Super Imperialism. The Economic Strategy of American Empire. Third Edition

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And they’re political; they’re pragmatic; and you should think really in terms of what are they doing structurally, and not thinking, what label, especially what Western label, are we going to print or paste on what they’re doing? Well do you also agree with the argument, it seems like Gates has invested not just billions of dollars, but really his life into what seems like the privatization of the global public health system. I mean, the Gates Foundation is one of the principal funders of the World Health Organization. This is not a state; this is a foundation run by a single capitalist. And he has shown that Modern Monetary Theory works. The difference is that the Republicans’, and now the Democratic, and the Federal Reserve’s idea of monetary theory is, of course the government can create all the money it wants, simply by printing it, but because the government has been privatized by the commercial banks and the financial sector. And so when we do create money, we’re going to create it to enrich the 1% not the 99%. It’s so bizarre. It’s almost a comedy. It’s like the old comics they used to have in grade school, “What’s wrong with this picture?”, and you’d see birds flying upside down and all sorts of dogs walking people. It’s just such nonsense.

So you can expect a wishy washy sort of slow decline with a few rapid spikes in decline as the Covid crisis ends. And you’re having almost a preparation for this by – I think Biden and the government people realize that the economy cannot regain its former industrial position, because it’s a rentier economy now. This may sound too technical. The author essentially is saying that if daily yield changes were distributed normally (assuming 252 trading days a year), the observed jumps in the US Treasury yields in the first half of August 2019 would have had an approximate daily frequency of once every 63 years. No one can claim the normal distribution of daily yield changes. But, if these many jumps happen in about 15 days, it is not normal. The last time something like this happened was in 2008. First, around the Bear Stearns collapse of 14 March 2008, and then, around the Lehman collapse of 15 September 2008. The lessons taken by US policymakers from the interwar period informed the institutions created at the conference. Officials such as President Franklin D Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull were adherents of the Wilsonian belief that free trade not only promoted international prosperity, but also international peace. The experience of the 1930s certainly suggested as much. The policies adopted by governments to combat the Great Depression—high tariff barriers, competitive currency devaluations, discriminatory trading blocs—had contributed to creating an unstable international environment without improving the economic situation. This experience led international leaders to conclude that economic cooperation was the only way to achieve both peace and prosperity, at home and abroad. So, yes, as long as you’re part of, as long as there’s a viable alternative with a critical mass – the fact is, if you rely on the dollar, you’re probably going to get screwed. Because with the dollar, as we discussed earlier in the show, the US can grab your bank account, at any point; they can grab your gold reserves at any point. But, obviously, there are many successful billionaires in China, many successful entrepreneurs, but these are largely industrial entrepreneurs who have actually created something.But you’re right, it’s amazing, the accusation that helping save lives in other countries by offering them free or inexpensive vaccines will undercut the profits of American companies is a crime against humanity, and must be punished by sanctions. It shows you that I guess the United Nations is dead. Super-imperialism is a Marxist term with two possible meanings. It refers either to the hegemony of an imperialist great power over its weaker rivals which then are called sub-imperialisms, or to a comprehensive supra-structure above a set of theoretically equal-righted imperialist states. The latter meaning is the older one and had become rare by the middle of the 20th century. Oldrich Vasicek is an old friend. When I started my “quant” career in bonds in January 1994 in Walnut Creek, California, Oldrich was there. A recently graduated PhD in mathematics, I received my first real-life finance education from him. So I certainly was viewed – Super Imperialism was done as part of my consulting with the US government, as was the sequel, Global Fracture. And then the Canadian government, Mexican government, and it all spread out from there. And what the crisis really did was just accelerate the polarizing trend that you have in the United States, between creditors and debtors, between property owners and renters, and between consumers and monopolists. These trends have been exacerbated.

You’ve shown how the United States has run rings around Britain and every other empire-building nation in history. We’ve pulled off the greatest rip-off ever achieved. The labyrinthian contents of Finance ( “The devil wins at the point where the public comes to believe that he doesn’t exist”) demands the most talented writing/editing to make accessible to the public; sadly, every Hudson book (the most comprehensive of Hudson’s range being The Bubble and Beyond) reads like a compilation of articles, resulting in grueling repetition and public obscurity.And we’ve seen that the Treasury Department just imposed several new rounds of sanctions on Russia. So what is your view on the new cold war that’s going on right now? And that will be our means of, “Well, you can’t pay, well, why don’t you sell off some more of your infrastructure? Why don’t you sell off more of your oil or mineral resources to us?”

But this is just a marketing strategy to me. I mean, there’s something that you’ve spoken about written about in Super Imperialism and in recent talks that I think lurks behind what both the Trump and Biden administrations call “great power competition.”I don’t think he needs introduction. He has written many books, and has been an economic adviser for multiple governments, and has a long history on Wall Street and academia. And you can find his work at Michael-Hudson.com. And the US has, it seems – and I want to get your view on this – successfully disrupted this massive EU-Chinese trade deal by weaponizing human rights allegations, talking about the treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, or the supposedly poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. One of our patrons asked about “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” and said, from your experience working with the Chinese government and other education systems, do you see the political will from the Xi Jinping administration to keep toward on the socialist path? Or do you feel that China is having a new battle with capitalists and financialized forces within the system since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms? This books focuses on the better-hidden economic terrorism of imperialism rather than the politics of military terrorism (although military spending plays a crucial role). Why use tanks when you can use banks? Of course, we need to pair this with the politics of democracy-bombs:

That’s right. It can’t do that either. And when the United States structured the Eurozone, it made sure that no central government, no national government could create its own national currency, so they can’t run budget deficits to spend into the economy to help a recovery.

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Here’s another question, Professor Hudson: What do you think is the regional and international significance of the RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership? That’s the trade trade agreement sign between countries in eastern and southeastern Asia in 2020. Yeah, hi Professor Hudson, I totally agree with you about the Democrats, at least the political class and their perspective on Russia.