Michael Hudson Quotes

We go forward with our heads held high, but look back and remember where we come from.

You have a choice. Either you can have more oil, or more clean water. Fracking is not good for the water supply.

The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.

What's bad for the frackers usually is good for the rest of the world.

Nothing could be better for the economy than to get rid of fracking.

Every government, from the Obama administration right through to Angela Merkel, the Eurozone and the IMF, promise to save the banks, not the economy.

Elites play the role today that landlords played under feudalism. They levy interest and financial fees that are like a tax, to support what the classical economists called "unproductive activity."

Nobody prefers to earn income any more, because that's taxable. Rich people prefer to make capital gains.

We're still in the collapse that began after 2008. There's not a new collapse, there hasn't been a recovery.

One basic myth is that rich people get wealthy by earning income. But that's not how most get rich. Most of the gains of the rich people since 1945 have been "capital gains".

To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.

Mathematically, debts grow exponentially at compound interest. Banks recycle the interest into new loans, so debts grow exponentially, faster than the economy can afford to pay.

There really isn't a recovery, and no signs of it on the horizon, because people have to pay the banks. It's a vicious circle - or rather, a downward spiral.

As you have to pay more interest and amortization on what you owe, you're left with less and less money to buy goods and services - unless you borrow even more and go further into debt.

The world's politics are in turmoil, not to mention the Mideast, where the US has mounted attacks from Libya to Iraq to Syria, and ISIS is attacking governments in today's pipeline rivalry.

A bubble is only called that after it bursts, after the insiders get out, leaving the pension funds and small investors, Canadians and other naïve investors holding the bag.

You're having government spending on the economy being cut almost everywhere. That means that the only source of spending for growth has to come from borrowing from the banking system.

If the economy is growing, people want to employ more workers. If you hire more labor, wages go up.

Inflation usually helps the economy at large, but not the 1% if wages rise. So the 1% says that it is terrible.

When we say "people worry" about inflation, it's mainly bondholders that worry. The labor force benefitted from the inflation of the '50s, '60s and '70s.

Basically, unless you're willing to write down debts and save the economy, you're going to have deflation and a steady drain in purchasing power - that is, shrinking markets.

Trump has said that he wants to remove the tax deductibility of interest. If he can do that, fine. But I hope that Trump knows that it's not the President that sets tax policy. It's Congress.

Textbooks don't teach people how to avoid paying any income tax. But that's what an army of tax lawyers and corporate tax accountants do.

To save the banks, you would have to turn the entire Eurozone into Greece.

People are putting their money into treasuries because they worry that the risk of putting their money into the bond market, the stock market or even the money markets is very high.

The companies aren't hiring, because consumers don't have enough money to buy the goods and services.

There are so many currency exchange rate problems that people are buying gold as a safe haven. Right now, gold looks like a safe haven if international exchange rates break down.

In fact, there's no way that banks can be paid everything that they're owed.

The economy is being run primarily by the banks for their own interest.

When you say "paying the banks," what they really mean is paying the bank bondholders. They are basically the One Percent.

Either you can save the economy, or you can save the One Percent from losing a single penny.

Money is not a factor of production. But in order to have access to credit, in order to get money, in order to get an education, you have to pay the banks.

That's the "magic" of double-taxation treaties: you can shop around for the lowest taxer.

Trump's junk economics is the illusion that if we cut the taxes on the wealthiest brackets, it'll all trickle down. But it doesn't trickle down.

On the flat tax, the more you compress the tax rates, the more you untax where the income is really made, at the top of the pyramid.

In order to be an economist these days, you have to participate in this fairytale that somehow we can recover and still make the banks rich. And it is a fairytale.

No price is too high to pay to try to make the financial system go on a little bit longer. But ultimately it can't be saved, because of the mathematics that are involved.

The ideological foundation of today's business schools is that economic control should be shifted out of government hands into those of financial managers - that is, Wall Street.

The United States Government has fought against creation of an international court to adjudicate the ability of national economies to pay debts.

You have the economic vocabulary turning into vocabulary of deception.

When Hillary Clinton said she's going to do just what Obama does and we're going to continue to recover, most people know that we're not recovering at all. We're shrinking.

Small banks that lend to consumers are fine.

Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.

Trump's claims that he's making taxes more democratic for the people, but it actually is a vast sucking of income and wealth upward.

The natural geopolitical arrangement is for Europe to be part of Eurasia, especially for Germany to develop trade and investment relationships with Russia.

A derivative is a bet on whether a stock, or a bond or a real estate asset, is going to go up or down. There's a winner and a loser. It's like betting on a horserace.

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.

If you increase living standards, you make labor more productive. This is why Asia today is becoming more productive than the United States.

Governments create money and spend it into the economy by running budget deficits. The paper currency in your pocket is technically a government debt.

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.