Economist Michael Hudson on new cold

war, Super Imperialism, China & Russia,

dedollarization
 6 May 2021

hello everyonei'm ben norton you're watching moderaterebels and there will
be a podcastversion of thisafter for people who want to listen weare joined
todayby the economist michael hudson one ofthe most important
economists in theworld honestly in my viewand a he's you know i i don't
think heneeds introductionhe's written many books and has been
aneconomic advisor for multiplegovernments and has a long historyon wall
street and academia and you canfind his workat
michaelhyphenhudson.comtoday we're going to talk about an issuethat
michael hudsonhas been writing about for decades andsomething that is
you're never reallygoing to hear from othereconomists especially
mainstreamneoliberal economists and that'swhat he calls super
imperialismthe u.s government has it's of courseits military apparatus which
we talkabout a lot hereat moder rebels in the gray zone withthe war in iraq
the war on syria the warin libyabut then there's also the economic formthat
imperialism takesand michael hudson wrote the book superimperialismthat
details exactly how this systemworksso today michael hudson i want to
startjust talking aboutwhat super imperialism looks like todayin the new
cold war this is somethingthat we talk a lot aboutwe saw that joe biden
gave his firstkind of major speech to congress youknow we're not supposed
to call it astate of the unionbecause it's still his first year butbiden gave a
joint speech to congress inwhich he declaredthat the united states is in
competitionwith chinato own the to win the 21st centuryas he put it and the
we've seen that theu.s governmentunder biden and of course before
undertrump has imposed several rounds ofsanctions on russiaon china so
professor hudsonlet's just start today talking aboutwhat you think the
posture has beenof the biden administration vis-a-vistrumpwe saw that the
mike pompeo statedepartmentessentially declared a kind of new coldwar
on chinapompeo gave a speech at the richardnixon library in which he said
that thefamous nixon visit to china was amistake and that we have to
containchina and eventually overthrow thecommunist party of chinaand
some democrats hope that the bidenadministration would kind oftake a
step back but we've seen that thetheanthony blinken state department
hascontinued many of these aggressivepolicies accusing china ofgenocide
and we've seen that thetreasury department just imposed severalnew
rounds of sanctions on russiaso what is your view on on the new coldwar
that's going on right nowwell i'd originally wanted to call mybook monetary
imperialismuh the publisher wanted to call it uhsuper imperialismin 1972
because it was really the usmoving towards a unipolar orderwhere it was
uh not competing with otherimperialismsit wanted to absorb uh
europeancolonialismabsorb european imperialism and reallybe the
singleunipolar power and of course that's whatreally hasuh has come about
the united states istrying to becomeuh the only uh dominant uhpower in the
world and in today'sfinancial timesuh one of the reporters said it says
theunited states wants to be the world'sabsentee landlordand rent collector
so we're dealing witha monetary and irantier phenomenonand uh when
biden gave his speechlast week there was a very marked changeright uh in
the middle of it the verybeginning wasvery calm offering means of
improvementuh for the american economy uh and a setof proposalsthat
were so wonderful that they don'thave a chance of being enactedand that
was simply to co-opt uh what'scalled the self the left wingof the democratic
party that's not anoxymoronuh and then all of a sudden his
bodylanguagechanged his voice changed and there wasjust an angerthat
we towards russia and towards chinauh a visceral anger uh that brought
backthe whole 30 years of his uh tenureuh in congress and he was the
leadingcold warproponent uh the leading proponent ofthe militaryand of
course now he's uh and wants toincrease the military budgetso uh while on
the one hand he'scontinuing thenationalistic uh uh uhtrade policies of the
trumpadministration he'suh escalating uh thecold war against russia and
chinauh in the belief that somehow ifhe can impose sanctions and punish
themeconomicallythat will lead to a fall of thegovernmentwell you can see
what he's projectinghere uh it's obvious thatthe united states economy is
going to bein real troubleuh once the covet crisis stops unitingthe country
anda feeling that we're all in thistogether and uhand certainly in new york
uh where iliveuh in august the uh freezeon real estate evictions by
rentersand uh for closers on uh mortgageesuh is going to end and it's
expectedthere will be 50000 new yorkers thrown into the streetthey very
kindly decided to postponethis until august soat least they can sleep in the
park anddon't have to begin sleeping in thesubwaysuntil maybe october uh
there's no waythat uhany uh wall street economist that i knowcan seethat
the economy is really going torecover the stock market is going way
upthanks to a federal reserve policy ofsubsidizinguh bonds and stocks uh
with 83 percentowned by the one percent of thepopulation uhbut the
federal reserve is not backingany spendinginto the actual economy well
that'swhere uhthe first part of president biden'sspeech came inhe was
talking about buildinginfrastructure uhand somehow reviving the economy
uh butit doesn't look like he's going to getmuch support from this fromthe
uh the republicans and uh he's hewants to be bipartisan in other words
hesays the democratic partyuh as always won't do anything thatrepublicans
wouldn't agree onbecause the democrats are an arm of therepublican
partytheir role is to protect the republicanparty fromleft-wing uh criticism so
uh you canexpect uha wishy-washy sort of slow declineuh with a few rapid
spikes in declineuh aft as the covet uh uh crisisuh ends and uh you're
having almost uhuh a preparation for this by i thinkbidenand the
government people realize thatthe economy uhcannot regain its former
industrialpositionbecause it uh it's a rontier economy nowmoney's not made
byuh companies investing in industry andfactoriesit means the production
uh whencompanies do make profits they'relargelyuh monopoly rents or uh
resourcerents uh or um other forms ofuh rent extraction and ninety percent
ofcorporate income in the united statesis spent on shareback uh
buybacksand uh dividend payouts not on investingin new productions
sonobody's really expecting new privateinvestment to occuruh in the united
states that is privatecapital investment in means ofproductionso biden says
well if the private sectoruh won't do it then the government cando it but his
idea of the governmentdoing itis to give government money to
privatecompaniesthat will build uh in industrializationand he wants to
essentially replicatethe military industrial complexinto an enormous uh
public-privatepartnershipuh to build very very high cost uhinfrastructure that
will make it almostimpossible for americans to uhhave any trade
competitiveness with uhother countrieswell if you're going to create ahigh-
cost grantier economyuh that's post-industrialized uh likethatwhat you do
you say it's not our faultforeigners are doing it to usit's all china's fault as if
china hadsomething to dowith uh american uh de-industrializationchina is
trying to avoid the rentierpolicies avoid the financializationavoid the crime
privatization that'smade americaso high cost and so ineffectiveand the
government's trying to uh sortofblame it but i think there's somethingelse
behinduh this fight against china andespecially russiauh the democratic
leadership seems tohave an almostemotional passionate uh
antagonismtowards russiathat can't be explained on uh objectivegrounds
but uhit's obviously there and uhtheir uh attempt to isolate russia is asif
somehow they canrecapture the dream of the yeltsin 1990sthe dream of
somehow uh replacingputin with a clientalcoholic kleptocrat like yeltsin
whowillresume the sale of russia's nationalresourcespublic utilities up to
americans uhthere's no way that's going to happenuh the actual effect of
uhof uh the sanctions on russia and chinahas been to drive them
togetherinto a unit into a critical mass andironically america's attempt to
isolateother countriesis turning into an attempt to isolateitselfuh the
question in this iswhat about europe uh the in the last fewdaysyou there's
been a lot of discussionabout cutting uhrussia off from the swift bank
clearingsystemand from other sanctions against russiarussia's already uh
worked with china todevelop their ownalternative to the swift bank
clearingsystem sorussian uh uh domestic payments are notgoing to beuh
that uh disrupted after a week or twothat they say it'lltake to put the new
system in but whatcuttingrussia off from the swiss system does isblockits
trade and its community its uheconomic relations with western europethe
united states i think realizes thatif it can't getif it can't exploit third
worldcountries or russia or chinaat least it can uh make
europepermanentlydependent and drawn in uh really underuh u.s controlso
if you look at the sanctions againstrussia and chinais a way to split europe
and make europeincreasingly dependent on the unitedstatesuh not only for
uh gasand energy but also for vaccines theseare the twoissues that have
been uh in the news inthe last few weeksuh blinken uh and uh other uh
usofficialshave said that russia offering its uhsputnik five vaccine to europe
isdivisive is an attempt to break up uhthe world rules-based order uhwhich
is amazing that russia's attemptto uh now thatpfizer and the other american
companiesare not uhproducing enough vaccine to provide toafricasouth
america and asian countries uh theunited statesis attacking russia and
cuba and chinafor uh offering uh other vaccines andsay they're tryingtheir
attempt to save lives through therest of the world is an attempt todivide and
break up the american orderbecause only the americans can have
theintellectual property monopolysomething that uh blinken uh
mentioneduhuh in in his speech and that uh uhpresident uh biden uh
mentioned theintellectualproperty monopoly means that uh americagets to
tellother countries our firms have the rightto sayyour money or your life to
third worldcountries and uhthat will be uh our means of uh well youcan't
pay wellwhy don't you sell off some more of yourinfrastructure why don't
you sell offmore of youroil or mineral resources to us uh sowhat we're
seeing is an intensificationof economic warfareuh against almost all the
othercountries in the worldhoping that uh somehow this will divideand
conquer themuh instead of driving them all togetheryeah hi professor
hudson uh i i totallyagree with you aboutthe the democrats at least the
politicalclassand their perspective on russia you havekind of two types that
command thedemocratic party you have thesethese boomers who grew up
hiding undertheir desks during the cuban missilecrisis and were
indoctrinated onanti-communismthen they went through the trauma of
the60s andyou know saw mcgovern lose and you knowmove to the center
and then you have the30 and 40 somethings whoand so and so they they
see putin as arevivalof the kgb and the evil soviet unionthat forced them
under their desks inelementary schooland then you have the 30 and
40somethings who see russia as thisexporter of white nationalism and
theright wing and they get this constantsteady streamof propaganda from
buzzfeed and othersites about that completely ignoringukraine but this is
just a marketingstrategy to me i mean there's somethingthat you've spoken
about written aboutin super imperialism inrecent talks um that i think
lurksbehindwhat uh both the trump and bidenadministrations call the great
powercompetitionand that's you know while the thispolitical classsees a
national rivalry with russia anduses it to uniteits own constituency a very
fractiousconstituencythere is what you've called a conflictof economic and
social systemsand you know i fully understand thiswith respect to chinayou
see industry journals even railjournals in the ustalking about the fear of the
chineserail system not playing by therules which means the free
marketbecause they're receiving statesubsidiesand kicking the ass of the
american railsystemexpanding infrastructure but you've alsoincluded
russiauh into this counter-hegemonicsystem which someone call
statecapitalist or socialized system versusthe financialized systemwhere
that land basically that giantland masswhich the state in china certainlyand
you seem to be saying russia issocializingis seen as an existential threat to
thevery essence of what the ushas been constructed as as an
empirewhere finance industry corporations havemerged with the stateum i i
i think you understand where i'mgoing herehow can maybe you can explain
a littlebit more about how this is actuallyyou know when we see russiagate
or thiscold war rhetoric it's actually kind ofa marketing device for the real
conflictof economic and social systems well therealexistential threat isn't a
trail rightuh trainuh trade rivalry it's not one oftechnologyat all it's uh the
existential threat istothe idea of an economy based oncompletely a rontier
systemin today's world the banks play the rolethat landlords playedfrom the
feudal epoch through the 19thcentury andall of classical economics the
wholeconcept of free marketsfrom the physiocrats with their laissezfaire
through adam smiththrough jon stewart mellon the whole ofclassical
economics was tofree industrial capitalism from therontier classfrom the
landlords from and from bankingand the monopoliesthat banks created and
organizing trustsso uh the the us realizes uhthat uh the economy's been
transformedin the last 40 years since the 1980ssince ronald reagan and
margaretthatcherwhen margaret thatcher said there is noalternative uhof
course there were many alternativesbut the united statessays if we can
create if we can turn therules-based order of free markets andclassical
economicsupside down and say our rules basedordermeans no
government power to regulate nogovernment progressive taxation but aflat
tax likewe convinced russia to have that theystill have by the wayif we can
have a rules-based order thatbacks the rontiera hereditary financial wealthy
onepercent of the populationholding the rest of the economy indebt pnh or
reducing them to other formsof dependency in a patron-clientrelationthen
we've restored essentially thefeudal economybut in order for us to do that
we haveto make sure that there's no alternativewe have to prevent any
alternative andchina is an existential threatbecause what it is doing uh in
itspolicywhich is very largely ad hoc and purelypragmaticchina's policy is
exactly the policythat made the united statesthe industrial power of the
world in the19th centuryuh china like the united states builtpublic utilitiesto
provide public services at lowsubsidized costs so as to enable itsprivate
industrynot to have to pay for the costs ofeducation for high uh rental costs
andhousing costsand high monopoly rents uh china's doingexactly what the
united states didand what the united states now says noother countrycan
do what we did we pulled up theladderand uh our uh wealthy rontier layerof
the population that's got rich now uhhaving gained control of the
unitedstates and its politicswe want to control the whole world andif there is
anothersuccessful economy whether it's chinaor russia or iran or
venezuelaif there's any other economy thatretains a strong state power
strongregulatory powerprogressive taxation uhpreventing uh of a landlord
classfrom uh somehow increasing housing costsuh privatizing uh medical
and healthinsuranceuh so instead of making it a public uhuhpublic right well
if we can prevent uhthat from occurring anywherethen people will really
believe there'sno alternative but tolet our takeover that reverses uh
theentire last two centuriesof free market economics and now theeconomy
is to be free for the onepercentto act uh to take over uhgovernment uh uh
enterprise to privatizeevery part of governmentincluding government itself
includingthe central banks especiallyuh in including uh the health system
theeducational systemall running it uh either for profit orat a cost that has to
be paiduh by credit and uh creationum and uh essentially recreate uh
theeconomy of the 13th centuryyeah professor hudson the argument
thatyou're making herewhich i've i've seen very few peoplemakeis i mean i
think it's a correctargument but it's interesting because itit contradicts this
claim that we'veseen from even a lot of peopleon the left who argue that
thenew cold war conflict or in general justthe conflict between washington
andbeijingis not a clash of systems rather theirargument is thatchina is yet
another capitalist powerand it's an inter-capitalist rivalrysimilar to the rivalry
that led to worldwar oneand that china and the us have verysimilar
economic systems butbut you're arguing in fact the exactopposite and i just
want to read areally brief part of this column thatyou that you published
atyour website michael hyphenhudson.comit's called america's
neoliberalfinancialization policy versus china'sindustrial socialism and you
have aninteresting quote herefrom a u.s government advisor for
therightreagan administration clyde prestowitzwho wrotekind of critic
complaining saying thatchina's economy is incompatible with themain
premises of the global economicsystemembodied today in the world
tradeorganization the international monetaryfundthe world bank and a long
list of otherfree trade agreementsthese packs assume that economies
thatare primarily market-based with the roleof the statecircumscribed and
microeconomicdecisions largely left to privateinterestsoperating under a
rule of law the systemnever anticipated an economy like chinain which
state-owned enterprises accountfor one-thirdof production the fusion of the
civilianeconomy with the strategic militaryeconomy is a government
necessityfive-year economic plans guideinvestment to targetedsectors an
internally dominant politicalparty namedceos of a third or more
majorcorporationsand has established party sales in everysignificant
companythe value of the currency is managed etcetc andinternational is
subject to beingweaponized at any moment for strategicendsnow in in your
column you pointed outhow this is actually a pretty funnycomment coming
from a u.strade advisor because some of those samethings that the u.sis
accusing china of like namelyweaponizing international tradeor fusing the
civilian economy with themilitary economyof course washington embodies
thatreally better than any other country inthe worldbut he is confirming that
the point thatyou argued is correcthis his complaint was that china stillhas
stateowned enterprises accounting for onethird of productionand that the
communist party of chinastillguides the economy and in old schoolterms
going back to lenin they would saycontrols the commanding heights of
theeconomyso so do you think that when people onthe left in the u.sand
other countries argue that this isall just a rivalryan inter-capitalist rivalry
between thecapitalist class and china and thecapitalist class in the united
stateswhat do you think of that argument welli spend a great deal of time in
chinaand i've been uh professionalprofessorships at a number
ofuniversities thereit's certain it is fundamentallydifferent from the united
states uhyou may have noticed in the last monthchina's move against jack
ma who wasdevelopinghis uh uh information technology systeminto a credit
systemuh they they knocked them down stoppedtheissue of uh new shares
the ipo and uhsaid only the government can keepfinance and creditin uh as
a public utility nowwhat uh presidents called state-ownedenterprisesused to
be called public utilities inthe united states uhand uh in europe most public
utilitieswere government-owned like the nationalhealth systemum in the
united states uh itbroke away from that uh government uhdirect ownership
and managementof many public utilities but uh theelectric uhutilities the
gas utilities uh almostall public utilities providing naturalmonopoly
serviceswere regulated uh now they've beenre-deregulated in the last 40
yearsyou have almost no regulation at all sochina is uh by keeping public
utilitiesin the public domainthat means that these are not vehiclesfor rent
extractionthat is for charging monopoly rents suchas uhwe pay in new york
for cable servicessuch as americans pay for the internetsuch as americans
pay for public healthsuch as americans pay for educationchina provides
free education chinaprovides uhuh and russia you know basically freepublic
health unfortunately russianpublic health means giving you anaspirin ifuh
you have a problem but uh at least uhit'suh it's not privatized so the
unitedstatesis uh a rontier economy and uhwhen left-wingers uh uh talk
abor people who call themselvesleft-wingers they're really notleft-bringers
at all they'rei don't know what post-left um theyum theyvery few uh people
who call themselvesfingers distinguish betweenindustrial capitalism and
financecapitalismwell that's the distinguishing featureof the last centuryever
since world war one there's been amovement uhaway from finance from
industrialcapitalismtowards financialization of theeconomies towards
financecapitalism based on a a merger betweenthe financial sectorand the
rent extraction sector mainlythe fire sectorfinance insurance and real estate
andalso the natural monopolieswhere the banks have taken the lead
inorganizing uhtrusts and organizing monopolies and sothe basis of most
bankcredit in the united states is uh touh provide uh the ownership
ofcompanies or monopoly rights nowchina doesn't make loans for
thesethings the people's bank of chinais the central bank and the central
bankdoesn't create credit for corporatetakeovers it doesn't create credit
forspeculationit doesn't provide uh an economy thatenriches itselfof
economic rents and exploitationbut uh uh obviously there are
manysuccessful billionaires in in chinamany successful entrepreneurs but
theseare largely uhindustrial entrepreneurs who've actuallycreated
somethingchina managed to avoid the russianstalinistmicromanagement
that uh blockedany kind of market feedback or any kindof
spontaneousinnovation china let a hundred flowersbloomit let innovation
take place it letindividuals get rich off innovation aslongas they uh
conducted their business uhand production and wealth in the
publicuhinterest defined as uplifting thequality of laborand contributing to
the economy'slong-term growthwell finance capitalism such as we havein
the usdoesn't live in the long run its timeframe is short termone quarter at
most three months and thetime frame ishow can we increase the price of
ourstock uh so that we cansell out and jump out of the thinkingboatuh when
the time comes uh they're notconcernedwith making the economy richer
they'renot concernedwith making their labor force happierbetter paid orwith
a better standard of living or evengetting long-term pensions which
havebeen replaceduh by uh defined contribution plansinstead of defined
benefit plansthere it's a basically an exploitativesystemand china's whole
management system uhalthough it's centrally managed uh youneed
astrong state in order to prevent anindependentgrantee class an
independent financialclassfrom emerging and doing uhto modern
economies what it did to thebyzantine empireand tried to do uh in in the
bronze agenear easttake over the government uh china doesnot want auh
uh a ranking class to do what they'vedone in the united statesand make
america into a centrallyplanned economywe're now more of a centrally
plannedeconomy than nazi germany worksbut the centrally planned
economy is inwall streetin the financial system not thegovernment uhso
when uh the biden and lincolntalk about a free market they mean
amarketcentrally planned by the financialsector withzero with the
government and elected uhofficials not having any role to playexcept to
decide whether they wantto vote for the democratic orrepublican sponsors
and backers of theromney interestshow do you think the pandemicand well
i i guess i could say there isa there's a class in washington thatbelieves
thatcovet 19 was deliberately cooked up in alab in wuhanbecause financial
capitalism hasperformed sopoorly in this pandemic and has sufferedsuch a
setbackin contrast to china's economy which isthe only major economy in
the world tohave grown and they foster thisconspiracy theorybecause they
can't really understandwhy that is so maybe you can explainhow the
pandemic has accelerated thetrends that you've beenelucidating and the
contrast betweenfinancial and industrial capitalismwell i'm shocked to hear
you say thatfinance capitalism is performed badlythe one percent have
made a trilliondollars since the covet crisis beganthe covet crisis is uh the
bestmoney-making opportunityi meant for people who are not
reptilianshape-shiftersi know got to be careful about what'sworking and you
knowthey they have to somehow prepare thegroundfor the fact that things
are not goingto get better uhnobody knows whether they're going to goback
to offices or notthey probably won't be able to goanywhere nearthe levels
that they were before thisthis fall becausethe schools and the offices don't
havethe ventilation systemsto stop aerosol transmission uh theydon't have
fans most of them don't havewindowsuh in the uh so there's uh the result
isthey're expecting a crash in acommercialproperty values in the major
cities iknow onnew york landlords who are trying tosell outtheir buildings
here uh anticipatingthat well things are not going to getback to normal and
they're not beingoffered any money at allbecause uh all the the buyers the
moneythe the new uh private capital fundsthat have all been createdwith
trillions of dollars in the lastfew months are waiting for the crashto pick up
office buildings commercialreal estateforeclosed homes for closed
rentalpropertiesall at pennies on the dollar and to dowhat essentially what
blackstonedid after uh obama's uh 2008 crisisof uh the 10 000 families he
evicteduh and created a bonanza for his backersuhuh who elected them
the banking uhsector sothey're expecting another uh uh obamatype
uhdisaster that will make financecapitalismeven more successful in
reducing therest of the economy to a state ofdependencydo you think us
that the lockdownpolicies havebenefited this class that's earnedtrillions and
trillions of dollarsit didn't uh what's the alternative ithink there had to be a
lockdownwe've seen what happened in asia and uhcountries that did have
a lockdown theydidn't get sickuh you had to have a locked down not toget
sickuh the problem is not the lockdown theproblem is that otheruh countries
uh are do not uhinvolve the evictions and theforeclosures that the
americans haveuh so things like this happened way backin the bronze
agewhich is uh what i've written a numberof books on uh in babylonia and i
thinkwe've spoken about this beforewhen there was a uh a drought oran
economic crisis or a disease anddeath couldn't be paidrents weren't due
deaths weren't due uhamerica could have avoidedthe whole problems that
the lockdown hadby saying okaynobody's able to go to work it's
obviousthey can't make uhmost people can't make enough money topay
the rentsand the mortgage payments on their homesor even get byso uh
we're going to say this is a timeout of timeuh this is uh we're not going to
enforcethe enormous backlog ofunpaid rents and unpaid debts uh thathave
occurrednow to some extent the problem has beenmitigatedby uh first
trump and then uh bidengiving a more stingyuh uh cares uhact uh uh
giveaway out to familiesthat were able to use uh the fourteenhundred
dollars and the sixdollars that they got on 1200 basicallyto pay their
landlords and to pay thecredit card companiesand to pay the banks but
once uh thecoveted crisis is over there's not goingto be any more bailout of
people andthey're still going to haveall of the arrears that they've
beenrunning up and uh they're going to beeven more depth strappedafter
this september than uh they werebefore the crisisand uh the what the crisis
really didwas justaccelerate the polarizing trend that youhavein the united
states between creditorsand debtorsbetween property owners and renters
andbetween consumers andmonopolists these trends have
beenexacerbated andit doesn't look like the government isgoing to find an
alternative becausethey say there isn't any alternativeif you don't like it here
why don't yougo to china whereas americans are notgood enough in
languageuh to go and mess up to chinayeah i i hope they used to be they
sayif you don't like it why don't you go torussianobody says that anymore
because they doyou know they what are you going to dooh well oxy
oxycontin i guess is thealternativei don't know when they when i
criticizedisrael they tell me to go to gaza soi was like okay you'll let me in i
meanyou control themsupporters but um on anotherrelated note umlast
summer venezuela applied for an imfloanit was it was a small loan
somethinglike 20 million dollarsto allow it to buy medical suppliesin the
because the pandemic had begunand they were locking down
theirpopulationand of course the imf said noit was difficult to understand
why we'veseen this sameuh rejection applied to iran howeverin early 2015 i
believe it was februaryjoe biden went to kiev it was his firsttrip to kiev as the
kind ofimperial lord of the post maidan orderand he boasted that he hadum
secured an imf a gigantic imf loanbillions of dollars for ukraine this isa
country thatalready at that point was notorious forcorruptionranked as one
of the most corruptcountries in the worldand that loan money went straight
toswiss banks through thepockets of the few you know 10 or 11sweaty
oligarchs that controlled thecountry sowhy how do you explain this
you'vewritten that the imfis basically a small room in thepentagon's
basementso how do you explain this disparity intreatment between
countries likeukraine which are absolutely incapableof paying back these
loans are sonotoriously corruptand countries like venezuela and iranwhich
are obviously targets ofu.s empire well my book superimperialismis all
about how the imf was createdas uh an arm of u.s foreign policyand it still
is an arm and there'sa mentality that the imf has of uh it'sa procreditor
mentality uh and uh it'sdominated uh thoroughly by uh the unitedstatesand
uh uh in a cold war modalityuh that's why russia and china areseeking to
create their owninternational bankand the even more vicious uh arm of
uhamerican imperialism probably the mostuhdeadly is the world bank uh
which is uhenormously distraught destructivethroughout the former soviet
union inthe third worldby pushing microcurrency loans that areaimed
atessentially uh making loans to uh womenas heads of families uh uh 7080
and then breaking up the family forclosing on themessentially using micro
credit loans asa way of uhevicting masses of families from theirproperty
and turning it overto the client oligarchies on thesecountriesand in blocking
countries from uhdevelopinguh their own food self-sufficiency
andgrainmaking the dependent on u.s uh grainexportsthat's been a uh
central aim of theworld bankever since its inception uh fightingagainst land
reformso the world bank and the imf havealways beenprobably the most
viciously pro-rentieranti-progressive uh institutions in theworlduh and as
such they're uh underuh they're guided by essentially the uhamerica's deep
state as an armof subjugating other countriespreventing their self-
sufficiencythe idea is if you can impoverish themyou willsomehow lead to a
regime change andput in a client allocate that will bewilling to make their
economydependent on the united states that's uhu.s foreign policy in a
nutshellsince 1945.yeah professor hudson related tovenezuela you we
were talking about theimpacts of sanctions and there's athere's a de facto
blockadeof venezuela a venezuelan economistleft-wing economist named
pascalinacorsio recently wrotean article in a venezuelan media outletin
which she estimated that350 billion dollarsof venezuelan assets have been
stolen orfrozenfrom the venezuelan public and they'recurrently heldin
foreign banks in in trent in the asshe calls the transnational
privatesectorand she points out that this number justi don't believe it's it's
adjusted forinflation but this number 350 billionis equivalent to 25 times
what wasinvested to rebuildeurope after world war ii so thisreminds me of
aa talk a a term that you i think youpioneered or you've
popularizedgravitizationyou talk about how after the u.splundered the
former soviet union andrussia and the former soviet republicsforcing neo-
liberal shock therapythat it wasn't just privatization it wasgravitation it was
grab as much as youcan as quickly as you cani mean it seems to me that
that thatthat kind of modelhas been applied to venezuela with
juanguayilothe attempt to impose a fake interimgovernment on the
government that wasnever electeddo you think that it's you know
thatparallel ofgravitation is is appropriate forvenezuela well you've seen it
veryclearly when uh its gold reserves wereseized by the bank of
englandand said uh uh america is really thedemocratic center of the world
and asthe democratic centerbecause we're the democracy we get tosay
who's the president of any countryin the worldand uh we have uh we found
a nastylittle opportunist that you justmentionedand uh we've decided he's
the head of itand we're giving all of venezuela's goldsupply to himuh even
though the uh the uh venezuelanpeople didn't electthem well they didn't
elect chileansdidn't elect pinochet eitheruh is the democratic center of the
worldamerica gets touh designate the heads of any givencountryuh by
military force that weren'tnecessary and soof course uh the the gold supply
wassimply grabbed byengland which again is a small branchtotally
dependenton the united states uh and uhgrabbed the gold they grabbed all
ofvenezuela's holdingsof its oil companies uh distributionuh network and
gas stations in theunited statesuh and the problem goes back uhvenezuela
was tied in a knotlong before chavez and it's when theunited statesbacked
a series of dictators ever sinceparis and manisin the 1950s who uh
essentiallydrew up international loan contractsnot only uh pledging
sovereigndebt uh to whoever the bondholders werebut uh collateralizing
venezuela's debtwith all of its oil reservesand all of the holdings of its uh
oilcompanyuh including the uh the us affiliates ofall thisuh and so uh
venezuela is stillsuffering from the eraof uh colonialism uh that america is
uhtrying to blame on uh chavez and hissuccessorsand on socialism instead
of on uh theamerican assassination teamsand uh uh killer squads that put
inthe dictators that uh pledged all of uhvenezuela's oil reserves to the
foreignbond holdersit was recently reported that bill gatesbesides creating
thisglobal earth surveillance system andhaving contracts with the nypd for
masssurveillance and thenasking for privacy in his divorce uhis has
become the largest landowner ibelieve in the united statesit's the largest
landlord largest ownerof agricultural landhe also presides over thevaccine
distribution system or programthat the u.sis employing gavi his apparatchix
andpeople who came through the gatesnetworkpopulate the world health
organizationhe's donating millions and millions ofdollars to mainstream
usmedia organizations he's regarded assort ofuh almost a scientific
expertwhereas when you know joe rogan sayssomething that might be
seen assensible about vaccination anthony faucicomes out and condemns
him as not ascientific experti don't even believe bill gates has acollege
degree buti just was wondering because of thedominant position that bill
gates enjoysover all of these multilateralinternational institutions as well
asinternally within u.s domestic politicswhere you think he fits into
youranalysis of super imperialismwell certainly uh the private sectoruh is
trying to merge with governmentwith governmentto the uh largest extent uh
possible uhi thinkit's very interesting what is uh thereal effectof gates's uh
purchase of american landwhat he's doing is uh not
developingagriculturehe's poisoning the land that he's onhe's promoting the
uhuse of pesticides and herbicides thatare destroying the soil quality of
thelandif he were an agent of the kjb trying todestroy american agricultureto
make it dependent on russia'sresurgence in agricultureyou couldn't ask for
a better foreignagentbecause the policies he's putting are sodestructive of
soil fertilityso destructive of uh the bee populationso destructive of the
biological uhelement of of the soil uh and in factuh gates is making the
same mistake andwith his foundation that khrushchev madeuh in russian
agriculture when he begantouh develop siberia thinking that thatwould
uhrestore russia's self-sufficiency andgrainto get free of america's threats
of agrain embargothe development of siberian land and thecruciateworked
very well for three years andthen it collapsedbecause again uh they didn't
use croprotation they didn't usenatural fertilizers they didn't use
anyreplenishment of the soiland uh the policy that gates ispromoting in
agricultureuh is instead of replenishing the soilit's poisoning itso uh he's so
probably uhyou wouldn't if you wouldn't want yourworst enemy to be in
charge of takingover american agricultural landyou wouldn't want him to
have any rolein that uh whatsoeveruh the fact is he's short he's reallyuh
stupid once you get a hundred billiondollarsyour iq drops 30 percent uh and
so he'suhhe suffered uh from thatyou want to just sort of belong you
uhyou're not the same person anymore andinherit once you inherit money
rightthere your iq goes down 20 percentso now he's operating with 50
percent ofan iq so of courseuh when you have his money uh wieldinfluence
overuh international organizations you havea democracytaking over ithow
do you think that bill gates and thegates foundation fits into super
imperialism and your analysisof u.s control of the internationalfinancial
systemhe uh is volunteering to get the supportof the deep stateby following
policies that uh win theapproval of the deep stateuh and uh essentially
uhhe is the deep state andimperialism is a mentality and it's ait's
atechnocratic mentality with the ideathat all of the fruits of
technologyshould be a kind of monopoly rentaccruing touh the financial
sector uh and uhhe's bought into that mentality andwhether you're in the
private sectoror in the state if you're into therontier mentalityyou're into the
super imperialismmentalitywell do you also agree with the argumentit
seems like gateshas invested not just billions ofdollars but really his lifeinto
what seems like the privatizationof the global public health system imean
the gates foundationis one of the principal funders of theworld health
organization this isthis is not a state this is a foundationrun bya single
capitalist well he made hismoneyin uh his uha computer system by uh
having auh monopoly uh power andwhat bigger monopoly can you have
than amonopoly over healthcaresaying your money or your life so ofcourse
he putshis money as a natural extension of uhhaving his uh uhword word
monopoly uh it's it'sit's the same mentality of trying tocreate a privatized
monopolyto prevent health care from beingoffered freely to sayit has to
every public utility fromeducationto health care to transportation has tobe
offeredat cost and uh that cost will includea profit and in fact whatever the
marketwill bearfor economic rent uh and dividends andmanagement feeson
consultant fees and uh until it alllooks like the militaryindustrial complex
applied to uhthe hitherto uh public sectorwell and also uh as you mentioned
themicro loans theprivatization of public educationthroughcharter schools
uh the uhcash freeze system that he and otherglobal oligarchs like pierre
omidyar aretrying to implement in placeslike india where they're trying to
getthe rural poor out of the cash systemand get them in debt and then i
guessmove them off their landand you know we've seen suicides andsocial
catastrophe already as a resultof the implementation of this systemand now
gates is obsession with uhvaccinationand openly stating that he does
notwant to remove patents he's obsessedalong with the us government
thatrepresents his interestsand the interests of big pharma withprotecting
the intellectual propertypotentially at the peril of globalhealthum and then
you know we um pfizerannounced thatit sees a massive profit potential
inthevaccination of children as young as twoyears olduh with these
experimental mrna vaccinesso thecdc goes ahead and licenses that or
isplanning to license thatso um it's pretty obvious what'staking place i think
what's a little bitmore confoundingi mean this is a little bit of adiversion and
it's really my lastquestion i hope you can get into somepatron questions
and then if you haveanything elseum it's a little bit more confounding isyou
know that there has been thistransatlanticalliance that the u.s has marketed
butnow it'sthreatening sanctions onthe most powerful economy of
europegermanyfor the nordstrom 2 pipeline and the ushasit's it seems and i
i want to get yourview on thissuccessfully disrupted this massive euchinese
trade dealuh by weaponizing human rightsuh allegations you know talking
aboutthe treatment of the uyghurs in xinjiangor uh the supposed uh
poisoning ofsergey skripaluh the poisoning of alexey navalnythese have all
been weaponized to try tointerrupt these dealswith core what what we're
seeing is corepost-war us allieswhere how is europe going to respond
tothis i mean they seemto be pretty much buckling under uspressure but
how isus the eu and europe responding to thisobvious attack on
theirindependence and how could this alterthe contoursof super
imperialism well i want to uhcomment on what you said earlier
aboutpfizerpfizer just announced three and a halfbillion dollars profitjust for
the first quarter uh what uh uhis they call intellectual property iswhat used
to be calledmonopoly rent it's unearned income uhand the intellectual
property in uhvaccinesmeans not only that uh other countriesare going to
have to paya monopoly rent uh to uhadvisor and other uh uhmonopoly rent
uh pharmaceuticalcompanies butthat america has to block russia uhother
countries from accepting russia'suhvaccine uh and uhit said that russia's
attempt to uhexportits sputnik 5 vaccine is an attempt tocreate dissension
in europe dissensionin the third world countriesit is dissension if you don't
uh lethalf of your population die uh it's ainsistent that other countries have
todie in order to guaranteethe profits to pfizer once it is able toput in place
four years from nowthe uh enough facilities to uh preventthe rest of the the
other fifty percentof the population from dyingthis is absolutely evil uh and
uhunfortunately uh the german electionsthat you mentionedare coming up
this fall and uh theamericans are putting enormous pressureto push the an
anti-russian pro-natopuppetuh uh i think uh largely from the
greenpartywhich is the uh anti-green right-wing uhmilitary party uh inin
europe unlike the united states uhthe green party uh isall for uh sanctions
against russia andsayinguh uh uh you have to treatuh any socialist in the
same way thatwe've treated julian assangei mean julian assange is an
example ofamerica's commitmentto intellectual freedom and a
personalfreedom uhand uh the assassination teams that ithas been
sending out to ecuadoron other latin american countriesrecently you
knoware uh more uh examples of this uhamerica's nicecan you just
interrupt sorry professorwith one example that i think ourour listeners and
viewers might not knowabout that really strikingly illustratesthe trend that
you'reelucidating here which is that two daysbeforeuh the czech republic
echoing the usaccused russia of having blown up amunitions dumpin 2014
and fingered as suspects petrovand boshirov the same supposed
russianfsbor gru agents who supposedly poisonedsergey skripalas the
culprits two days this hap thisthis happened two days afterthe czech
republic had announced that itwould accept therussian sputnik 5 vaccine
and on april20ththe czech republic announced that itwould no longer
acceptthe sputnik 5 vaccine it looked likesuch abogus uh intelligence
intrigue cooked upby the cia to sabotagesputnik 5 in central europe and
ofcoursethe u.s funded uhuh nato troll farm known as bellingcathad already
been investigatingthis munitions dump issue so that waspretty telling so i i
ithink it's exactly right what you'resaying i just wanted to illustrate itwith
thatwell comedian comedians all over europeare having a field day with
themi mean here are the two uh uh the two uhalleged takingyour agents
not here okay welluh you can find it on uhi'm not sure right now but i i've
seenmany comedy shows about thisand the fact that they would have
thesame two kgb agents whoallegedly uh poisoned the skirt polesusing the
same false names in the samepassportsuh in czechoslovakia i mean it just
uhuh there has to be a black comedy aboutabout all of thatbut you're right
and it's uh it'samazing the the accusationthat uh helping save lives of
othercountries byoffering them uh uh freeor inexpensive vaccines will
undercutthe profits of american companiesis a crime against humanity and
must bepunishedby sanctions uh it shows you that iguessthe united nations
is deadand just picking up on something elseyou said umyou mentioned
the german green party umthis isyou know it's it sort of
representseverything that's fraudulent aboutwhat we consider green politics
it's apro-nato pro-warpro-surveillance state green partyand uh there is a i
don't want to callit a conspiracy theory of suspicionuh based on
theappointment of armin lachey touh germany's cdu party the
christiandemocratic union of angela merkel whichhas been the dominant
party in germanythat he is too pro-russian he's madesome comments
criticizing u.s conduct insyriathat the us is sort of quietly backingthe green
party andwe see the green party surging umwhat what do you make of that
and whatand what do you make ofum the idea of the u.s sort of backingthis
pro-nato form of green politics oranato oriented green new deal tore-
establishuh or to retrench uh global u.sfinancial controlthis has been
consistent and unbrokenu.s policy sinceworld war ii uh after world war ii
theunited states interfered with uhitalian politics to keep the
italiancommunistsout of power it interfered in greece byuh wholesale
assassinations both byengland and america of uh greekcommunistsuh it uh
interfered in yugoslavia uhwhat it's done in germany is the same asit's been
doing throughout latin americain the third worlduh and other countries for
uh the last75 yearsso this should not be surprising at allbutwhat is appalling
is that the europeanpress is notuh dealing more with this and that
theamerican pressisn't picking up what uh much the littlebit that the
european pressis commenting on so even the financialtimeswill is saying
what you just said aboutuh the german politics and the greenpartyuh the
major german papers are i meani've had numerous uhinterviews with the
christian democratparty the newspaper the frontautomatics item uh and
uhother uh groups groups there uhit's it the the christian democraticpartyuh
it's appalling that uh the germans uhare almost like the english in
believingthat because they were defeated in worldwar iithere's still a
reliance not only on theunited statesbut also the resentment by the
eastgermans overthe russian occupation of east germanyandthe appalling
conditions uh there thatuhuh germany still is as if it'sjuxtaposing east
germany to the unitedstateswithout realizing uh how much the worldhas
changed in the last 30 yearswell professor hudson we're at an hourhere
and i don't want to keep you toolongso we're going to start wrapping up
andwe have some questionsum but before that i wanted to point outjust
where we were talking about pfizerhere in latin america there was a
storygoing around that didn't really get muchcoverage if any in englishin the
u.s and that was that pfizer whenargentina wasin negotiations with pfizer
pfizerwas demanding control over glaciers andfresh water in argentina as
well asas fish reserves in order for thevaccineswhich ironically is what
pushedargentinato ally with russia and more closelywith russia i mean
traditionallythey have not been very close allies andnow russia is providing
the sputnik vvaccineas one of the main vaccines forargentina soi mean it
also kind of this is anotherexample of the point you've often madeabout
howas the more that the u.s empire pushesother countries it actually in
some waysbackfiresand pushes them into an alliance withchina and
russiabut just just in the last few minuteshereuh over on our patreon we
actually wehave 15 questions soi'm not going to be able to ask all ofthem
unfortunately and what i can sayprofessor hudson is maybemaybe you
could try to answer some ofthese kind of briefly and but i'm notgoing to ask
you all of them again justbecauseyou know i don't want to keep you
foranother hour here but just for a fewminutesso we have a few questions
here i'llkind of combine them one of them isaboutmodern monetary theory
mmt and anotherone is aboutdr stephanie kelton's book the deficitmythso
i'm wondering if if you just want tobriefly addressmodern monetary theory
stephaniekelton's workwhat you think about it and then i wouldadd my
ownquestion to that briefly how does modernmonetary theory fitinto super
imperialism because the pointi would add is thatyou can only do modern
monetary theorystyle spending if you have a sovereigncurrencyand if that
sovereign currency is backedby a militaryand you don't have to do trade in
theu.s dollar so i meanin many ways it seems to me that modernmonetary
is only reallypossible for the us because of superimperialismwell stephanie
uh has been the majorpromoterof the now obvious idea that
governmentsdo not have to borrowfrom bondholders in order to
financetheir budget deficitsthey can simply print the money and theeffect of
printing the moneyis no more inflationary than borrowingfrom billionairesif
you borrow from a billionaire moneythat they would not have spent and
spendit into the economythe monetary effect is exactly the sameas
simplyprinting the money and creating it andstephanie used to be the
number onepromoter ofmodern monetary theory until of courseshe was
overtakenby donald trump uh that said we cancreate uh we cancut taxes
and run an enormous deficit uhand as long as we give all of thedeficit to the
wealthiest one percentby using uh 8 billion a trillionto bid up stock and bond
prices and only2 trillion into the economyuh we can create all the money
we haveand of course uh he had a largeraudience than stephanie has
we've gonearound the world giving speechestogether but neveruh i think
the largest audience we hadwas maybe 40 000in a sports stadium in italy
uh uhonce uh where people came to hear ustalk about monetary theory
butwe we didn't have donald trump'sconstituency and he's shownthat uh
monetary money theory works thedifference is that the republicans andnow
the democraticand the center the federal reserve theidea of monetary
theoryis of course the government can createall the money at onceuh
simply by printing it butbecause the government's been privatizedby the
commercial banks and the privatethe financial sector and sowhen we do
create money we're going tocreate it to enrich the one percentnot the 99
well of course stephanie andme and the rest of theuniversity of missouri
kansas city staffrandy rayand the others uh we all wanted ourwhole ideaof
uh printing money to finance deficitswas to spend it into the economyto
create a full employment economy uhlikepavlina chernova uh has been uh
urginguh our idea was not to create money togive it to uhuh create a stock
and bond bubble uhand so somehow the idea of mmt has beenhijackeduh
by the right-wingers uh in thefederal reserve that arerunning away wild with
it beyondanything we could have imaginedwell really quickly professor
hudson i imeani think there are a lot of there's a lotof value to modern
monetary theory andyou just articulated that but at thesame timei've seen
this this argument articulateand i'm curious about your thoughts thatyou
could say that for instancevenezuela tried modern monetary theorybut
because it doesn't reallyit didn't i mean the the currency wastotally
devalued by an economic war bythe united statesit doesn't it doesn't have
the same kindof financialinternational economic power that theunited states
has or that a currencylike the euro would have soof course a country like
greece can'tthey can't do mmt because greece doesn'thave a sovereign
currencyand a country like venezuela can't dommt it seems to me thatonly
a major economic power that othercountriesmight use their currency to
trade inlike the united states would be able tocarry out these problemsthe
key is the balance of paymentseffect no country can go brokeif its debts are
denominated in its owncurrencyvenezuela can uh print all the
domesticcurrency it needsto pay its debts to keep the economygoing butit
can't print dollars only the unitedstates government can create dollarsand it
isn't as much as venezuela'sforeign debt is in dollarsthis is that is beyond
the ability ofits government and treasuryto print so venezuela's probably
greececan't print eurosthat's right it can't uh do that eitherand when the
united states uh structuredthe eurozone it made sure that nocentral
governmentno national government could create itsown uhnational
currency so they can't uhcreateuh run budget deficits to uh uhinfo to uh
spend into the economyto uh help a recovery your uh theeurozone has
turned europe into a deadzoneuh because it is unable to use a
modernmonetary theorybecause uh the the european central bankwill uh
and the terms of the uhthe eurozone agreements are that uh nogovernment
can run a deficit of morethan three percentwell uh obviously if the united
statesuhfunctioned under uh the eurozone rulesuh we couldn't have haduh
the uh the trump uh boomletuh we couldn't have had uh the
policiesthatpresident biden is suggesting so theeurozonehas uh committed
economic suicide byuh following a pro-creditor deflationarypolicyon the
logic that if the governmentdoesn't create creditthere's only one source of
financing forthe economyand that source is private banks so theeurozone
economic philosophyis designed to enrich private banks andtheir credit
creationnot the government credit creation andthat's the key of modern
monetary theoryeither credit is going to be created byprivate banksand
interest for the things that privatebanks lend credit foror it will be created by
government uhfor the public interestand the kind of things that
governmentrun deficits forif they're good governments to spendinto the
economyprofessor hudson here's anotherinteresting question fromover at
patreon have you followed thisdebate on the so-called greatreset which is
the world economic forumhas talked abouttheir their plan also we've also
seenthethe five eyes countries have have usedthis phrasebuild back better
we've seen again andagain there's clearly coordinationbetweenyou know
the united states has used thewide administration has used that term alot
the australian government etcso the basically you know the worldeconomic
forum and and otherkind of neoliberal institutions havebeen pushing this
great resetidea there was a video that kind of wentviral that was later taken
down wherethere were there was like 10 visions forour future in 2030and
the first one was that you will ownnothing but you will behappy and another
point of it was thatlike everything will be delivered viadroneso i mean it
seems to me like kind ofyou know you'llit seems to be very similar to like
akind of a new shock doctrine butdo you have any thoughts what are
theycalling a fourth industrial revolutionyeah it's so bizarreit's almost a
comedy it's like uh uhthe old uh comics that you used to havein grade
school what's wrong with thispictureand you'd see birds flying upside
downand uhall sorts of uh dogs walking peopleuh it's just uh such
nonsense uhwhat can you say about it it's uh it'sit's sillybut again that's
what happens when whenyou get uh rich enough to join the worldeconomic
forumyour iq drops 30 percent and you losethe offensive
judgment[Laughter]well i think there is a logic behind itwhen you think
about it in terms of afourth industrial revolution which is tounlock new
financial potential for tokeep global capitalismgoing and this is where the
green newdeal comes inwell sure if i was a billionaire i wouldbe subject to
wealth addictionand i'd want to own all the property inthe world and so of
course i telleverybody elseyou'll be happy with no propertyhalloween at all
and my friends will ownit allof course you'll be happier uh just letus take iti
mean that's the message i don't knowif you saw jodie dean has a new book
andandher argument is that we're seeing a kindof not necessarily a new
economictransformation but a shift into whatyou could just call neo-
feudalism andthat it's actually a totally differentsystem a different mode of
productionit's no longer even really capitalismit'sthe great reset is just their
vision forneo-techno-feudalismyes this is not carl pauline's
greattransformationit's it's i've been saying all alongit's neo-feudalismit's
that's what a rontier class is arantier economythe difference is that the
financialinterest today and the monopolists playthe roleas the landlords
played in the 19thcentury before democratic reformuh uh ended the
landlord class as suchuh and by doing that paved the way forthe
resurgence of the financialclass and the monopolists that it backedwell a
question that's very interestingand iwe were talking about our
discussionbefore the interview andprofessor hudson said he doesn't
followcryptocurrencies a lot but i'm justcurious because we got a
questionover at patreon professor hudson what doyou think aboutcrypto
currencies like bitcoin alsodogecoin has becomepopular and this is related
tonon-fungible tokens nfts there there'sbeen anargument that all of this is
justcurrent it's just a new form ofspeculationfor rich people who have
nothing toinvest in and there's another argumentespecially for nfts is that
this is anew way to launder moneylaunder money but i'm wondering what
youthink about cryptocurrencies andthese new technologies well i think
thatfunctionally speaking cryptocurrenciesare like andy warholuh etchings
uh they have no intrinsicvalueuh except the fact that other peoplewant to
buy themand enough other people may want to dois is trophiesas people
get richer and richer theywant to buy trophies andy warholetchings
andother bad art uh is uh one example of atrophy andhaving uh money in a
cryptocurrency uhlike bitcoinis uh another kind of a trophy uh ithink its
mainuh function is either money launderingor tax evasionuh there and
certainly the uhamount of energy that it uses to mine uhbitcoins uh makes it
uh impractical asanyactual means of payment so you have uhessentially
cryptocurrency only as a asa meansof storing your liquid money inan asset
that you think other peoplewill buy so it's all based onexpectations uh
nothing intrinsic at allitgives no meaning to the phrasefictitious capitalso
someone asked here over at patreondo you think that cryptocurrencies
likebitcoin could be a way to help get offthe dollar to de-dollarizeno they
have no effect at all it's it'sjust shunted asideuh if everybody would put their
money inandy warhol itchingsuh that wouldn't have anything to doabout the
dollar uh it wouldn'taffect uh money put in bitcoin doesn'taffectinternational
trade or internationalinvestment or tourismor any of the actual payments
amongcountries uh it's auh completely uh separate it's likemoney held uh in
a caribbeanoffshore banking centermax kaiser and the velvet
undergroundare not going to be happy about thisand i won't volunteer i'm
not sure idon'tuh uh i've known max for many years uhhe has an audience
that wants to hearabout cryptocurrency uh but i don'tthink he has
anymaybe maybe things have changed but uh iwould be very surprised uhi
he and i uh don't have uh realdisagreements about thatbut i don't have his
audience uh we havedifferent audiences so we talked aboutdifferent
thingsright right well i think you found somecommon ground oncentral
banks well i also do want topoint outto our audience for people who
don'tknow among michael's audiencesamong michael's audience are
multiplegovernments who he has advised soi mean i was actually going to
sayearlierit's just funny to me that in the useconomic experts are people
like theso-called experts are people likelarry summers you know the the
bigprivatizers whohave destroyed entire economies ofcourse toin the case
of the former soviet unionto subordinate russia's economy tou.s capital but
it to me it just says alot thatthey're considered so-called economicexperts
whereasi mean professor hudson has advised thechinese government and
other governmentsso it to me it says a lot aboutwho the real experts are
and especiallywhen you look atthe the financial voodoo and the snakeoil
salesman thatmakes up chicago economics wait a minutemy first client was
the us government uhandit was at the super they hired me to in1972to
explain super imperialism to it tothem and they gave the hudson institutea
75 000 contract uh most of which wentto my salaryuh in order to to explain
it all souh i certainly was viewed a superimperialism was done as part of
myconsultingwith the us government as was the sequeluh global fractureuh
and then the canadian government uhmexican governmentit all spread out
from theregreat well a few more questions beforeyou wrap up here
professor hudsonthis is this is a very interestingquestion uh how do you
think thatchina can deal with a problem likeextremism especially in regard
tothe china pakistan economic corridorcpecin neighboring volatile countries
likeafghanistan and pakistan because we'veseen thata key part of the belt
and roadinitiative has been to better integratecentral asia and south asia
some ofthese countries that do have a problemwith extremismand
secession movements and that that'sreallyat the heart of the new silk
roadchina is not as interfering as theunited states uhis uh it's trying it is
trying to uhcarefully avoiduh uh taking sides for better or worseuh in any of
this uh pepe x escobarfollows all of this uh pretty closely uhit's certainly not
going to uh getmilitarily involved as the united statesdoesits main concern
is that the unitedstates foreign legion uh essentiallyamerica's major ally is
saudi arabiaamerica'shas an alternative to uh socialism andthe alternativeis
wahhabi fanaticism and uhit's worked with saudi arabia to useisisand other
wahhabi terroristorganizations to try to destabilizerussia from the southuh
which was stalin's great fear in uhworld warii uh and to destabilize china
from theuyghursection so uh what china is trying to dois to preventa foreign
foreign-backed uh terrorismand sabotage uh in its own country whiletrying
to just uh make a modus vivendiuh with uh other countries uh that
haveproblems anduh not to try to engage in the kind ofregime changemuch
less military occupation uh that isthe centerpiece of american policyum
there's another question here we'llprobably just ask two moretwo or three
more here just to wrap upbut this this could bean entire interview so i mean
of coursewe can keep it briefand maybe we can have you back anothertime
to talk about this but someoneone of our patrons asked about socialismwith
chinese characteristics and saidfrom your experience on working with
thechinese government and othereducation systems do you see thepolitical
will from the xi jinpingadministration to keep toward on thesocialist pathor
do you feel that china is having anew battle withcapitalist and financialized
forceswithin the systemsince deng xiaoping's reforms well inthe late 19th
centuryuh everyone viewed socialism asuh the more efficient evolution
ofindustrial capitalismso uh i don't think it helps to saywhetherchina is
socialist or capitalist uhis the famous phrase uh i think fromdeng went
uhwhite cat black cat it doesn't matter aslong as it catches micei think the
the chinese are sort ofin the process continually ofreinventing their
economyof seeing what works and what doesn't ithink they're operating on
a pragmaticad hoc basis and that pragmatismdoesn't lead them to think is
thiscapitalist or socialistthey don't think in terms ofa abstract generality
there they thinkvery specifically uh does thisparticular industryhelp develop
china or not is it part ofour overalllong-term plan for 1925uh 2025-2000and
beyond how does this fit into thedeveloping the economic structure of
oureconomy to make it moremore practical so i don't think uhlabelsreally
help in this at alluh uh they theythey uhuh present themselves in the
marxistcountry but marx didn't talk aboutthe kind of problems that
they'rehandling now and uhyou uh is one of my fellow professors atuhuh
the pe kang uh university saidmarxism is the chinese uh word for
uhpoliticsuh and uh they're political they'repragmaticand uh you should
think i really interms of what are they doingstructurallyand not thinking what
labor what labelespecially what western labelare we going to print uh or
paste onwhat they're doing uh labels don't helpyou actually have to get into
thenitty-grittyuh of looking at how they're handling uhtax policyhow they're
handling land ownership andthe credit policyhow they're handling uh rural
uh thebudget deficits of rural communitiesuh these are the problems that
they'redealing with right nowyeah i mean there's there's definitelyon the left
a very long history ofholier than thou kind of no no truescotsman sentiment
so i think that'svery refreshinghere's another question professor
hudsonwhat do you thinkis the regional and internationalsignificance of the
rcep the regionalcomprehensive economic partnershipthat's thetrade
agreement sign between countriesin eastern and southeasternasia in 2020
you can't tell yetuh there's still a jockeying forpositionwith its uh relationship
to theunited states europe and other countriesso too early to tellokay here's
an interesting question fromnoahdoggity thank you for the donation hereon
this live streamhe said dr hudson do you think land taxor the singapore
modelis best for creating affordable housingfor workersand what can we do
on local and statelevelsthe land tax is by far the best way ofkeepinguh
housing prices down because uh ascountries get moreprosperous the
value of the rentedlocationis going to go up as you developeducational
systems and parksand public uh utilities uh then you'regoing to haveuh the
rental value of given sites anduh properties houses andoffice buildings uh
rise now if you donot uhdon't create this prosperity they don'tcreate the
publicinfrastructure that raises value if youdo not tax it awaythen all of this
rental value is goingto be availableto be pledged to banks and the bankswill
lend enough moneyuh so that the mortgage interest isgoing to absorball of
the land rent if the if you taxaway the land rentthen this cannot be
capitalized into ahigher value and if you tax the landrent number oneyou
don't have to tax uh uhincome uh you don't have to have a salestax youyou
tax only the unearned uh economicrentand uh the argument for that was
alllaid out by adam smithand john stuart mill and marx andthorstein
vedlinand uh other people uh in the 19thcentury soobviously if you want
low-cost housinguh you want to prevent thefinancializationof real estate
and that uh i can assureyou is one of the central problemsuh that china is
dealing with uh rightnow and it's a problem thatuh i have a book coming out
on this aseries of my my lectures in chinauh uh dealing with thisthat'll be
available in about uh threemonthswell final question and we'll wrap up
umthank you so much for joining usprofessor hudson this is another one
ofthose questions that could go onforever but we can just keep it
briefbecause we'realmost at 90 minutes here um mark owenaskscan any
country attempt to move awayfrom the dollaror does the economy need to
be of acertain size and does the country haveto have specific resources to
do soany country can move away from thedollar as long as they uhthey are
part of a system that has acritical massso the great threat to the dollar uh
uhhegemony is that uh china russiairan and the shanghai
cooperationorganization countriesare going to be a critical mass
thatvenezuela much of latin america africaand the rest of asia can all join
soyes as long as you're part of uh as longas there's a viable alternativewith
a critical mass the fact is if yourely on the dollaryou're probably going to get
screwedbecause uh the dollar as we discussedearlier in the showuh the u.s
can grab your bank account atany pointthey can grab your gold reserves at
anypoint even germany is now asking for itsgold reservesto be spun black
slowly they can grabyoumonth by month they can grab you theycanthey
can grab you i mean they look atalex saabright in indeed so yes any
anyone can uhwithin a few years you'll have analternativeeconomic order
that to the dollarso that things don't have to be the waythey are there is an
alternativemargaret thatcher was wrong and so isbiden and
blinkenexcellent well thank you so muchprofessor hudson for joining us i
justwant to plugthat a new version of his book superimperialism will be
coming outsoon in a few months and hopefullyprofessor hudsonwe can
have you back to discuss that i'mlooking forward to it i think it'll bevery
important and i think we're livingthrougha really a historical watershed
momentyou know you what you justreferenced that there is a
newinternational financial system beingbuiltright now as we speak and so
few peopleacknowledge that's even happeningso thanks so much for your
work and andthanks for speaking with us well it'sbeen a very enjoyable
discussion thanksfor having methanks a lot professor greatand if anyone
wants to support the workwe do hereat moderate rebels you can go over
topatreon patreon.commoderate rebels and i would also highlyrecommend
checking out michael hudson'swebsite that is michaelhyphenhudson.comi
as you know someone i would definitelynever call myself anywhere near
aneconomic specialist i focus much more onpolitics soi always find that
such a valuableresource i'm constantly going to readbecause what's good
is that professorhudson has not only his articles but healso has
transcriptsof all of the interviews that he doesand we will have a full
transcriptof this interview that he's going topost over at michael
hyphenhudson thanks so much for joining usand we will see you all next
time if youwant to submit questionslike we did in this broadcast go
topatreon.commoderate rebels and we'll see you allnext time thanksEnglish
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