‘The Destiny of Civilization’

michael hudson

you you have to back politicians who are   00:52:41 willing to change this and unfortunately there's  no party that's uh in favor of canceling student   debt or any kind of debt in the united states  because the political parties are subsidized   by the banking in the financial sector so  uh i don't see uh i don't see a way out

there's a landlord tax the the  one percent in their day were the landlords you   have to tax away the land rent and make that  the public uh tax base not income not taxes on   consumer goods not taxes on capital because you  want good capital investment you want fortunes to   00:45:07 be made in a good way that add to the economy's  productivity you don't want them to be made in   a predatory bad way uh the whole fight to tax  economic rent and to even recognize that most   income is unearned when you talk about the uh  income disparity almost all this disparity is   unearned income it's economic rent it's not  income that's made by increasing uh production   00:45:33 it's not income that's made by increasing living  standards it's just predatory rent seeking from   special privileges that the wealthy have gained  from government and today it's not the landlord   class anymore as it was in the 19th century it's  the financial class and the raw materials class   uh and uh without dealing uh with this uh  cl structure i don't uh the system is going   00:45:57 to shrink and shrink and we've seen this before  we saw it in rome the same kind of polarization   and concentration of wealth in the roman empire  well the last stage of that is feudalism so we're   back to what rosa luxemburg said the choice is  between socialism and barbarism basically and uh   there's no other way to do it you can't  solve the problems within the existing system   00:46:23 because it's controlled already by the one  percent

you  see a lot of third world debts that uh if the   third world better countries have to pay uh their  foreign debts under as the world economy slows   down they're going to be subject to austerity to  the world banks and the imf's austerity programs   00:35:01 and they're going to be kept in poverty uh is it  really right that they should be kept in poverty   just to enrich the bondholders of the one percent  the one percent will say yes that's why we're   the one percent so that we can impoverish  other people that's our liberty our liberty   is the right to impoverish other people and reduce  them to dependency uh that will happen if you do   not write down the debts uh it's already happening  in the united states to the student debt uh crisis   00:35:30 where students uh have to pay so much money uh as  they fall behind on their student debts that they   can't afford to take out mortgages to buy homes  uh and you're having the home ownership rates   plunge in the united states that's the result of  leaving the debts in place uh the mortgage steps   uh uh are causing shrinkage so there is no way  to get out of this economic polarization without   00:35:54 a debt write down and that's something that  is too radical and uh uh when we talked about   when i was referring to what china's doing i'm  referring to what it's doing today and tomorrow   about uh the uh real estate company evergreen  uh uh china has a choice is it going to leave   evergreen's real estate debts in place and every  grand uh as a real estate company is two to three   00:36:21 percent of the entire chinese economy if it  pays the foreign creditors and the domestic   one percent of china it's going to impoverish the  uh the employees of evergrand it's going to make   housing prices more and more expensive in china  china has had a debt finance housing boom uh   if you leave the debts in place then uh you're  you're going to impoverish china and obviously   00:36:47 china is going to say i'm we're not going to put  the creditors first we're not going to do what   the west does and say the sanctity of debt service  debts are uh that you owe or sacred uh it's worth   sacrificing the economy it's worth plunging the  economy into poverty just to preserve the wealth   of the one percent i think china's uh is going to  make the opposite decision and say we're not going   00:37:12 to commit political suicide we're going to operate  for it's a socialist economy and when it comes to   debt and credit thank god we have our banking in  the public domain and since the public domain the   people's bank of china is the creditor they can  afford to write down the debt without having any   political backlash because it's cancelling that  so do itself uh which is a great advantage uh and   00:37:38 it's also uh as for the private bond holders uh  it's going to say well sorry bondholders you made   loans to a company that was way over leveraged  uh already uh the american bond rating companies   have reduced their bond rating to chunk so you  knew what you were buying if you continued to hold   bonds that uh fitch and other bond raiders moody's  all say or junk and you lose your money well   00:38:03 you took the risk you got a high rate of  interest now you're you're paying the price   that's how markets work uh and uh that really  uh is the argument and i think uh you have to   uh obviously what i'm suggesting is a radical  step just as you're suggesting of taxing wealth   would require the radical step of closing down  offshore banking centers of simply negating uh if   00:38:28 banks would simply erase all of the deposits  they have from the offshore banking centers from   the cayman islands from from panama from uh from  liberia to all the places that began by to be set   up by the mining companies the oil companies  and then were set up beginning in the 1960s   essentially by the cia to finance  the vietnam war by making america   like england the home for criminal capital  for flight capital all this uh all this flight   00:38:57 capital and the kleptocracy that you mentioned  in russia all this really should be wiped out   and if you leave this capital if you leave this  one percent in place the economy is going to be   sacrificed and shrinking is it worth shrinking  the economy just to leave the one percent in place   and if you challenge them that's pretty radical  that's really what i think marx would say today

it's what i write about and that is why what  is it that has created this uh uh disparity   and why is it widened so much since 1980. well  the most obvious reason is uh interest rates   reached a peak of 20 in uh 1980 and they've gone  down ever since well in the late 1970s uh my old   00:16:50 boss's boss at chase manhattan paul volcker  said let's raise interest rates to very high   because the 99 are getting too much income their  wages are going up let's uh raise interest to slow   the economy and that will prevent wages from going  up and he did and that was a large uh reason why   carter lost the the election to ronald reagan  interest rates then went down from 20 to almost 0   00:17:20 today the result was the largest bond market boom  in history bonds went way up in price the economy   was flooded with bank credit and most of this  credit uh apart from going into the bond market   went into real estate and there is a uh symbiosis  between finance and real estate and also between   finance and raw materials and also like oil and  gas and minerals uh extraction natural resource   00:17:48 rent land rent and also monopoly rent and most of  the monopoly rent has come from the privatization   that you had from ronald reagan margaret thatcher  and the whole neoliberalism uh if you look at how   did this one percent get most of its wealth well  if you look at the forbes list of the billionaires   in almost every country they got wealth in  the old-fashioned way from taking it from   00:18:13 the public domain in other words privatization  you have the largest privatization and transfer   of wealth from the public sector to uh the private  sector and specifically to the financial sector uh   in in history uh sell-offs and all of a sudden  instead of uh infrastructure uh public health uh   other uh basic needs being provided at subsidized  rates to the population you have uh privatized   00:18:41 owners uh financed by the banks raising the rates  to whatever rate they can get without any market   firing power uh in the united states the  government is not even allowed to bargain with   the pharmaceutical companies for the drug prices  so there's been a huge monopolization a huge   privatization a huge flooding of the economy with  credit and one person's credit is somebody else's   00:19:11 uh debt so you you've described the one percent's  wealth in the form of uh savings but uh i focus   on the other side of the balance sheet this one  percent finds its counterpart in the debts of the   99 so the one percent has got wealthy by indebting  the 99 uh for housing that is soared in price 20   00:19:37 uh just in the last year in the united states uh  for medical care for uh utilities for education   uh the economy is being forced increasingly  into debt and how how can one uh solve this   taxation will not be enough the only way  that you can uh actually reverse this uh   concentration of wealth is to begin wiping out uh  the debt if you leave the debt in place of the 99   00:20:10 uh then uh you're going to leave the one percent  savings all in place uh and these savings are   largely tax exempt uh so basically i think you  you uh left out the government's role in this   wealth creation of the one percent so your  finance has indeed grown faster than economy   absorbed real estate into the finance insurance  and real estate sector the fire sector finances   00:20:39 absorb the oil industry the mining industry  and it's absorbed most of the government so the   financial wealth has spilled over to become  essentially the economy's central planner   it's not planned in washington or paris or london  it's planned in wall street the city of london   and the paris ports the economy is being managed  financially and the object of financial management   00:21:04 isn't really to make money it's capital gains  and again as your statistics point out capital   gains are really what explains the increase  in wealth you don't get rich by saving the   income rent is for paying interest income is for  paying interest you get rich off the government   basically subsidizing an enormous increase in the  value of stocks the value of bonds by the central   00:21:31 banks which have been privatized and uh the reason  that this is occurring is that uh the largest   public utility of all money creation and banking  is left in private hands and private banking   in the west is very different from what government  banking is in say china

as long as you leave banking and credit in   private hands you're going to have banks trading  their product debt and the more debt they create   the more debt service that the borrowers the 99  have to pay the banks in order to obtain a house   00:22:54 or an education or medical care or just to break  even and the more money they pay to the financial   sector the less they have to pay for goods and  services so as the economy polarizes between the 1   and the 99 the economy as a whole shrinks because  more and more of its income is spent not on   production uh and consumption it's spent just on  bit service

to get rid   of monopoly rent you have to return basic key  uh infrastructure to the public domain where   it was before 1980 so that uh basic needs can be  supplied at low prices not uh creating monopoly   for uh the one percent uh and i guess i'm saying  you have to realize that finance has used as well   00:25:12 to take over the economy and this has to  be reversed uh because uh once you have   uh wealth taking the form of uh claims uh  loans and claims on other people's debt   we'll count you up compound interest any rate of  interest is a doubling time and compound interest   is always going to grow faster than the economy's  real growth and the only way to prevent this isn't   00:25:37 simply to lower the interest rate which you've  done today 0.1 uh the only solution is to wipe out   the overall debts that are stopping economic  growth and these debts are the savings of the   one percent the good thing about cancelling debts  is you cancel the savings of the one percent   and as long as you leave these savings in  place there's not going to be a solution

i think the reason  your book was praised so much uh in the west is   you didn't come up with a threatening political  solution uh and uh when they said this was the   mark book is the marks for modern time that meant  don't read marx read this book and i suspect that   after you put all of this enormous good work  into the uh statistics that you did on wealth   00:15:30 and income i think the publisher probably said  well what are what are your solutions well you   just came up with uh the solution that you uh said  in the book and that's to tax income and wealth   uh this is not a threatening solution because  there's no way that you're going to tax wealth   as long as you have offshore banking centers to  conceal wealth as long as you have what the oil   00:15:54 industry put in place a hundred years ago the  flags of convenience pretending to make their   uh income abroad the fact is uh the one percent  don't really make much income they're ideal if   you're a billionaire you want to do what uh half  of american corporations do you don't make a penny   of taxable income uh that that's uh the whole  problem

he regards   00:01:35 the idea of isolated individual as a myth  what interested david much more was a dialogue   he believed that it is only in dialogue in the  class of opinions where answers are formed and how   human consciousness is born we humans according to  david are the product of our social relationship   that's why it was so important for him  to be involved in a situation in which   00:02:03 people think and act collectively and david  grabber foundation will follow the same path

He reminds us that the original meaning of "free market" was "a market free from rents," where unproductive creditors were not allowed to lay a private tax on productive manufacturers. https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Without some way to escape debt's gravity, all productive labor becomes oriented toward debt-service, and the economy grinds to a halt.

Hudson, meanwhile, is the debt-historian and economist whose haunting phrase "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," is a perfect and irrefutable summation of the inevitable downfall of any system that relies on household debt to drive consumption.