we need to do something differently?
Michael Hudson I’d say maybe between one and two percent. In order to understand that you’re taking a wrong detour, you have to understand what the right path is, and why China’s doing it right. They can’t acknowledge that, because that’s called socialism. And when everyone points out that instead of having health care absorbing 18 percent of the American GDP, you could provide public health care and lower the cost of living in the United States. That’s a precondition for making labour more competitive. Well, the employers are going to argue that if you make health care public, then you’re going to lose the ability to lock-in labour to its employers. Right now in the United States, especially during the pandemic, if you work for an employer for a living, you’re afraid of being fired because you lose your health insurance and that is a threat of bankruptcy. If you complain about your job, you might be fired. That’s a danger. So having private health care paid for by the employers locks labour into dependency. They’re afraid to ask for higher wages. They’re afraid to ask for pensions. Privatized employer-based health care has become part of the class war here, and it is succeeding in impoverishing labour. Same thing with privatized education costs financed on credit at fairly high interest rates, without any bankruptcy recourse to wipe them out..
President Biden promised that he was going to wipe out student debt. If you have students paying 40 to 50 thousand dollars a year to have a college education and a college diploma is a precondition for getting a job like a union card used to be, then you’re going to have that added to the cost of living. When you have all of these privatised – education, health care, not to mention housing and other factors – when you have all these rent-extracting exploitative sectors you cannot be a competitive economy. You can only get money by conquering and exploiting other countries, by owning their own rent-extracting sectors and monopoly-profit sectors.
But there’s no one to conquer anymore. America couldn’t even conquer Afghanistan. Every economy for the last 5,000 years has two parts. There’s the real economy of producing and consuming and paying taxes and government services. And then there’s the debt and financial overhead. All economies operate on credit. The problem is that credit cost money, and creditor claims accumulate at compound interest. if you look at the compound interest for anybody’s savings – take the wealth of the One Percent and all the trillions of dollars they have – if you leave your money to accumulate compound interest, it grows exponentially. But economies don’t grow exponentially. They grow in an S-curve, and sometimes there’s an interruption. Sometimes there’s a disease like Covid. Sometimes there’s bad weather and a environmental disaster or there’s a war. And once there’s an interruption, what do you do with the fact that the finance sector grows faster?
Well, this goes way back to Babylonia. It occurred in Greece and Rome. Ultimately the tendency is for the financial sector to take over and to use the financial returns to take over real estate. And so there’s a symbiosis between real estate and finance. That’s occurred in every economy for the last 2,000 years since Greece and Rome. It certainly characterises where most money and most wealth is made today. In the universities, you take a course and they say, well, you accumulate wealth by saving up the wages and saving up the profits you made. But that’s not how the wealthy classes got money. That’s not how the One Percent have made money. They have made money either by taking property from the public domain by privatisation, or it’s made today by the central banks, lowering interest rates, flooding the market with credit, enough credit to push up real estate prices 20 percent in the United States in the last year. Housing prices have gone way up to unaffordable levels, pushing up education prices – and education is priced at whatever a bank or the government will lend you to pay with a student loan. It’s all financialization. It turns out that what people thought was industrial capitalism has turned out to be finance capitalism instead. So what China is doing is saying that it’s not going to let our industrial capitalism evolve into finance capitalism. It’s going to evolve into socialism, because they’re a socialist government.
Ross Just say the Chinese, the penny’s dropped and they’ve understood how badly wrong the West got it. What does the Chinese economy, and as importantly, society look like 10, 20 years from today?
Michael Hudson It’ll be a more balanced, less polarised economy. It will still let people make fortunes, but not gigantic fortunes large enough for an independent oligarchy to develop, to become a rival to government and try to replace government. In the West, you’ve had a financial oligarchy evolve and take over planning from elected government. So we don’t have democracy now. It means a free market where you leave everything to Wall Street as your central planner. So China is going to leave its planning spontaneously to individuals to innovate, to develop, where America is becoming, and England, are centrally planned economies planned by Wall Street, not to create prosperity, but to create rent-extracting opportunities for Wall Street stocks and bonds and absentee real estate. So you’re going to have a rentier economy – let’s call it neofeudalism – while the rest of the world goes forward into what industrial capitalism was meant to be a century ago before it was sidetracked in the West. Much of Eurasia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation will evolve into socialism, as most expected would happen in the West a century ago.
Ross You talk about Super Decadence. Is the irony lost on you that one of your politicians recently attended a 35,000 dollar gala event dressed in an expensive dress with the words ‘tax the rich’ embroidered all over the back of it?
Michael Hudson That perception of inequality has become so popular that you can almost make fun of it. There’s something called neurolinguistic programming, that says that if you have a problem, a headache or something, if you can imagine your headache or your problem being very far away and then expanding and expanding and finally, poof, it all dissolves and goes away. They think that they can say “Tax the rich” and just make it into a phrase that’s so popular, it doesn’t really mean tax the rich any more. It means that you accept inequality, but realize that it’s just become part of the system – and wouldn’t it be nice if there were a parallel universe in which we could indeed tax the rich. But of course, that’s just a nice fantasy.
Ross Michael, always entertaining. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
Michael Hudson It’s wonderful to be here, Ross. Thanks for having me on your show.
POSTSCRIPT:
Right after this interview, China did on its own just what George Soros was asking U.S. money managers to do: Stop lending money to China. So China itself made an about-face and turned down the BlackRock’s plans to buy a large Chinese real estate company, and it did not pay foreign holders of its Evergrande bonds on September 23.
Diplomatically, China had expected Wall Street firms to lobby to stop America’s anti-China policy. And indeed, many Wall Street executives did point out to the U.S. government that China offered many opportunities for America to make money, and urged not to treat it as an enemy. But the military-industrial complex (MIC) has its own agenda, along with the neocon and neoliberal advocates of unique U.S. unilateralism. I think that ever since China’s officials met in Alaska with Mr. Blinken earlier this year, they see the handwriting on the wall, as have Russia and other SCO members. They’ve accepted that the world economy is fracturing between the U.S.-centered “free world” (central planning by Wall Street and unilateral diplomacy from Washington) and the multilateralizing rest of the world.
MH
Economics 101 ! Dr Hudson is a gem. He is spot on, as always.
He is the absolute best economist I know of, and he happens to also be a very good man.
His books are also superb.
Michael Hudson knows that his characterisation of the rentier economy he critisises was and is very characteristic of Britain. In particular during the time when the british oligarchy protected Marx and when he confirmed that they gave him the best working conditions in his life.
While I havent read Hudsons books I would be surprised if he has even attempted to explain this paradox.
It is suggested you start reading “Super Imperialism: …………” by Michael Hudson. You will be suprised to lean how he upturn back Americanized upturned economic principles making Adam Smith stands on his feet again and not his head. This sounds confusing and may only be understood by reading the above Text.
Well, I got to say as I did once before the shock of watching a friend sell his house here in the Fraser Valley of BC, Canada for 1.7 million dollars still boggles the mind? It actually horrifies me. A house with no views out any of the windows except the neighbors next door and in a poor location really. This was nothing more than a lottery win really and O how they justify it by saying all of the excuses? That Central Banker Paul Warburg was so right what he said watching the roaring 20’s:
“The world lives in a fools paradise based upon fictitious wealth, rash promises and mad illusions. We must beware of booms based upon false prosperity which has its roots in inflated credits and prices”
And his contempt for the political class was huge. Truly nothing changes greed is as usual the name of the game ultimately.
In all of this however, energy and its price shouldn’t this be discussed more thoroughly? I guess one needs to go to Gail Tverberg website at ourfiniteworld to learn the shocking danger we are truly in. Here’s a few paragraphs to ponder on:
A key issue with fossil fuels is depletion. The resources that are the least expensive to access and remove tend to be extracted first. In theory, there is a great deal more fossil fuel available, if the price rises high enough. The problem is that there is a balancing act between what the producer needs and what the consumer can afford. If energy prices rise very high, consumers are forced to cut back on their spending, pushing the economy into recession.
High oil prices were a major factor pushing the United States and other major users of oil into the Great Recession of 2007-2009. See my article in Energy, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis. In part, high oil prices made debt harder to repay, especially for low income workers with long commutes. It also made countries that used a significant share of oil in their energy mix less competitive in the world market.
The situation being encountered by some natural gas importers is indeed similar. Paying a very high price for imported natural gas is not a very acceptable situation. But not having electricity available or not being able to heat our homes is not very acceptable either.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/09/25/could-we-be-hitting-natural-gas-limits-already/
Excellent link. The Eurasian century will just be extreme depopulation for the West, and massive depopulation for Eurasia. Every resource is degraded or ending. As in a famous scene in Pinocchio, we can always put 10 gallons of ideology in our car’s tanks (ours is so pure!), once the fuel trucks stop coming to our neighborhoods.
I thought that at least coal and gas had another century to go, but it is clear that China’s electricity troubles are related to peak coal. And now the turmoil in natgas markets says that it, too, is produced in insufficient amounts.
Russia has warned it has only 30 years of oil at current extraction levels.
I thought and hoped it had 50, although who knows, there may still be Arctic discoveries in the cards.
Peak oil, peak coal, peak natural resources are propaganda created by western energy companies & governments to maintain monopoly control & pricing on existing supplies. China has not hit peak coal but is moving off coal, amongst other reasons, because of the massive health impact of coal plant smog pollution. As for Russia warning about oil supplies, their warning is not based on peak oil, but on disinvestment, Russia & their various oil/gas company executives have criticized western oil companies for failing to invest in extractive development. The arctic is known to have vast gas reserves that are untapped, but will require huge investment to begin the process of extraction. The same goes for oil, Siberia has vast regions of untapped oil reserves but the investment required to begin the extraction process is huge. The entire green agenda of the west is just a power play to place more restrictive controls on oil & gas trade – & notice something, as the US loses control & influence in the world, this green agenda takes on emphasis, that’s because the US will not control much of the oil & gas resources in the world, therefore what the US does not control or influence, it seeks to block.
excellent. then, according to your prediction, this will end sometime soon. According to my predictions, which hopefully are completely wrong, it will spread to sectors that more or less directly depend on hydrocarbons. Things like fertilizer, aluminum, polystyrene, paint. And this is going to be a cold winter, no matter what, given gas prices. I hear that in the UK people are filling the tank with gallons of neo-liberalism, since 90% of forecourts have run out of gas.
Uk has 300 yrs coal reserves…just so surprised technology is not used to to make it a clean resource….UK even imports Russia and Polish Venezuela Columbia coal!!!!!!!!
In 2019, the UK imported 6.5 million metric tons of coal and exported 740 thousand metric tons of coal.
So you would agree with Gail its about affordability {shes not peak oil} ultimately with an emphasis on the infrastructure. In fact it came as a little unusual but typical to me to read and hear about the oil sands in Canada laying off massive numbers of its workers and shutting down some of its facilities only to turn around and watch the news a few weeks later of a brand new offshore oil rig being deployed off of Nova Scotia? At the time I said or questioned within myself hmmm what they can’t do both run the oil sands and the offshore rig together? Further as Gail says many of our refineries are old and no new ones are in the pipeline to be built? We have so many things converging now that the costs are just huge, to large for consumers to pay for. I see this at work and indeed when I have to drive into the city for cap screws and for a mere 24 of them we have to pay 78.00 for them not including my time and truck time I’m left in disbelief especially when I hear we got them at a discount? I pay attention to her doom er blog. lol I have had some fascinating talks too with a previous maintenance guy well versed in peak oil, such a pleasure to and he just says about the green revolution that nothing will ever replace oil, oil will never leave us never.
Peak coal? There are several countries with well over 100 years of coal in the ground.
China is cutting coal pollution, thus the electricity issue. There is all the coal China needs in China, Russia and Ukraine.
”/…/ leaving the United States as the high cost economy with no visible means of support, because we’re not doing our own industry anymore. We’re not competing with China. We’re letting China do all of the industry, and all of a sudden we’re dependent on it. This does not bode good for prosperity in the United States or Europe and other areas that are satellites of the US economy.”
That’s neoliberalism in a nutshell. Productive industry and labour are totally anathema to it with its ’means of support’ being violence and coercion globally. And that is what’s failing in a most spectacular way as we speak. And it doesn’t help that George Soros couldn’t care less which society he’s wrecking. If he cannot subdue Russia and China, he’ll happily settle for the US.
The last bit was the most interesting. Michael says that the Chinese leadership recognises ‘the writing on the wall’. They do have friends on Wall St. but remarkably these do not outweigh their enemies in the Pentagon, MIC, and neocon think tanks. The old Marxist assumption that the base determines the superstructure no longer applies in America – and evidently Europe as well. Also he reports that the Chinese government decided not to bail out foreign investors in Chinese the real estate market. This strikes me a as big stuff. Might this turn out to be China’s ‘pivot’ away from a partnership with the Americans that began with Kissinger and Nixon? As Michael explained they can presently afford it. They do not need either American capital nor the heavily indebted American market. He goes further to clarify how it is that America is actually marginalising itself with the fanfare of sanctions and threats. Well, anyway, my thanks to whoever is responsible for posting these essays and interviews with the singular Michael Hudson. I’m delighted to discover that the Party leadership has come to take him seriously and that Party intellectuals have taken the hints to read Vol. II and III of Capital. Hudson is a paragon of clarity and purposeful vision. Without him, so many of us would be at sea.
Nice accurate comment.
Soros, Fink two peas in a pod. Good guy, bad guy, yada yada, Buyer beware. Same old same old.
This is economic intellectialism at its best. He has just made it as simple as it really looks.
Having been reared and educated in Europe I highly appreciate the coherence of Michael Hudson’s views.
But having lived in China for the last 30+ years I’m also struck by the fact that his coherence applies within the limits of a social, cultural, and moral system of thought that is rooted in the cultural field of Western societies.
———
Western classical economists recognized that individuals and their actions are influenced by the social, cultural and moral context inside which they operate. They advocated that, in the wake of the enlightenment and the British industrial revolution, market actors should be given complete freedom (laissez-faire) while recognizing the need for the state to provide for the common good. These theories remained largely in alignment with “the reason that is at work within the transformation of money into capital” that had converted South Western European long distance merchants as early as the 12th century.
What had changed between the early-days of Early-Modernity and the beginning of High-Modernity was the expansion of the rational character of “the reason” to all there is under the sun. In other words, with the enlightenment by philosophic rationalism and the industrial revolution, the Western social, cultural, and moral contextual settings had taken a more rational turn which explains why classical economics emerged soon thereafter.
With the passing of time the market economies of the West complexified while the cultural field of Western societies evolved on the less rational path of ideology : ‒ by the turn of the 20th century the two wings of liberal parties split into hard core liberal parties and social-democratic parties ‒ worker movements were in the ascendancy and hard core socialist parties were rising ‒ the first WW saw the first access to power by communists and this acted as an awakening in the minds of capital holders. In other words class dynamics were in the ascendancy :
— In a first phase, as good servants of the biggest capital holders, the economists started to integrate their ideological misgivings in their models which forced them to focus more on the individual behaviors of buyers and sellers in the market. Their ideological assumption was that the individuals always behave as rational actors. And from this initial ideological assumption neoclassical economics naturally assumed that the cost of production is a less important factor in determining the value of a product or service than the utility of the product to the consumers.
— In a second phase, in the 1960s again under the impact of class dynamics, capital holders and economists planned the deconstruction of the working class as an organized force by expanding the field of their investments to the whole world and by concentrating their Western investments in the field of information technologies. This machiavelic plan was accompanied by an ideological fight for the domination of the cultural field of Western societies (postmodernism and neoliberalism). In the process – Western hardware production facilities got nullified by externalizing their costs of production – the investments in information technologies helped to maximize the utility of software products and the consumers got glued to their screens – Western societies got atomized and lost the capacity to act as cohesive entities. This second phase completely detached the formation of capital from profit generation by making capital captive of financial credit. And as Michael noted this transformed Western economies into rentier economies that capture the citizens into debt bondage of a new feudal social order…
———-
By the end of the seventies, well aware of the new strategy of Western big capital holders, Deng Xiao Ping and his comrades observed that the Chinese nation was in danger to be broken into pieces. They decided to accommodate Western big capital holders by opening the country while reforming its ways. Their target was to industrialize as fast as possible in order to build up the capacity of the Chinese nation to resist the urge of Western imperialism to suck its blood.
The past 30 years under Mao had built up the infrastructure for agriculture to thrive and the land distribution, to the farmers around 1980, concluded with great success. The history of the country’s successful industrialization was built on that initial success :
— in the 1980s the townships, in association with the farmers, invested part of the profits from agriculture in ‘township enterprises’ which produced all kinds of very cheap products that rapidly swept the whole world.
— in the 1990s the most successful among those township enterprises received financial and managing help from central institutions and many rapidly grew into very promising national enterprises. Most of those successful township enterprises got then, at least partially, privatized. These privatized township enterprises then formed the backbone upon which many of today’s successful entrepreneurs built their fortunes.
— by the end of the 1990s the housing stock owned by the state was sold at really bargain prices to the occupants. This decision resulted in today’s extremely high home ownership rates at around 90% !
— in the 2000s private enterprises received very accommodating conditions from the authorities from land use, to public credit, to technological support and so on. Their success was largely due to these state accommodating conditions. What is not often talked about is that many of these private enterprises ended up bankrupt while the state silently lost its inputs…
China’s success was due to all those reasons. But more importantly, while this is never recognized, it is the governance of the country that has created the conditions of this success.
Governance in China is at the heart of the continuum of the country’s cultural field which goes back thousands of years. In contrast with the rest of the world governance in China has always been the fact of its men of knowledge. Its men of power, as well as the different forces at work within its society, were at all times kept subservient to the men of knowledge who governed the country. Chinese enterprises or banks might be world leaders in their fields but, as proven by the recent actuality, they are subordinates of the Chinese state.
What I have been trying to show all along this long comment is that the Chinese social, cultural, and moral system of thought is rooted in the thousands of years continuum of China’s cultural field. And the most difficult, for us Westerners, is to grasp that our Western system of thought is not adapted to China’s cultural field. In other words, as polished and coherent our discourse might appear to us, it does not really catch the attention of Chinese deep thinkers or the men of knowledge who govern the country.
“In that way, the foreign investors would be able to sort of get the profits of Chinese industry, Chinese labour, and it would become the darling stock market of the world, just like Russia’s stock market was the leading booming stock market of 1994-96. China would be run to benefit US investment bankers.”
It sounds like what you are saying is that the Clinton boom years of the 1990’s were built on the plunder of Russian state assets being privatised largely to the benefit of American vulture capitalists and the Clinton economic magic was not just the result of some dot.com bubble and American entrepreneurial genius.
Bubba’s reputation is gonna take another hit–at least in the eyes of those who value true fair play and justice for all rather than the American simulacrum used as an all-purpose con job. I can see why Bubba meddled hugely in the Russian election to keep his cash cow Yeltsin engaged, like a good puppet, in selling out his native land: more loot for his Wall Street buddies.
George Dubya Shrub, Barack Hussein Obomber, Orange Man and Dementia Man have continued the charade and, you say, set their sights on China as the next mark. The pity is that it is hideous self-serving trolls and gnomes like Soros and Browder that walk away with the dreams and fruits of the labor of entire countries now. They’ve already plucked America clean. American workers have no hope of a “better life.” The vineyard has been striped bare and even the rootstock is dead. After Russia, China would seem to be the last target left, until India gets its act together. Without shame, Wall Street will shake down even the untouchables for the two pitiful rupees they might be able to rub together. Soros will surely come back as a blow fly in his next life.
What Hudson proposes in terms of economic development were the same policies – state capitalism from above – which both Germany and the United States implemented in the late 19th century. In the US the main proponent of this industrial state capitalism was Alexander Hamilton and in Germany, Friedrich List. These policies were designed to break British hegemony which ultimately they did. List commented in this connexion that:
”At the opening of Parliament in 1721, the King is made to say by the Ministry that ‘it is evident that nothing so much contributes to promote public well-being a the exportation of manufactured goods and the importation of foreign raw materials. This for centuries had been the ruling maxim of English commercial policy … Clearly the rise and growth of manufactures in England, with the increase in population resulting from it, tended to create an active demand from the population at large.” (Friedrich List – A National System of Political Economy)
Free-trade be damned, countries wishing to develop their economies have invariably adopted the state capitalist model – an industrial system based upon the internal promotion and export of goods and services and the import of raw materials which cannot be produced internally without eschewing free-market policies. The development of the East Asian model has attested to this development.
In the United States Alexander Hamilton argued that competition from abroad and ‘force of habit’ would mean that new industries which would soon become internationally competitive (infant industries) would not be started in the USA, unless their initial losses were guaranteed by government aid. Such aid, could take the form of import duties, or, in rare cases, prohibition of imports. Hamilton’s recommendations had a tough time getting through the free-market defenders of the faith, but this didn’t stop tariffs gradually increasing 12.5% to double with the 1812 war against the British. But the inexorable forces of development economics pushed the United States to adopt unilateral nation-building which necessarily abjured free-market policies. The US government was to put Hamilton’s theories to the test more diligently than any other country for over a century (1816-1945). During this period the USA had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufacturing imports in the world and didn’t open up their markets until well into the 20th century.
Of course, and as economic policies go, it was entirely possible to open domestic markets to the rest of the world without any sort of protection and stand by and watch the economic development. or rather lack off it, work out. Such were the disastrous free-trade policies of the Yeltsin regime in Russia in 1980s, which need no further comment. Such are the vagaries of free markets without protection.
And from early 20th century a trojan horse named Pilgrim Society took over the USA and thereafter followed world wars and revolutions setup by the controllers.
I suggest you look at Simon Patten, who was the first economist to move from an “economy of scarcity” to an “economy of abundance,” and eventually chaired the Wharton Business School at University of Pennsylvania. Hudson often remarks about him and his vision, and wrote ” Simon Patten on Public Infrastructure and Economic Rent Capture” ten years ago and republished ” On Simon Patten” almost 4 years ago due to his importance. His airbrushing from history books and the elimination of political-economy from university studies led Hudson to say:
“Simon Patten, who led the Wharton School during the Progressive Era, was a pioneer of the economics of abundance, theorist of the second industrial revolution, and intellectual godfather of the New Deal. His descent into obscurity poses provocative questions about how the field has evolved.”
Few know what was done to install Neoliberalism and its Finance Capitalism as the Outlaw US Empire’s guiding economic doctrine that Hudson’s done so much to expose. It began in 1860s England as a reaction to the reforms pushed by Classical Economists, morphed into the Anti-Communist Crusade, and most recently was the force behind the adoption of the policy goal of attaining Full Spectrum Domination that was announced in 1996 and repeated in 2000. Hudson’s unique in that he’s connected most of the dots from the ancients to today.
Hudson also mentions Thorstein Veblen who was the dean of the Institutionalist School of Political Economy within the USA. His entire conclusion in this essay centers on him:
” Significance of Veblen for Today
“As the heirs to classical political economy and the German historical school, the American institutionalists retained rent theory and its corollary idea of unearned income. More than any other institutionalist, Veblen emphasized the dynamics of banks financing real estate speculation and Wall Street maneuvering to organize monopolies and trusts. Yet despite the popularity of his writings with the reading public, his contribution has remained isolated from the academic mainstream, and he did not leave a ‘school.’ The rentier strategy has been to make rent extraction invisible, not the center of attention it occupied in classical political economy. One barely sees today a quantification of the degree to which overhead charges for rent, insurance and interest are rising above the cost of production, even as this prices financialized economies out of world markets.
“The narrowing of Chicago-style monetarism and neoliberalism has left the economics discipline in much the state that Max Planck applied to physics from Maxwell to Einstein: Progress occurs one funeral at a time. The old conservatives die off, freeing the way for more progressive successors to take the steering wheel. But what makes today’s economics different is that it actually would help to look backward, to the epoch before the financial sector and its allied rentier interests hijacked the discipline. The most systematic analysis of this process was that of Veblen nearly a century ago. It remains sufficiently relevant that Marxists and more heterodox critics have incorporated his theorizing into their worldview.”
Those with a greater interest in this overall discussion that heed Hudson’s suggestion “to look backward, to the epoch before… ” would want to read his PhD Dissertation from 1969 about an American economist few will know, Preshine Smith, which you’ll find here.
And there’s so much more the avid student can mine from Hudson’s website. His upcoming book will be a must read.
That quote by Veblen is interesting for it makes me think of rent extraction differently. Here in the lower mainland its a big thing to have or buy homes with self contained suites so the homeowner can extract rent to pay his mortgage for him lol? Talk about unearned income? Wow! And then when the homeowner sells well the quote “Progress occurs one funeral at a time,” sums it up quite succinctly I’d say. We have quite the homeless problem which government tax dollars are supposed to solve?
Strange reading the comment section of doomer blog http://www.ourfiniteworld.com from time to time it helps some with the psychology/insanity of this stupidity / madness. lol
Cheers
“His descent into obscurity poses provocative questions about how the field has evolved.”
Provocative questions? Indeed and I’d answer that with well he was a Christian and white? It also raises for me the question of the publisher Logos International which was the publisher of Dr. Willard Cantelon’s books? They disappeared?!?!?!?!
Bury the truth shall we?
Upon reading this I cannot help but think of that idea of a nationwide fifteen dollar and hour minimum wage which is floating around here in the U.S.A. The thought that the working poor need to make more money to have a decent living. Granted a little extra money is nice, but the real problem is prices of basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter are way too high. So, high that U.S. manufacturers are noncompetative in a world market place. Few people stateside are thinking about the other side of the equation. Seldom discussed is why is the cost of living so high? Micheal Hudson appears to have answered it in this interview. Rather than raising wages, politicains ought to be figuring out how to push prices down, but then again that would get into Wall Street profits. I suppose for us, we ought to be spending more time figuring out how not be spending so much money. e.g. chuck the cell phone, forget the fancy car, quit buying junk one does not need; that just makes Wall Street richer, and us poorer. Plant a garden, and enjoy life instead.
Become a real estate agent. I was told the guy who sold that house for 1.7 mil worked not even one hour and walked away with enough money to buy a small plane lol?
And then we have Evergrande….I wonder what the guy who bought the house is going to do when the bubble bursts. I suppose that is not the real estate agent’s problem though.
I have always been amazed by poverty in the US.
How is there so much poverty in a country with a per capita income of USD 68,000?
This article explains a bit as to the reasons.
@ jiri
You’ll find the rest of the answers here:
https://youtu.be/qZM6TJ4Cvb0
You can watch the complete interview on RT UK:
https://youtu.be/LAwFs22Rmqw
This is superb analysis:
There is something, but the more I read the logical reasoning of the economic “unearthing” from a economics line of reasoning, the more something started to nag at my insides.
I know this is not going to sit well with anyone who reads this…but .. the author did too good a job explaining it. I know this sounds like a backwards compliment- kind of like how can one complain about getting an A+++ job explaining something and you (me) still have a problem with it.
I do not have a problem with the analysis part, it was great… I am not complaining, best to date from author/ or any other economists (Max like in nature.).
I just feel that there is an element of this whole system that seems already pre-planed out beyond our level of conscience thought, in a 4 -5 D chess level (which I am trying to imply is beyond analysis on a 3 D level- earthly).
So to get to my point, and I know the author already covered lots of history and economics cycles, to uncover lots of underlying issues (which I agree with.) It is just that I can not help but notice that there is an element of economics which runs counter to logic (which suggests another purpose..)
It would run over, over-lapping into say the sketchy gray area of thought- which I guess is not economics in nature– but this is the comment section–not the article itself– and everyone else in the comment section already covered the “economics” part really well… so I do not want to be redundant, it is sort of a difficult (not academic) realm…but a comment section is the only place I may bring it up…
So I will try to elaborate with a parallel, that troubles me, when the British Empire, used Gun Boat Diplomacy, essentially it opened (history and economics overlapping) China’s closed economy by sticking lots of boats with cannons near their shores and said “Do trade with us or else.”
So I question, why the need to open up trade, to this extent, unless one also wants to inject British values (materialistic) into this Chinese equation.
If one is that smart to try to change culture, is one smart enough to consider, policy, and economic cycles into the future, say have cycles continue, say force change, observe consequences, forces change observe consequences,,, etc, etc.
What I mean to say is all the economics cycles do not really add up to economics cycles to me..,I expect there is something else going on, meaning the original planners (thousands of years of cycles in succession) so it is not human in nature… are expecting a “response” in the future, and already planed for it, for political not economic reasons..,which are all hidden in nature.. I believe this is the element that is not logical…it is for a reason (to cover their tracks)…
This is the only way I can square history and economics is to overlap a religious context… otherwise there are parts to it all that just seem to illogical. It seems to me once I overlap a religious context than the illogical parts make sense- which once again- I know the author can not write about–but this is the comment section== meaning the article is good but I am just injecting “food for thought” in the hypothetical realm of you will…not really for anyone to reply to but just to slightly configure the conversation in a context that brings a little more “meaningful” meaning to one because it sort of suggests an over lapping concern we can not write about or speak about but that exists none the less.
It is just that there is an element of all of economics that is not logical in nature (more just outright evil) but not really preve’ to.
In other words what the author says and reasoning is correct but I fear that consequence was already part of the social-economic- overlapping religious part –hence it (China’s response) was being already observed over the centuries and thus was already predicted…meaning it is part of a set-up , a means to an end, which is where the religious thought over laps this… it gives a purpose to the random nature of economics and history and culture.
So the answer is somewhere is the heavens above, not here, this is temporal, and not really preve to our analysis in the way we are forced to discuss it (not author’s predicament to solve- but a much bigger problem.)
Bostonian; You are quite right.
What the modern era is singularly lacking is a language with which to assimilate the overarching reality of the cosmic movement that over lights this whole agonized drama. One does not have to go back too far in history to find intelligent people talking seriously in terms of “god’s plan”. However modernity has buried this dimension of understanding and is bereft in its thinking for its absence. As i see it the solution to the current global crisis must include giving pride of place to the deeper cosmic dimension which is the real key to the puzzle. But to do that causes one to immediately run up against the resistance of “egoism” which has been conditioned to believe it is entitled to strut about the world stage thinking that it owns the whole show. Capitalist imperialism is the highest stage of egoism. With a hideously patriarchal twist.
Another was of saying it, to employ modern European mythology, is that Faust (bourgeois ego) has assumed dictatorship of economic thought. Faust seeks possession of all of the powers of the world and is given to take such possession, provided he renounces all fealty to God. (Hence Western imperialism) So now Faust (the bourgeoisie) lives in terror of his denied God. But his salvation and final release from his denial is in the hands of the divine feminine.
So if we look into this situation with a keen psychological eye I believe what we encounter is a dialectical contradiction between egoism and awakening spirit. It is the one dimensional arrogance of ego which presumes custody over the mass mind. Economic thought tends to get lost in the illusions of egoism. But I do not consider Hudson to be so blinded.
“But the military-industrial complex (MIC) has its own agenda, along with the neocon and neoliberal advocates of unique U.S. unilateralism.”
That’s a nice way of saying that the AngloZionist Empire only knows how to dominate and exploit what used to be called third-world nations. When facing a challenge, like with China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they can only double-down and do more of the same. It isn’t just that Wall Street wants a free lunch, it’s that we are in the middle of the Great Reset and there’s no going back to being a “normal” nation that works for a living and pays its bills.
“We have become enslaved to the Beast. The Beast calls the shots on boom or bust of our economies, on who should be shackled by debt, when and where a pandemic should break out, and on the conditions of surviving the pandemic, for example, social confinement. And to top it all off – the instruments the Beast uses, very cleverly, are a tiny-tiny invisible enemy, called a virus, and a huge but also invisible monster, called FEAR. That keeps us off the street, off reunions with our friends, and off our social entertainment, theatre, sports, or a picnic in the park.” (Peter Koenig)
The Beast is, of course, the same bunch of money changers that Jesus threw out of the Temple and what St. Paul called the Powers That Be. They have morphed into being the financial elites that today control everything. They are about to nuke what’s left of the US economy and destroy the dollar. There is no way out of this except for separating ourselves from the 1913 Federal Reserve Act and print our own US-economy-based money – not fiat FED-money, as is the case today. That would mean cutting the more than 100-year-old ties to the Rothschild and Co. clan-owned FED and creating a real peoples-owned central bank.
Chances are, this will never happen, as the crazy Zionists will not only nuke the US economy, but all of humanity as well in an apocalyptic final battle between good (them) and evil (everyone else) that chosenites of all stripes pray will happen soon.
Renegade is a good programme…but having it written here has made it easier to understand such matters…especially by the excellent MH. …so also thanks to who found and posted this. Appreciated.
So, to do a follow up on my previous post- which I believe needs more explanation- (it is not up at the time I am posting this- so just assume it is a necessary follow up to an earlier post.)
The more I look at history (which always overlaps economics) the more I realize (it is not presented to one this way in college/universities or public schools) it does not make any sense unless one looks at it with a skeptical “eye.”
In other words things are not what they appear to be.
Meaning there are parts of world history (I will give concrete examples later) which make absolutely no sense without injecting or inferring that “well that is just how people must act / or think” must be part of our make-up – part of our human condition- that is just how humans are.”
This is part of the plan in doing it- it was not the actual historical event which was the aim- but the actual recording of the event (eventually in writing- who ever controls the printing part – already knows they control this part – no matter which part of the globe we are talking about- but let’s just assume it refers to which ever nation or empire controls the most power, at that particular point- they always intend on controlling the narrative.
The reason why controlling the narrative (not history) becomes important in order for people to draw the intended inference. The inference is hidden in nature – it is the 2nd and 3rd inference (unconscious) level which was the point of the political theater (it was never intended to be historical or economical in nature) – it was just a ruse to get to the hidden objective – the real meaning may be found there- or else “history” makes not sense – it simply can not be interpreted correctly.
I never took a “philosophy of history or economics course” nor have I ever thought about this before it is just my previous post got me realizing I better explain it better- and in the process I figured out something that was always troubling me about history and macro-economics when I learned it in college.
The other thing that raised a hair on the back of my neck (way back then say 25 ish years ago) was the manor the professors present it. It was too exact- the professor had a take on every aspect-be it history or economics- if one veered off the beaten path even a little- immediate grade punishment. So one learned very quickly how one was expected to “learn.”
The entire process seemed a bit to contrived– but one is unable to process it– to understand how or why it is contrived unless one is able to sit back–many years later without fear– and be reasonable about the topic(s)- shine critical thinking light on it– and think really hard if it makes sense.
So the examples are never ending in scope, they all seem to follow patterns based on first thousands, then hundreds, and eventually just decades are needed to pull a population’s thinking in a certain direction (usually globally). Essentially the more history builds upon itself in successive layers- the easier it gets to pull off the next bit of history because one can assume the previous history is already present in the collective sub-conscience (the actual is always true because it was always the intent to control the narrative with this purpose in mind).
No matter which part of history I look at Ottoman Empire- World War 1 and World War 2, to the present predicament with paid mercenary (ISIS, ISAL, do not know other names keep morphing daily can not keep up any more) – they all seem to follow the same patters.
History really is repeating itself- just not in way we are taught to interpret it.
1) When I look at the Ottoman Empire – I see loads of history- which are meaningless when taught (one has to go to a private school to get this–they do not teach it in public school- possible even University. It is only when one learns it at a private school where one learns Islamic religion and its progression in history and how this overlapped with the Ottoman Empire’s version does one suddenly become struck with the disparity–the two are diametrically opposed to one another.
The Muslim professor who teaches it knows this to be the case, but presents the history lesson as an independent event, which it is not–it is too closely related to the time and time scale reference to the Last Prophet and Quran as point of reference for it to be acting as an Islamic Empire- the two are antithetical- they do not match up.
Unless, and this is the part they do not teach in private school– (Sheikh Imran Hosien is the only person I know of in the world who managed to explain it- in a way that finally makes sense..) they are meant to overlap (in this case the religious (Islamic Empire) and the history part (diplomatic missions part “history part”) in order for us to confuse / mix up (intended purpose) how we are to “understand” a said group of people – culture- or in this case re-interpret religion in a way that is a ruse- never meant to be (for an evil purpose).
All this is assumed to take lots of planning to execute properly- and lots and lots of control of the narrative in order to pull it off. Essentially once someone presents a credible counter-narrative the entire plot starts to fall apart, so essentially the narrative needs to be kept in place on a global level. Critical thinking can expose it, but the very nature of the problem will prevent it from being exposed because it has an “evil” component which when one understands who it is implemented and executed over thousands of years and has a global reach and control to it-goes against all academia in it’s presentation. The problem is one can not make sense of history or it’s overlapping economies by implication unless one draws many inferences about these 1st and 2nd degree levels of thought- one has to delve into the 1st into the philosophical – then critical thinking- then whatever is possible in science at the time (what is technologically possible to pull off.) and finally religious thought to decipher what might be possible actually happening.
The only way I can “square” Ottoman history with the relative Islamic grounding is to come to the conclusion that the two do not overlap- and the only way I can square that is with a 4 or 5 Dimensional approach– namely are different branches of differently groups being set-up to prevent alliances from forming 100’s or thousands of years into the future, that is the only explanation that “squares.” This is not presented in history nor economics nor any version of religion- they need to overlap – and then with critical thinking – a hidden explanation suddenly becomes apparent.
The same phenomenon happens when I try to map out world war 1 and 2 on a world map. I come to exactly the same conclusion. I see chaos- it is simply not logical when I map out who got in a war with whom- and for what reason.
Until one overlaps the hidden themes of false flags, which family was running around making tons of $$$ causing wars to take place, and for what purpose (which gives an actual reasonable explanation why the economic crashes happened (not what we were taught- or could read about- or see a video on) who benefited from a crash- happening – what they actually did before the crash- and after- and how governments were paid off to cause world wars.
Think about the implications, literally millions and millions of people died (I believe the most lives lost were Russian- the entire concept is lost in Western versions of history– again this complies with a hidden 4-5 D like plan) it is intended to be hidden but to evoke a subconscious emotions or thought patterns in order to hide the deception–but very necessary in order to drive civilization to the next step– to get history to move forward in a predicted pre-planed manor, to get to the next world war.
The 4 -5 D level of thinking comes in when one realized it is impossible for a human or group of humans to plan for and carry out the death and destruction of people and property on this unprecedented level in history it simply put is just too evil to attribute human qualities too. No one is capable to this type of planning and evil.
Yet it, the planning and execution part happened, it is part of our reality.
This implies something important.
Lastly the same applies to ISIS or ISAL or whatever derivation thereof happens= I can not “square” Islam- and terrorism together- they are incompatible – one can not apply the Quran to invading another country. Jihad is only allowed in cases of defense not offence.
Yet that is exactly what is happening.
They may look Muslim–but come on lets get real here–on can not tell one’s religion by one’s race– or how one looks –simply impossible.
This is where science come in–what is possible in the field of science that might explain a sudden appearance of mercenaries to show up on the scene–and do essential the impossible–claim they are “Islamic” in nature.
This gives off the same “smell” as the Ottoman version narrative of history, and WW1 and WW2 backstabbing versions of history–with the propose of deception– in order to buy into the next stage of global / world conflict and economic coercion.
To a certain extend science-economics-religion- deception- critical thinking- and pretty much most forms of thought all are being deployed for the purposes of driving society and humanity in certain directions
Apology if my post is going on too long–
1) if elements of post 2 are correct in regards to ISIL and ISIS or whatever derivation exists presently (I believe the name changes are by design because it exponentially skyrockets humanity’s animus /alienation/ contempt for a particular global event (pre-paid mercenary war) which in turn causes exponential animus / disgust/ hostility to/ a particular religion (ask yourself who / or which group hates Islam the most to uncover the ones that benefit from this situation)- which again I do not square with that religion- which has been set up, really bad- Ottomans- Palestinians- 9/11- Hollywood- most of world history and subsequent media representations and data, and the global order, etc, etc, along with all Muslim nations being compliant / yielding/ to this global narrative- due to global control of world financial $$$ lenders (all private – none public in nature) – and a yielding to the Zionist narrative- ).
2) So I do not believe elements of (1) ISIS or ISIL (whatever at this point) are acting independently of a global shift in order– they are paid armies- of very dubious origins (the science part)== turkey is playing a role here–why doesn’t ISIS or ISIL attack America or Israel or Turkey—eh?! why are they so pin-point accurate in where they show up– how come they keep appearing– or re-appearing– is it possible–who is benefiting from their presence– I guarantee one- Islam is not benefiting from their presence – nor is God. So what is their purpose?
3) If no one benefits from their presence – except maybe one or two countries on planet earth– then what is their real purpose?
4) History is repeating
5) Their real purpose if on the sub-conscious level?
6) If for example we assume WW3 possible (WW1 and WW2 happened under less circumstance) then that would be a likely purpose for ISIS /ISAL and why the names keep morphing— to set up a stage of disunity before a religious figure (Anti-religious) the Israel is waiting (lusting after) to arrive- and his purpose is Anti-religious by nature– which means the stage needs to be set up where Christians and Muslims and Jews do not unite against Anti-religious figure set to show up (Anti-Christ) 1st in Syria (this would explain the situation there presently) then moves to lead Israel to rule the world.
7) This explains the purpose of ISIS an ISAL- it is to set up hate for “I”slam- based on their name being constantly plastered around the globe (they even get Muslim nations to do this) so that the Anti-Christ can augment disunity among religions but especially Islam before he gets here.
8) They (ISIS and ISAL) are evil – but one can think of this as the secondary problem- the real evil is who is housing them and paying their wages–again history repeating itself– Bolsheviks in nature—like the late Stephen Cohen (Emeritus Russian Studies Princeton) described it “they came to power when everyone else was on a bathroom break”- a coup d’etat for the purposes of dismantling Christianity via USSR creation, a Zionist abomination, which same Bolsheviks imploded USSR to let Russia come back into power – to help Zionist plans – to get rid of West in a hot war– leaving Israel okay==Hence doing this on the world / global set up to copy -history repeating itself – what happened to USSR and the dismantling of Christianity== but now occurring to Islam through the global pre-paid / pre- planned appearance of ISIL and ISIS, by essentially just repeating their name over and over and over in the global media- and global sub-conscience.
9) This is all pre-planned out ahead of time– it has repeated through out history– it is not Muslims (individually) who are aiding the ISIS or ISAL to exist- Muslims do not know them – can not make any sense of them..Muslims are completely confused as to where they came from or who they are, or even what to think of them.
10) This is hypothetical in nature- just theory– I am not preve to science derivations of this sort-but I am aware of the fact cloning technology exists, I also know that Satan himself was able to impersonate a person who came to a group of Muslims during his existence (a Hadith / or saying of Last Prophet) where he explained to the group of followers- that the man (unknown to the group) was in fact Satan – not a man- a devil (jinn) BUT the Prophet knew this information, where as no one in the group was preve to this fact…
11) I do not know who ISIS/ ISAL (whoever) are..I just know I can not figure out their actions based on their supplied names (which keep morphing / err “shifting”) based on their “Islamic” designations–
12) seems related to splintering religious identity of Islam- to splinter any resistance possible Anti-Christ will eventually face on his eventual and final rampage through earth– because it will be obvious it is religious in nature when he literally demands everyone bow down and worship him as a God (he actually travels around to every point on earth with his evil compadres– against God (the real one) demanding worship (haddiths)
13) Hence at that point the rest of humanity has one of two choice, become religious fast, and fight (be willing to) or die (eventually) a disbeliever in God (guarantees Hell) because Prophet Isa/ Jesus Christ is returning – (the real Messiah) which will guarantee the defeat of all non-religious practices (a Haddith- outlines him making a prayer- to wipe out the remaining ungodly forces “evil” who are subsequently attacked by a virus which causes paralysis- so they are eventually defeated for good)
14) Last point about history repeating itself is the Pharaoh also had a similar compadres around him that the Anti-Christ is said to have around him (according to Quran and Hadiths) consisting of magicians / wizards…indicating a demonic element… and their inability to be defeated until a Prophet and God step in to remedy the situation.
15) The historical and economic situations do not “square” properly unless I write about some religious occurrences – I am not pushing one religious affiliation over the other- as long as they agree on a God (one) (which all three monotheistic religions agree on anyway)
There is one last thing I just remember- but it may or may not be helpful for someone out there–so I better mention it…
Weather planet earth gets in a hot war or not, is not really the important point…
because–
There is a Haddith (saying of the Last Prophet) which I initially thought only applies to Muslims- but now I realize applies to humanity as a whole- even those without religious affiliations (say atheists for example) – it is basically warning mankind to get one’s fixed belief in a one God (say for example intelligent design) before any of the last major signs of the Day of Judgement occur:
because :
1) Another hadith describes global huge events occurring in rapid succession, one after the other, of a enormous nature, after the 1st major sign happens (if a hot war happens that would be it) described as “events occurring one after another (last 10 ) in rapid succession – as if a necklace is cut and the first bead/pearl falls off, and the other ones fall off faster and faster in rapid succession (after 1st sign occurrs).
2) Another hadith describes the necessity to have a belief in one God (monotheism) (say intelligent design or whatever one chooses) before the 1st of the last signs occurs (say a hot war) because one’s faith in a God will not be accepted / and repentance not accepted after the 1st of the last ten signs occurs-because it states as a reason that everyone will believe a God exists after the 1st event (I believe this means the world everyone takes for granted – the beauty- nature- birds – flowers- ocean waves etc. will suddenly stop- for the most part- over much of the planet- so this will have the effect of jarring the remaining so much as to force a “yearning” back to the way the earth used to be (hence a belief in God)- which the Anti- Christ will still seek to erase.
3) Peace onto every person- who may or may not read this
Guess what the Chinese economy has just finished building for its future:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vScCDXnoWqY
Now compare the above to what The Greatest Nation On Planet Earth has been building and investing in for its future.
It is ironic that if this is the path China is following, then it is akin to the model proposed by Catholics of subsidiarity, which has been developed in modern forms ever since the guild system. Of putting limits on corps so they do not get too large and therefore breaking things up when necessary and dividing and distributing the economy up evenly, maintaining competition, and no oversized monopolies outside of a few consumer brands. There is no such thing as perpetual everlasting growth into infinity. Even ancient Israel had its great resets every jubilee, and the economy factored that in and debts and loans were handled accordingly. At some point one has enough wealth where making more doesn’t add anything, and thus while it is immoral to rob someone of their just labour, it is another thing to prevent their reach so that others may have their opportunity to gain wealth, but each one will work to earn it. Likewise there are things that should be made to serve their purpose. Homes are meant to live in. Not just be a parking spot for wealth accumulation that necessitates value increasing arbitrarily without any actual value added to it materially. Real estate naturally has value, but it should be created and exchanged such that they serve the purpose for which they are built – to be inhabited and lived in and worked in. Much the same for money and currencies. Inflation should be tied to population growth, where each human being has perceived value as a labourer and requires the use of money to earn and make purchases, and only on this concern should it be necessary to print more. There is a lot of wisdom in the old ways of doing things. They lacked the technological means to really make things shine, but the views of the Church were logically sound. Avoiding the largese and greed of Capitalism, and the theft and constrictions of socialism.
The growth of US real economy per capita ended in August 1971 with Nixon’s Shock (cut last connection between dollar and gold) . What has grown is fake virtual economy, making money with money.
I have never read such a well balanced interview with so much information in so few words – enough to understand the current state of affairs and all that is happening in the world.
Mr. Hudson puts things in such simple and easy mamner. No confusing technical terminology is used.
The postscript mentions world economy fracturing into the US centered vs the rest of the world. How can that happen. How can the parasite survive without the host. The parasite will die if it finds no host. Don’t you think so?
One of the aspects not thoroughly touched on is a comparison of what one gets w/money. In the U$, money can get a private army to shoot strikers, money can get laws written to protect profits for those w/money, or support a foreign government to the detriment of one’s own nation. Money is, and always has been completely entrenched w/power in the U$. We have heads of private banks as Treasury Secretaries, arms lobbyists as Defense Secretaries, and multinational ag. executives as Agriculture Secretaries. What could possibly go wrong? We don’t have any kind of universal healthcare because joe lieberman’s, evan bayh’s and max baucus’s wives worked for pharma and insurance companies. We won’t get price negotiations for pharmaceuticals because tom carper’s wife works for the pharma industry. The entire government of the U$ is set up to negate, ignore, or counter the wishes of the public when issues of money are at stake.
In China, public servants are, and always have been educated, trained and evaluated for careers in Public Service. They don’t buy their positions through influence, at least not to the degree as practiced in the U$. I don’t think that money is nearly as entrenched w/power in China as it is in the U$, and that is a very big difference.
Its clear Xi is not going to give this fortune cookie called China to outside moneychangers like Soros and his associates nor should he. And many of those associates are in fact elite US Democrats and RINO GOP people & backers, not Trump supporters. This is where Trump policies were more China friendly in the long term wanting both countries to retain control of their economic assets but manage the trade flows better.
It was in China’s long term interests to keep the US bouyant & strong in order to be able to pay for Chinese goods. The globalist path – currently in operation since the US 2020 elections – doesnt not allow that.
The standard practice of the moneychangers throughout history is to create a “boom” and flood a economy / country with debt, then crash the markets and come in a buy up everything for cents of the dollar.
In the 1990s the target was Russia and Eastern Europe, and now China.
And also the US under Biden and the Democrats and RINOs thru alleged pandemics and printing money until it becomes greatly devalued.
The attempt to bring down the US economy is I think also designed to bring China down with it.
As if US demand and the US$ collapses China goes down too.
Michael Hudson in typical style dropping nuclear truth bombs…