Summary of Michael Hudson's J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS

By IRB Media

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

#1 The financial crisis was the result of the rise in debt overhead, which caused a slowing down of the business cycle and caused debt deflation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822527355

IRB Media

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Insights on Michael Hudson's J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS

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 1

#1

The financial crisis was the result of the rise in debt overhead, which caused a slowing down of the business cycle and caused debt deflation.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Junk Economics is the cover story for the financial aristocracy’s attempt to redistribute wealth and income upward. It is sponsored by financial interests to increase their share of society’s resources, while driving the middle class into debt.

Insights from Chapter 3

#1

I drafted this dictionary and its accompanying essays more than a decade ago, for a book to be entitled The Fictitious Economy. It did not find a publisher. My warnings about how debt leveraging would lead to a crisis hardly qualified as a timely how-to-get-rich manual.

#2

The language of economics has changed to reflect the fact that economies now aim at different objectives than those of the classical economic critics and reformers. Instead of allying itself with industry, banking has found its main market in real estate, the rent-yielding oil and mining sectors, and monopolies.

#3

The classical economic theory that land rent and monopoly rent are unearned income paid to an unnecessary rentier class has been airbrushed from the academic curriculum. The history of economic thought is not taught anymore.

#4

Modern Monetary Theory argues that money and credit are a public utility rather than a private monopoly of commercial banks. It therefore advocates that the government spend into the economy via central banks or treasuries.

#5

Today’s mainstream economic theory is based on assumptions that are not rooted in reality, and it produces models that do not take into account the political, environmental, and legal ramifications of debt.

Insights from Chapter 4

#1

I owe a debt to the living. Without the loving support of my wife, Grace, this book would not have been completed. I also owe a debt to the classical economists, from François Quesnay and Adam Smith to E. Peshine Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx.

#2

The first step to reforming a malstructured world is to rectify the names. Today’s economic terminology is in need of such renovation.

#3

The financial sector has transformed the English language to suit their needs. Words like rescue, bailout, and free markets are used to describe predatory practices, while words like earnings, contributions, and productivity are used to describe rent and interest.

#4

Classical economics defines economic rent as unearned income, which is the excess of price over real cost-value. Today, neoliberals and their libertarian mascots seek to make governments too weak to fulfill the classical program of taxing land and natural resources, regulating or preventing monopolies, or providing basic financial and economic services by public infrastructure investment.

#5

The most typical way that a false mind reasons is by not examining if the principle is true, even when you derive accurate consequences therefrom. This is the method of today’s mathematical economics, national income statistics, and especially international trade and monetary theory.

#6

The economic problem is ultimately one of insolvency, not merely temporary illiquidity. The major economic problem is whether the economy’s debts should be downsized to reflect the ability to pay, or growth and living standards