“It Is A Regression To The Ancient Usury Problem That Destroyed Rome”

The opening of economic analyst Michael Hudson’s thoughts on a system in which debt creation floats the boat, until he believes, it capsizes:

“Mainstream economics has become a body of assumptions selected to rationalize a ‘trickle-down’ tax policy favoring the financial sector driving the rest of the economy into debt, turning the economic surplus into interest charges – to be recycled into yet more debt creation. Claiming that wealth at the top pulls up the rest (‘the rich are job creators’), the policy inference is to shift taxes off financial wealth and property onto labor and industry.

What this view leaves out of account is that some ways of ‘getting rich’ are corrosive, not productive. The wealthiest 10% have gotten rich mainly by getting the bottom 90% into debt. And labor (‘consumers’) try to escape from their financial squeeze by going even deeper into debt, to buy homes and status before their access price rises even further out of reach. But what is pushing up real estate and other prices is easy bank credit – that is, debt. So the debt expansion calls for yet more debt to keep the financial system solvent.

This is not industrial capitalism as analyzed by the classical economists. It is something quite different. It is a regression to the ancient usury problem that destroyed Rome.” (Thanks Browser.)

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