Michael Hudson answers questions from Icelanders

Icelandic blog opens comments for questions and answers from Dr Hudson.

I think there are three or four elements which make Dr. Hudson the best commentator on the Global Financial Crisis, and as he has been described on amazon.com by one reviewer, the best economist in the world right now:

* He was a balance of payments economist for a major Wall St bank. This gives a key insight into how international payments and finance work, particularly from the point of view of the hegemonic power (see his book Super Imperialism).

* A healthy Marxist background, so that he understands that exploitation is inherent in the system, and that the disposal of the economic surplus is the key.

* A classical researcher, with an interest in debt and jubilee. This is a core problem just as relevant today as in the time of Babylon and Sumeria.

* A Georgist input, an appreciation that site rent is by far the greater part of the economic surplus, and that the alternative to taxing the rent is the pledging of it as interest to banks as they go about constructing their global financial ponzi schemes.

This last element is I believe Dr Hudson's secret weapon, which puts the last piece in the puzzle, as there is a total of about 3 of us worldwide who at all take the ideas of Henry George seriously.

Icelandic blog opens comments for questions and answers from Dr Hudson.

I think there are three or four elements which make Dr. Hudson the best commentator on the Global Financial Crisis, and as he has been described on amazon.com by one reviewer, the best economist in the world right now:

* He was a balance of payments economist for a major Wall St bank. This gives a key insight into how international payments and finance work, particularly from the point of view of the hegemonic power (see his book Super Imperialism).

* A healthy Marxist background, so that he understands that exploitation is inherent in the system, and that the disposal of the economic surplus is the key.

* A classical researcher, with an interest in debt and jubilee. This is a core problem just as relevant today as in the time of Babylon and Sumeria.

* A Georgist input, an appreciation that site rent is by far the greater part of the economic surplus, and that the alternative to taxing the rent is the pledging of it as interest to banks as they go about constructing their global financial ponzi schemes.

This last element is I believe Dr Hudson's secret weapon, which puts the last piece in the puzzle, as there is a total of about 3 of us worldwide who at all take the ideas of Henry George seriously.

Michael Hudson answers questions from Icelanders