How does the US Empire Work? Dr. Michael E. Hudson on the truth of reality

You want to listen to Michael E. Hudson - he's the real expert on economics. Basically after going off the gold standard - the US now relies on the "Petrodollar" - which means that the value of the dollar is backed by our genocidal military invasions of oil-rich countries (like Venezuela, Iran, Iraq). So Saudi Arabia was behind 9/11 and the Saudis invest their profits into treasury bonds of the US and Wall St. - and then the Saudis buy US weapons - and control OPEC. So that was set up by Kissinger and then called the Carter Doctrine - that the US will invade to protect the PetroDollar. So we maintain monopoly control of the Oil over Japan and Germany.

So in the past 10 years the US military has "lost $21 trillion" - off the books - and the central banks of the West have also CREATED $21 trillion as welfare for Wall St. Over 90% of Wall St. growth is due to "stock buybacks" - meaning next to free low interest loans that then prop up their stock rate of return - Stock Buybacks used to be ILLEGAL. So it's a HUGE ponzi scheme for the rich and then slave labor for the masses.

Right now the Arctic is seen as the new contest for oil/gas but abrupt global warming will be tanking the economy - since you can't eat money. http://arctic-news.blogspot.com details how abrupt global warming will be doubling very soon to the East Siberian Arctic Shelf Methane Bomb going off from El Nino this fall. So money historically has ALWAYS been valued by the military - China was the first to create "paper money" and valued it by the military expansion. So we already have a socialist economy based on military spending - as Noam Chomsky points out. So the internet was developed by the military - all our high tax was first developed by military contracts - and then it is handed over for free to private spin-off companies through the military contracts. The problem is military spending is very bad at creating good spending jobs - so the military contracts are purposely in EVERY political district in the US to ensure that the politicians are controlled by the military contractors for "job creation."

So then right now - 40% of GDP is from financial parasites - collecting dividends and capitol gains and rents - through passive UNEARNED income - and this is concentrating wealth while creating a HUGE debt. So that is why the FED can no longer increase the interest rates - the US Empire is already bankrupt. ONLY the military is propping up the value of the dollar by enforcing economic sanctions against countries that don't allow "opening up" of markets to US control.

For example CARGILL is the largest private corporation in the world that controls US grain trading - and so the US government pays CARGILL to store grain which is then DUMPED into other countries to then WIPE OUT their local farmers. This is why after NAFTA over 1 million Mexican farmers fled into the US because CARGILL dumped corn into Mexico. Cargill for example DUMPED grain into Somalia into Mogadishu - where the farmers controlled the capitol. So CARGILL dumped the food at 1/6th the local price - thereby wiping out the farmers and causing a political vacuum and civil war. Cargill does that in over 100 countries worldwide. So you can't EAT money but you can use food as a weapon of imperialism.

 Europe uses the term "Social Democrat" for Bernies views - NOT "socialist" - so Europe has both "Social Democrats" and "Democratic socialists." So it is just a label - when you look at Bernie's views he's not calling for nationalization of business. In fact with the 2008 financial meltdown - we did have Nationalization of business - with the bailouts and buyouts. Also the military contracts are the real socialism. This is what Bernie points out - just as Martin Luther King Jr stated - it is socialism for the rich ALREADY in the U.S. 

For example the Central Banks of the West have printed out of thin air - in the last ten years - $21 TRILLION in FREE MONEY for Wall St. So over 90% of Wall St. growth has been from "stock buybacks" due to very low interest loans. Stock buybacks used to be illegal. Nomi Prins has lots of vids on youtube about this - she used to work for Goldman Sachs. So the Democratic Party is already controlled by the Goldman Sachs Socialism for the Rich elite.

 Also Micah - I personally talked to bare-footed peasants in Venezuela in 1998 - and they had never voted before but they decided to vote for Hugo Chavez. The fact is that the poor in Venezuela did have their conditions greatly improved but the US literally staged a military coup against Hugo Chavez. The US masses do not know about this. The US has historically controlled Venezuela through right wing military fascism. I also stayed at a man who worked for Venezuela at OPEC - and he was kidnapped by the Jackal - so he trained at Columbia University. So I did my undergraduate degree in International Relations - we in the US do not understand that the US is an empire. So we "impose" democracy on other countries by actually supporting fascist regimes. The reason Venezuela is in such bad condition is because of the US sanctions and the US military coup - and the US funding the protests, etc.

 yeah except it is about time that the US masses realize how US Empire works. Have you read JOhn Perkin's book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"? The US CIA assassinates presidents who do not fall in line with the imposed World Bank and IMF austerity programs for the poor and handouts for the rich. That's the REAL corruption going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEsSf7ARpw8 The fact is there was a US military coup attempt against Venezuela and the US has done this countless times in other countries - so the Rockefellers could get Iranian Oil after the 1953 coup and the coup in Guatemala was mass mind controlled by the nephew of Freud - for the sake of United Fruit working with the CIA - Dulles Brothers working with the Nazis. Operation Condor was a CIA Latin American support of fascist regimes based on mass torture and assassination - and massacres. That's the REAL corruption going on.

 thank you and I noticed you are into music. So I have studied music and also activism - so yes our political system is way more corrupt than we realize. And it goes deeper than this. OK let me share some connections between music and politics - the economics professor Michael E. Hudson also started out training in music. Hudson points out how the equal-tempered music tuning was promoted as "social harmony" when it is a tuning based on logarithms (equal-tempered) that have an inverse exponential function.

So this is an ancient political philosophy even embedded in our music! So all human cultures use the Octave, Perfect Fifth and Perfect Fourth as 1:2:3:4 music tuning. Only in the West was infinite time-frequency then "contained" as a symmetric geometry. So Plato taught that each citizen has a value of 9/8 (the major 2nd music interval) which must be compromised for the good of the state as equal-tempered tuning - so that 9/8 cubed (logarithms) equals the tritone as the square root of two.

This is not the empirical truth of reality. In fact the Perfect Fifth and Perfect Fourth are "non-commutative" - to the octave. That simply means that 2 does not go into 3 and so reality is based on complementary opposites - so for example in Daoist music then yang is the Perfect Fifth and Yin is the Perfect Fourth - and their music scale does not line up with the octave! So then for Plato - even democracy is a scam - that tries to equate equal-tempered citizens with a secret exponential growth of technology and science.

 I have corresponded with numerous scientists about this - like math professor Luigi Borzacchini who calls this secret music origin of Western science the "deep pre-established disharmony" that is the "evoltive principle" of science. So for example the circle of fifths is actually an infinite spiral of fifths - as Sir James Jeans points out in his book "Science and Music." This simple fact is ignored and covered up by so-called music experts - like that one youtube channel who does music theory - Adam Neely. So yes our political system is so corrupt that even the experts do not realize how deep the lies are.

There is a book called "The Paper Economy" by David T. Bazelon that notes how our patent system for technology develop is tied to the legal system via our economics. So Plato set this up - that's what Bazelon notes. So now with exponential growth - we have created the ecological crisis on Earth and abrupt global warming is now inevitable because of the aerosol masking effect from burning coal and oil. In other words Sulfur pollution has cooled the planet about half as much as global warming emissions have WArmed the planet. This means that the more we use renewable energy and the less sulfur pollution we have from coal and oil - then the more we warm the planet! Also there are positive feedback amplifications from Nature already - the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf has a huge "methane bomb" that is already starting to go off - http://arctic-news.blogspot.com has the details.

So yes our political system is very corrupt but so is western civilization general - our legal system as well. For example my dad was the assistant attorney general of Minnesota - and so when Jesse Ventura was elected as an independent governor - you know what happened? Jesse Ventura relates how the CIA called him into the basement of the capitol and he was surrounded by a dozen CIA agents demanding to know how Ventura got elected as an independent and what he was going to do as governor. So the CIA really does try to control politics. And also - I pointed out to Jesse that when he promoted CARGILL to go into Cuba - this really was part of just the US Empire corruption that Jesse was not even aware of!

If you want to learn about the implications of noncommutative music tuning as the truth of reality then watch this lecture by Fields Medal math professor Alain Connes (a Fields Medal is harder to get than a Nobel Prize). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIziuv-WLMM

 The issue isn't deficits rather the issue is the value of the dollar based on the treasury bonds. The US relies on China, Japan, Germany and the SAudis to buy treasury bonds. The traditional rate of return on the treasury bond is 6% - that is what the FED banks pay themselves when they print money and buy bonds. But because the FED and other central banks have printed So much money - $21 trillion in the past ten years as Nomi Prins points out - now the interest rate can not be increased. Why?

It's basic math - a bigger debt means that it's not affordable to pay back the interest on the loans. So the US is currently FORCING other countries to invest in our bonds - because there is nothing else to do with all the surplus dollars in their banks from the trade deficits. And so BECAUSE of the PetroDollar - the US forces everyone to buy oil in US dollars and also to pay back international loans in dollars as "hard currency." That is the basis of Empire.

 yes the foreign owned treasury securities increased from $6.2 trillion in 2014 to $6.3 trillion in 2018 - so it's a huge amount. During the same time period total debt increased from 13 trillion to $16.1 trillion. So Foreigners own 39% of public debt as of end of 2018 - That is both government and private foreign investment - whereas in 2014 the foreign owned debt was 48% of total US debt. So this is a problem because it proves that the world is divesting from the ballooning US debt. Citing 2019 Congressional Research Service https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS22331.pdf

The FED owns something like 11% of the bonds - and other banks own more as well. So the big concern is that other countries are trying to buy oil and gas NOT in US dollars and then create their own banks - and not invest their surplus dollars back into bonds. And if they don't have to buy oil/gas in dollars - and then they can trade with other countries and pay off loans not in dollars. So then the US is left with a huge debt. The only incentive to buy bonds is the interest rate but since our debt is so big the FED can no longer afford to raise the rate.

This is not discussed in public - there's a couple youtube channels that cover this. So again the US military enforces the PetroDollar - so Iraq was invaded and Libya was invaded and Venezuela is being invaded - and China is being challenged - so they all were and are trying to move off the dollar economy. So the US military enforces the value of the PetroDollar. It's not a very efficient system - that's why military debt has bankrupted the Empire.

It happens to all empires - it's military over-reach. US Wall St. value has relied on over 90% being from "stock buy backs" - so the banks get next to free money from the FED since the interest rate is now close to zero. So the larger the loan then the lower the interest rate. So then a corporation takes out a huge loan at very low interest rate but then buys their own stocks so that the stock value then rises over 6% rate of return a year.

So that means the corporation makes a profit but it is purely speculation without any real economic value (and the tax payer then has to repay the debt based on the treasury notes issued from the printing of the free FED money). So that is the biggest economic scam in world history - as Nomi Prins points out the central banks have created $21 trillion in the last ten years just as FREE money for wall st. speculation. Stock Buybacks used to be illegal but now they are by far the main means of Wall St. earnings.

Professor Michael E. Hudson - on secrets of Empire - vid

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Dr. Michael Hudson: Economic Lessons for 2020

 "My father was sent to jail for trying to organize the Teamsters Union as a Trotskyist in Minnesota....Minneapolis was the head of the Teamsters Revolt with the general strik ein the 30s...Roosevelt said look the Democratic Party is based in the cities. We need to put the mafia in charge of the labor unions. We need to put the Communist Party in charge because they promised not to go on strike in WWII if we get rid of the Trotskyists. So everybody I knew, instead of being drafted into the army, they were drafted into jail for fighting against the Stalinism, the mafia and the labor union movement and basically against the crooks in the Democratic party."

 yes 40% of GDP is from financial speculation now. The real problem is the FED is a private bank that "loans" to the tax payers - and the FED typically pays a 6% rate of return on the bonds its buys as the interest rate on money. So in contrast China has a government owned bank and so can finance whatever it wants with an INTEREST-FREE loan!! So if a project goes bankrupt - a business - then instead of the jobs being wiped out by a speculator taking over - a Vulture - then in contrast the Chinese government just wipes out the bank loan!

That is how banking used to be done in the original imperial city-states as Michael E. Hudson points out - so the Jubilee days of the Bible. So in fact the Wall St. Bubble was FINANCED already by the Tax Payer - you have it turned around. The Central Banks have pumped $21 Trillion of FREE MONEY into Wall St. in the past 10 years - as Nomi Prins has pointed out. So that means big corporations get a much lower interest rate on loans - due to a larger loan amount - and using their business as collateral. The loan is then used for a previously ILLEGAL stock buyback - so that suddenly the stock value goes up as a speculation bubble.

But now the federal debt is so huge due to selling of bonds to the FED - that the interest rate can not be raised. So what was previously a 6% rate is now close to zero - meaning that the US Empire is financially already bankrupt and it's not that Bernie wants money from the Rich. Bernie is exposing the fact that the Rich already have free money from the taxpayers - and the poor people pay a higher percentage of taxes on EARNED income - in contrast to lower taxes on unearned and passive income. It's called Debt Deflation.

 Michael E. Hudson:

"The reason is not only financial, it's be fiscal. The taxes have been shifted off banks and their customers, mainly real estate and monopolies, onto labor. In the United States, for instance, in the 1930s, seventy percent of all state and local tax revenues came from real estate, from the property tax. Today only 1/6th comes from that. States and cities have been convinced to lower the property tax burden and to take an income and sales tax and the worse is your value-added tax. Your value-added tax is intruded onto the market and shrinking it and preventing you from buying the goods your produce. They're taking the value-added tax and giving it to the bankers who control your government and control your politicians....to bail out the banks, because the plan they have for you doesn't work, and it leaves somebody bankrupt and it's not going to be the banks, because they give us our jobs."

MMT's Michael Hudson Explains The Debt Deflation Era We Live In

"The pensions were paid by bankers saving the money in advance, creating a huge budget surplus, giving the surplus to the government, so that the government would cut taxes on real estate, cut taxes on finance, cut taxes on the rich, cut them in half, cut capital gain taxes and then say: NOW were broke, we have to increase the social security tax further -  because the workers have not paid enough to social security to get it enough money, to fight the war in Iraq, to fight the war in Iran, to fight the war in Afghanistan and most of all to fight the class war against labor."

OK you keep confusing "stock sell offs" with fiscal policy - the FED. First of all even those 10% that "hate Bernie" still do not own much of stocks. 

The richest 1% own 50% of stocks held by American households finance.yahoo.com › news › the-richest-1-own-50-of-stocks-held-by-... Jan 17, 2019. 

So Wealth is more concentrated now than ever before. Secondly that wealth is not the "real" economy in the sense that the wealth is from FED WELFARE. It's Free socialism for the Rich. That's what Bernie keeps repeating and he'll keep repeating it forever because obviously you are in denial of this basic concept. Do you know what a "stock buyback" is? 

"There's a Worrisome Trend in Share Buybacks | Stock Market ... money.usnews.com › Money › Investing › Stock Market News Aug 15, 2019 - Wall Street seems to be using record-setting buybacks as a crutch to drive earnings per share growth." https://wolfstreet.com/2019/04/08/what-would-stocks-do-in-a-world-without-buybacks-goldman-asks/ "The net effect of these investor groups is that they together shed $1.1 trillion of shares (included in these categories, and spread over them, are ETFs). But the $1.1 trillion of shares that these investor groups shed over those five years was overpowered by $2.95 trillion of share buybacks over those five years."  

So while you keep talking about Bernie being dependent on the rich selling stocks - in fact the Share or Stock buyback scams - FUNDED BY FED FREE MONEY - has been 3 times MORE than selling stocks. And how much FREE money are we talking about? $21 trillion at least. 

 Nomi Prins: The central banking heist has put the world at risk ... unherd.com › 2018/06 › nomi-prins-central-banking-heist-put-world-... Jun 15, 2018 - Nomi Prins: The central banking heist has put the world at risk ... conjured money, out of a worldwide QE total of around $21 trillion”, says Prins. https://unherd.com/2018/06/nomi-prins-central-banking-heist-put-world-risk/  

Since QE began, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, “the US Federal Reserve has produced a massive $4.5 trillion of conjured money, out of a worldwide QE total of around $21 trillion”, says Prins. The combination of ultra-low interest rates and vast monetary expansion, she explains, has caused “speculation to rage … much as a global casino would be abuzz if everyone gambled using everyone else’s money”. Prins was also a member of Senator Bernie Sanders’ team of economic experts, advising on central bank reform."

 So if you want to talk about Bernie you better also talk about the FED also. oops. 

 “When the asset bubble pops, the fragile financial system and the broader economic environment could be thrown into deep depression and turmoil,” she says. “That’s why the QE baton has been passed from the US to other nations, and why the central banks are so desperate to collude.”  

Yep - it just popped.