Michael Hudson describes how Rome fell when the creditors took over the Senate. They murdered the politicians who stood for the people and for debt reform, and put in charge someone like Trump who cut all the taxes for them. Debts spiralled out of control and the economy crashed. Rome was no more.
Economist and author, Michael Hudson, in his new book “…And Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year,” shares with journalist Chris Hedges how Ancient cultures forgave debt cyclically to prevent debt peonage and the rise of an oligarch elite.
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PART 1 of 2
Michael Hudson describes how Rome fell when the creditors took over the Senate.
This happened because most people in Roman society chose to believe the lie that creditors were morally superior to their victims. It is the same today. Average people believe that creditors rule by “divine right.”
In any society, everything ( everything) is a product of a society’s values, beliefs, and taboos -- i.e. its narrative. He who has the gold makes the rules, and he who controls the narrative gets the gold.
We live in a consensus reality, and we punish anyone who questions the consensus. In much of Europe you can be imprisoned for questioning the absurd holocaust™ consensus. Our consensus is that creditors are gods, for they are the keepers of the scoreboard.
Michael Hudson: “If you read the histories of Rome written by Livy, by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, by Diodorus of Sicily – every Roman historian attributed the fall of the Republic to the greed of creditors, and ended up killing every politician who represented the debtors.”
Hudson mentions the Gracchi brothers who both served as tribunes (representatives of the common folk, or plebs) in the Roman Senate. When King Attalus III of Pergamum died in 133 BC, he left his fortune to the people of Rome. Tiberius Gracchi proposed using the money to purchase land and distribute it to poor people and to war veterans. However the rich Senators wanted to steal all the money for themselves, so they assassinated Tiberius Gracchi in the Senate, using chairs to beat him to death. Then the rich senators had 300 of Tiberius’ supporters clubbed to death.
Ten years later, Tiberius’ brother Gaius became tribune, and he again to help the poor. So the rich senators passed a decree saying that anyone the senators branded an “enemy of the state” (i.e., a defender of the poor) could be summarily executed without trial. As centurions moved to grab Gaius, he committed suicide by sword. Then the rich senators had thousands of Gaius’ supporters killed.
A century later, rich Senator-creditors assassinated Julius Caesar for threatening the creditors’ supremacy.
Today’s people pretend that Republican Rome was “democratic,” when in fact it was plutocratic, as were all Greek city states with one or two brief exceptions. All were ruled by creditors. The modern delusion is not surprising, since most people live in a dream-world of righteous fairy tales and childish bullshit. That’s why they are slaves of creditors.
Today’s people also regard the Roman emperors as tyrants, when in fact most emperors kept the creditors in check. After the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 AD) the creditors started to regain the upper hand, and they eventually destroyed Rome.
Incidentally why did ancient Egyptians regard their pharaohs as gods? First, Egyptians lived in fear of plague, famine, floods, attacks from outside, and so on. For protection they worshipped the gods. Pharaoh was their conduit to the gods. Second, the pharaohs kept the predatory creditors in check. For example, the Jewish book of Exodus describes how Hebrew creditors reduced average Egyptians to slaves. The Hebrew bible celebrates this. Eventually Ramses II expelled the Jews from Egypt, declared a debt jubilee, and revitalized the economy. Jews reverse this, claiming that they had been slaves of Egyptians, and were gloriously led out of bondage by God. Christians still believe this lie 3,270 years later.
In the video, Michael Hudson says that ancient Judeans adopted the Babylonian idea of debt jubilees, but the money lenders eventually got rid of this. The money lenders’ religious representatives were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who asked the Romans to crucify Jesus for having questioned the money lenders’ “divine right” to enslave.
Continued below . . .
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PART 2 of 2
Today, creditors are morally and politically supreme. Hudson says that all societies start as credit-based societies, in which the creditor is the state or the temple. That is, the creditor is public. Then societies become money-based. Finally, private creditors steal all of the money from the economy, and they reduce average people to bartering. This is happening today in more and more places. I’ll repair your roof and your air conditioner in exchange for that old car outside your house. Barter is the end stage, after which society collapses altogether.
In Europe the creditors are now ultra-supreme, especially over the 19 members of the euro-zone. If a nation displeases the un-elected and unaccountable euro-crats and their bosses (the creditors), the nation loses its voting rights (e.g. Poland and Hungary, who refuse to obey the European Commission’s dictates that they accept limitless immigrants).
In France the yellow vest protesters think they oppose Macron, when in fact they oppose the creditors, whose agent is Macron. Eliminate Macron, and the creditors will immediately replace him with another puppet. The supply is limitless. Since 2000, creditors have installed the presidents of most Western nations. If a referendum displeases the creditors, then they make the peasants vote again, and this time the creditors rig the vote so the result is “correct.”
BY THE WAY, the UK government can create infinite money out of thin air, and does not need Brussels or Frankfurt. Therefore, why do so many UK oligarchs oppose a Brexit? The answer is that UK oligarchs ignore or obey Brussels’ dictates on a case-by-case basis. If Brussels’s dictates reduce the gap between the rich and the rest, the UK oligarchs ignore them. If Brussels’s dictates widen the gap between the rich and the rest, the UK oligarchs obey them.
Back to the video, what caused the change from the Bronze Age and the Sumerian civilization? Why did Western culture start making creditors supreme? Hudson notes that Levantine traders (e.g. Phoenicians) originated in the western “Fertile Crescent,” which includes Lebanon, Syria, and Western Sumer. When the Levantines spread west, they brought usury with them. They were loan sharks and Mafiosi. Gangsters and warlords. With their arrival, Western culture changed from cyclical time to linear time, in which you can never start anew, never regenerate, and never wipe the debt slate clean.
Hudson notes that the linguistic origins of “sin,” “guilt,” and “debt” are the same in all Indo-European and Semitic languages. Wrongdoing was seen a “debt” or an imbalance. Justice meant correcting or compensating for the imbalance through monetary or other means.
Regarding economics, Hudson notes that debts always grow faster than debtors’ ability to pay, whether we speak of individuals or entire nations. Economists ignore this fact, and get Nobel Prizes for pretending that debt does not exist. Economics textbooks speak from the perspective of creditors, not debtors. The “booming economy” is only booming for the rich and the creditors. “Imagine how much Americans could afford to buy if they were not crippled by debt. We would have an economic miracle.”
Meanwhile half the peasants are obsessed with attacking “homophobia,” and the other half with attacking “socialism.”
The end result of all this? Dystopia.
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ONE OTHER THING
When creditors gain supremacy, and they throw people off their land, people move. They congregate in central cities, or in the center of the Empire. This happened in ancient Rome, and it is happening today. Creditors use debt to impoverish foreign lands, depriving people of their livelihoods. As a result, the impoverished people migrate to the center of the empire.
Hence today’s immigrant crisis.
"debase the coinage" Michael Hudson
Huh? Dr. Hudson is for needlessly expensive fiat?! Thus dooming the population to using bank deposits instead?
Hence, you can't trust Progressives for true reform, is my experience. (Nor Austrians nor MMT advocates, so far.)
Questionable take on Roman history that excludes the cost and effects of maintaining an ever-expanding military empire.
The parallels to the US are evident, obvious, and foretelling.
I agree with Hudson. The Roman Empire was not destroyed by military overreach. After all, the military was funded with booty stolen from conquered nations.
After the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, the Roman Empire spent the next 300 years contracting faster and faster until 476 AD, when the game was over.
The Empire was destroyed by internal corruption, and by the infinite greed of creditors. The USA is being destroyed for the same reasons.
Compound interest causes exponentially worsening damage. People who think that Rome was destroyed by military overreach do not understand the destructive role of debt. Their failure is understandable, since (as Hudson explains) mainstream economics pretends that debt does not exist.
None of these things stand alone. Greed fueled empirical expansion, which was the driving force of the Roman Empire. When it cost more to maintain the armies than they returned home in reward the Empire was finished.
Kevin, did you know that Michael Hudson was Leoon Trotsky's godson?
Yeah, I know, he mentioned it before, interesting, isn't it?
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