Economics of US new cold war on China and Russia, with Michael Hudson

Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton speak with economist Michael Hudson about the US new cold war on China and Russia.

||| Moderate Rebels |||

#ModerateRebels

[sweetlou]

Professors Hudson & Wolff should be required reading in all public schools.

Capitalism is destroying the biosphere.

[danielgeistzer]

WONDERFUL!!! My favourite journalists hosting my favourite economist!!!

[josephadamo]

Thank you for having Michael on again, he is the best economist alive bar none!

[danthemansmail]

Hearing the truth has become for me like drinking a tall cool glass of water on a hot summer day. Thanks Grayzone and Dr. Hudson.

[marilynwargo]

Thank you, guys! Wonderful info. More! 🌸🐌💙

[patmax]

This Was Very *Interesting Inteligent Conversation* Sadly A Rare Thing These Dayz😢
Thank You Gentlemen So Much Appreciated🙏⛪💚👍😉

[spiritofgoldfish]

The classical role of government is to tax away economic rents and use it to lower the cost of production. This is done through subsidies for such things as public infrastructure, education, and health care, not raising the prices through monopolistic privatization.

The problem with economics as it is understood in America, is that there is no distinction between wealth production and wealth extraction. Production of goods and services speaks for itself, but monopolies and the banks (FIRE, finance, insurance, and real estate) extract what is called economic rent. The free market Adam Smith talked about is free FROM economic rent, not free FOR economic rent.

This is Chinese Economic Policy as opposed to American Financial Capitalism favoring the rentier class, and it is what the conflict is really all about.

American democracy is entirely theatrical with the public will having no more effect than Chinese public will on the Chinese Communist Party.

If the US was a democracy, we would have a decent minimum wage, public health care, free education, parental leave, and gun control, to name a few, all by popular demand.

[seanlee]

In the US the market is socialist where losses of large enterprises are socialized and the govt are capitalist where the govt put themselves up for sale, while in china, the market is capitalist and govt is socialist.

[sherriinolywa]

I press the “like” button and it reverts to a neutral position….? Excellent excellent segment!!

[streetpotato]

Waiting for someone to call him a tankie.

[julieannmyers]

Between latest data on climate disintegration & the societal trends toward Neo-Fascist/Neo-Feudalism, it appears a "perfect" storm is on the horizon.

[picandvideo]

Geopolitics, global economics, Economic polarities - free lessons 👍

[OneLine]

There is not much difference between a "rentier" and a capitalist. I don't think saying it is different capitalist systems fighting each others and what he is saying are that much different. The real issue here would be more about whether this new "service" economy or "financial" economy is progress or regress. Hudson says it is regress to a pre-industrialized feudal system. I am not sure just how much that is the case, but there seems to be different strands. One is certainly neo-feudal, but some others aren't. It does seem to be neo-feudal in the US since Reagan, except real feudalism was based on agriculture, and that is where people were working. Now where people are supposed to work is in doing menial tasks for the rentiers in order to be allowed to live. I think it is quite different, but there are similarities quite clearly.

The problem here is one of vision. China is aiming at an industrial society, so they provide the manufactured goods. They see the US as a future farming country that will provide staple goods. The US on the other hand want to privatize intangibles, like intellectual property, which of course cannot be stolen, but also cannot be protected easily. There will be a long time of posturing on that, the US claiming they own other people's ideas, and urging others by force to accept it and enforce it for them. And they see manufacture as inferior, because they all of course have ideas behind which can be privatized. So it's a step up from worker -> means of production -> schemer. The nice thing about the schemer, is that he is always delusionally right. The bad thing is that he cannot even wipe his own behind, so it needs lots of convincing and rhetoric. I doubt this scheme can be exported outside highly Evangelical countries so its probably bound to fail. It simply makes zero sense in practice, and it is not feudal either because they were against the idea.

Well, hopefully, because it is a very terrible thing. Mostly slavery under another name, which makes feudalism as quite a nice place in comparison, same with industrial capitalism. So in the end I think it is just the slavery status quo which was never abolished effectively. It's neither regressive or progressive, just a modern adaptation. Aristocracy without virtue, but with privatized values. Biden is a great example of this. A slaver that is anti-racist. Racism is bad for business, makes slaves nervous. :)

[HOMESBYPETER]

God how I hate commentators that take over the show when they're guests don't really get a chance to talk

[rahimrawji]

You know, I should read some of your work Michael but I also really like watching TV and basketball and hockey playoffs are soon going to start

[darkofius]

The economy that has difficulties in the manufacturing sector and the workforce has been late to upgrade the knowledge, it is expensive, will have two opponents that obtained the new skills and knowledge at par with the US, but developed further domestically. The lever in the financial sector lost its luster, nor Russia or China will be caught into the treasury play, these days are over. Barter is the new name of the cold war game, and what has the US that the opponents canot produce, where is the Washingtons plus, if there are none of the substance and scale, the cold war might become a war of attrition that Washington might fill the pain in a short time from today. It is not only the two, there are 30 other states that predators with DNA of a parasite got a boot on, Washington is destroying its hosts and will encounter the parasites that might be entering into its economy.

[liam]

So is the Moderate Rebels channel being wound down so it can be lumped into the Grayzone channel?

[robmiller]

You are so correct and good to hear your point of view. I'd just like to add that Russia has made itself unpopular with the West when it Ripped Up the Budapest Memorandum! To really understand what is happening in Eastern Europe people need to thoroughly understand this extremely important document and international Agreement! The Budapest Memorandum was signed by the following countries:- Russia, USA, France, UK, and China and it Guaranteed the Sovereignty of all the Countries that were part of the Old USSR to these countries (Eg Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia etc etc) in return for these countries giving up their Nuclear Weapons to Russia. Lest We Forget! Would Russia have annexed parts of Georgia, Crimea, Eastern Ukraine if they still had their Nukes? In my opinion Putin Needs an Enemy so he can deflects from the real economic and political Issues in Russia. Russia GDP is smaller than Australia's. Like Australia it is an extremely Resource Rich Economy which is heavily dependant on the Price of Oil. Russia's Population is 143 million people compared to Australia's 25 million!.
China is behaving strangely because it is about to fall off a Demographic Cliff face! Its 1 Child Policy is about to bite it on the bottom. This is why China wants to deal with its ambitions in Hong Kong (Nearly 100% Completed), Taiwan is still work in Progress but Xi Xiping has made it clear that it needs to be done in the next decade. And China's determination to re-educate those in its Western Provinces to ensure a unified. It sure is a strange old world we live in; Brexit, Trumpism, Covid, Isolationism, Protectionism, Imperialism you name it???

[reinerwilhelms-tricarico]

The analysis of American finance oligarchy and rentiers as a kind of neofeudal order is correct, I think. I don't understand though why China isn't measured with equal criteria. It isn't democratic, and it is ruled by the CCP and industrial titans who still have to obey the CCP. It isn''t socialist, and it isn't communist. It isn't capitalist either, even though it would be closer to industrial capitalism than America. All we can say that it is a state commanded economy for the most part, with tight mass surveillance, which is the wet dream of American oligarchs and much of the Davos crowd, and with a market to take care of the details (unlike the hideous attempt of the former UdSSR to do everything by planning from the top down). And even if China is far from being the world's hegemone, they have strong imperial ambitions and in fact are slowly re-colonizing Africa, even though in a much smarter way. Of course, if a little imperialist is fighting a big imperialist, everything they do can be depicted as defense. Just look at the leading ideology. Mao is still highly estimated like a god in his glass shrine, and in spite of all the changes it's one straight line from there to the autocratic rule now of the Winnie the Pooh, who was lifted to become lifelong emperor with some 4000 votes and a handful of abstentions. It's not much different from the old Chinese empire. I would say it is a modern technocratic feudalism.