Tag: financialisation

Michael Hudson: The End of Western Civilization – Why It Lacks Resilience, and What Will Take Its Place

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Monday, 11 July 2022 — Michael Hudson

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

The greatest challenge facing societies has always been how to conduct trade and credit without letting merchants and creditors make money by exploiting their customers and debtors. All antiquity recognized that the drive to acquire money is addictive and indeed tends to be exploitative and hence socially injurious. The moral values of most societies opposed selfishness, above all in the form of avarice and wealth addiction, which the Greeks called philarguria– love of money, silver-mania. Individuals and families indulging in conspicuous consumption tended to be ostracized, because it was recognized that wealth often was obtained at the expense of others, especially the weak.

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Theft or exploitation?- a review of Stolen by Grace Blakeley

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13 September 2019 — Michael Roberts

All our wealth has been stolen by big finance and in doing so big finance has brought our economy to its knees.  So we must save ourselves from big finance.  That is the shorthand message of a new book, Stolen – how to save the world from financialisation, by Grace Blakeley.

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Books: Review of Alan Nasser’s, Overrripe Economy

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25 May 2019 — MROnline

by

Alan Nasser’s Overripe Economy is a profound historical look at the U.S. economy from the 1870s on that not only brings the lessons of its history and development up to the present, but offers deep insights into the economic bases for its “degeneration” from rapacious but productive capitalism to its present financialized capitalism replete with secular stagnation and reliance on debt, credit, and financial bubbles rather than production as such. Capitalist profit now comes not from production of “widgets” as Nasser calls them, but increasingly, from financial speculation and emoluments for the already very rich. The result for the working class is massive inequality and the fall from secure full-time employment generally into the current, seemingly permanent, workforce precariat.

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City of London: The shocking study no mainstream media outlet dared to publish

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6 March 2019 — True Publica

By Robert Woodward – TruePublica: A seriously important and highly credible study was published five months ago last October. It was completely ignored by all of the mainstream media. Not one took the opportunity to publish the stunning revelations for fear of what might happen if they did. The report has unpalatable political consequences for the government – in fact, both Labour and Tory are implicated by the exposure of this colossal crime.

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BREXIT, THE END GAME

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23 January 2019 — theplanningmotivedotcom

A HEXit ON THE EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS

One of the strongest arguments used by the hard Brexiteers is that the decision to leave Europe has not collapsed the UK’s economy as many had predicted. The reason why this has not happened is because Big Capital is not convinced Britain will be leaving the EU, which means leaving the customs union and/or the single market. Three months from the supposed exit date the political process of leaving is stalemated. Many “Leavers”now recognise they have been stitched up. Like surgeons facing a pair of mature Siamese twins, the politicians on both sides do not know where to make the first incision or even if the twins will survive the operation because they share so many common organs.

the brexit impasse pdf  (ARTICLE) graphs mortgage lending 1987+ (SPREADSHEET)

Squalid London – Our Own Swamp. Corrupt Money and The City of London By True Publica and Craig Murray

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22 October 2018 — TruePublica – Craig Murray

As HMS BrexitBrittania looks ever more likely to head in the same southerly direction as mothership Titanic, there is one backstop where all parliamentarians can agree – The City of London, often referred to as Britain’s second empire, must be saved at all costs.

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The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire (Documentary)

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21 September 2018 — Spider’s Web

At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance. Continue reading →

Video: Smoke and Mirrors of Corporate Buybacks Behind the Market Crash By Michael Hudson

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25 August 2015 — The Real News Network

Michael Hudson, the author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy Global Economy, says the stock market crash on Monday has very little to do with China and all to do with shortermism and buybacks of corporations inflating their own stocks.

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Michael Hudson: The New Cold War’s Ukraine Gambit

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16 May 2014 2014 — Naked Capitalism

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond.” This article is from a new book, Flashpoint in Ukraine, edited by Stephen Lendman. It is currently available from Clarity Press as an e-book, and soon to be printed.

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Can the Top 10% Prop Up the Whole Economy? By Charles Hugh Smith

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15 May 2014 — Washington’sBlog

Is the top 10% up to the task of borrowing and blowing enough money to prop up a debt and bubble-dependent economy?

Since the entire economy depends on consumption for its “growth,” and discretionary consumption is financed with either cash or debt, that leads to two questions: 1) who has cash to spend on non-essentials and 2) who is credit-worthy enough to borrow money for non-essentials?

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Phyllis Clarke Memorial Lecture: The Systemic Crisis of Financialization

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3 March 2014 — Leftstreamed

Costas Lapavitsas teaches economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has done research in the political economy of money and finance, the Japanese economy, the history of economic thought, economic history, and the contemporary world economy. During the last three years his interests have focused on the Eurozone crisis, and he has undertaken research on it with a group of researchers associated with Research on Money and Finance at SOAS. His longer ­term research interests, however, include the financialization of capitalism, its characteristic trends, variable forms and manifold implications for contemporary society. Continue reading →

Books: The Importance of State Theory By Bob Jessop

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12 June 2013 — New Left Project

Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s long-awaited The Making of Global Capitalism, said to be ten years or more in the making, is ‘about globalisation and the state’.[1]  More precisely, Panitch and Gindin use its 450 pages to provide an important, informative, and well-written account of the predisposing factors, emergence, expansion and transformations, of global capitalism, as seen through the lens of the strategic actions of the US federal government.

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