Michael Hudson
Michael Hudson
ukraine looks imf
Look at Ukraine. Its currency, the hernia, is plunging. The euro is really in a problem. Greece is problematic as to whether it can pay the IMF, which is threatening not to be part of the troika with the European Central Bank and the European Union making more loans to enable Greece to pay the bondholders and the banks. Britain is having a referendum as to whether to withdraw from the European Union, and it looks more and more like it may do so. So the world's politics are in turmoil.
looks saving way
If you look at payments to labor as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, you find profits going way up, investment and savings going up.
leader looks united-states
Most of the European leaders look at themselves as having to follow the United States, because if the US opposes them, there will be a regime change.
marine where-we-come looks
We go forward with our heads held high, but look back and remember where we come from.
corner forces lebanon others seriously sufficient supporters turn unlikely
Certainly, anti-Syrian forces in Lebanon feel on the defensive, nervous, frightened, depressed. The Syrians may be out in one way, but in others they're always right around the corner and have sufficient friends and supporters in Lebanon that make it unlikely it will turn into a seriously anti-Syrian place.
adam avoiding banks care central debts dollar foreign fund government health intend paying pension private repay smith trillion
They're never going to be repaid. Adam Smith said that no government had ever repaid its debts and the same can be said of the private sector. The U.S. government does not intend to repay its trillion dollar debt to foreign central banks and, even if it did intend to, there's no way in which it could. Most of the corporations now are avoiding paying their pension fund debts and their health care debts.
among construct difficult government iraqi military militia security situation tainted
It's very difficult for the Iraqi government to govern because the security situation is still very unstable. Among the most pressing problems, the most pressing is to try to construct a military and security bureaucracy that is not essentially tainted by militias or militia loyalties.
fall mean europe
Deflation means a slowdown of income growth. Markets shrink, new capital investment and employment also taper off, so wages decline. That is what's happening as deliberate policy in Europe and the United States. Falling or stagnant prices are simply the result of having less income to spend.
loss people house
The aim of promoting low down payments is to push prices back up so that fewer houses are going to be in negative equity and fewer people are going to walk away from the mortgages. That will save the from taking a loss on their junk mortgage loans.
moving mean thinking
Now, suppose that a homeowner puts down only 3% of their own money or 3.5% for the FHA. That means if prices go down by only 3%, the house will be in negative equity and it would pay the homeowner just to walk away and say, "The house now is worth less than the mortgage I owe. I think I'm just going to move out and buy a cheaper house." So it's very risky when you have only a 3% or 3.5% equity for the loan. The bank really isn't left with much cushion as collateral.
real agency people
The real estate interests and banks are in a kind of symbiosis. They're the largest-growing part of the economy. This is the sector that backs the political campaigns of senators, presidents and congressmen, and they use this leverage to make sure that their people dominate the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the federal housing agencies.
running people care
When you say "bank," a bank is a building, a set of computers and chairs and things. The bankers are the people running these banks. They're the chief officers, and they push the loans because they don't care if they go bad. For one thing, they may package these bad loans and sell them off to gullible institutional investors.
running government guy
If bankers can push the loans and make more profits for the bank, they get paid higher bonuses. They often also get stock options. If the bank goes under, they get to keep all of these salaries and options - and the government will bail out the bank. These guys will take their money and run, which is pretty much what they're doing now.
running thinking two
There are two definitions of deflation. Most people think of it simply as prices going down. But debt deflation is what happens when people have to spend more and more of their income to carry the debts that they've run up - to pay their mortgage debt, to pay the credit card debt, to pay student loans.