Summary of Michael Hudson's Killing the Host

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 As economies grew, people were supposed to save more and have less need to go into debt. However, as debt levels increased, people began to consume less and save more. This caused a shortage of market demand.

#2 The aim of political economy for the past three centuries has been to recover the flow of privatized land and natural resource rent that medieval kings had lost. The political dimension of this effort involved democratic constitutional reform to overpower the rent-levying class.

#3 The financial sector aims to minimize the cost of roads, electric power, transportation, water, and education, but to maximize what can be charged as monopoly rent.

#4 Financializing industry has changed the character of class warfare from what socialists and labor leaders envisioned in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Then, the great struggle was between employers and labor over wages and benefits. Today, finance is cannibalizing industrial capital, imposing austerity, and shrinking employment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822520141

IRB Media

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Insights on Michael Hudson's Killing the Host

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 24

Insights from Chapter 25

Insights from Chapter 26

Insights from Chapter 27

Insights from Chapter 28

Insights from Chapter 29

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

As economies grew, people were supposed to save more and have less need to go into debt. However, as debt levels increased, people began to consume less and save more. This caused a shortage of market demand.

#2

The aim of political economy for the past three centuries has been to recover the flow of privatized land and natural resource rent that medieval kings had lost. The political dimension of this effort involved democratic constitutional reform to overpower the rent-levying class.

#3

The financial sector aims to minimize the cost of roads, electric power, transportation, water, and education, but to maximize what can be charged as monopoly rent.

#4

Financializing industry has changed the character of class warfare from what socialists and labor leaders envisioned in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Then, the great struggle was between employers and labor over wages and benefits. Today, finance is cannibalizing industrial capital, imposing austerity, and shrinking employment.

#5

Financial sector advocates have sought to control democracies by shifting tax policy and bank regulation out of the hands of elected representatives and into the hands of nominees from world financial centers.

#6

Money creation is now monopolized by banks, which use this power to finance the transfer of property. The financial strategy is capped by creating international financial institutions to bring pressure on debtor economies to take fiscal policy out of the hands of elected parliaments and into those of institutions ruling on behalf of bankers and bondholders.

#7

The financial sector has taken away the free lunch economic rent that was supposed to be given to the public in the form of lower prices and more services. Instead, they have created a neo-rentier society that extracts wealth from the economy and gives it to them.

#8

The financial sector’s response is to lend enough to enable debtors to pay. When this financial bubble bursts, creditors foreclose on the public domain of debtor economies, just as they do with defaulting mortgage debt.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The original fight for free markets was to free them from exploitation by rent extractors: owners of land, natural resources, monopoly rights, and money fortunes that provided income without corresponding work.

#2

The guiding principle of classical value and price theory was that everyone deserves to receive the fruits of their own labor, but not that of others. Neoliberal economics seeks to deny that any income or wealth is unearned, and that market prices may contain an unnecessary excessive rake-off over intrinsic value.

#3

Up until medieval times, most families produced their own basic needs. It was not until the 13th century’s revival of trade and urbanization that an analytic effort arose to relate market prices to costs of production.

#4

Economies are in danger of succumbing to a new rentier syndrome. This was pointed out in 1774 by Dean Josiah Tucker, who noted that it made a difference whether nations obtained money by employing their population productively or by piracy or simply looting of silver and gold.

#5

The main distinction between today’s mode of conquest and that of 16th-century Spain is that it is now largely financial, rather than military. Land, natural resources, public infrastructure, and industrial corporations are acquired by borrowing money.

#6

Classical value theory provides the clearest tools to analyze the dynamics that are polarizing and impoverishing