Pepe Escobar relies heavily on Michael Hudson's economic analysis for his five "variables."
Sputnik InternationalPepe Escobar: Five Variables Defining Our Future
Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar
Pepe Escobar relies heavily on Michael Hudson's economic analysis for his five "variables."
Sputnik International
12 comments:
Pepe Escobar has often said that the US "debt" will be its demise. He's economically illiterate.
Right.
Michael Hudson is a notorious debt phoebe. Pepe Escobar is following Michael Hudson on this, as well as others like Douglas Macgregor. who sees the US as about to go bankrupt.
Michael Hudson knows the difference between sovereign debt and private debt but he blurs the distinction apparently because it favors his social-political-economic agenda. His whole career seems to be based on this so he is unlikely to reverse course at this point.
Hudson's strong point lies in distinguishing economic policy based on industrial production (China, Russia) and financialization (US, UK).
He argues that the West is replacing profit from industrial production with economic rent extracted from a debt-based economy, which is weakening the whole system.
In my view, he makes some good points occasionally but he also tends to shoot from the hip and a lot of his shots seem to go off mark.
Taking a broad brush approach in a limited space, he cites almost no data and a lot of the data doesn't support his claims as far as I can see. I'd like him to be more specific. On the other hand, he has published a lot of books and they may provide that.
Anyway, it is not just Pepe Escobar reading him and writing about his take on the world. He is one of the go-to economists of the "resistance."
At least he is an opponent of neoliberalism and conventional academic economics.
Some "resistance". Could lump Hudson in with Austrian economists for all the good they do.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, Washington is the winner. They successfully exploited history to drive Russia back into Asia. And what did it cost them? A fraction of what is wasted on the US defense budget. Who did the dying? The Slavs. 500,000 on the Ukrainian side and 100,000 on Russia's. Yes, that is an example of "winning".
Now Europe is economically subjugated, whereas Russia is where it was before this conflict: a resource supplier. That is their role in a global economy, similar to that of Canada, Australia, Brazil, Congo, etc. Basically any country that has a small population relative to their resource base.
All this was made possible by a feckless European leadership. Stooges willing to sell out their own people for money. A population blinded by their hatred of the USSR and before that, the Tsarist empire. So Washington manipulated them.
Escobar is so fixated on seeing a showdown between Washington and the rest of the world, he doesn't mention the domestic issues that are damaging the US. Such as unchecked immigration, which undermines the very notion of national sovereignty. Or being at the beck and call of Israel, a nation 1/40th the size.
Strengthened Army industrial base doubles artillery production
https://www.army.mil/article/271572/strengthened_army_industrial_base_doubles_artillery_production
Is this what the world wants to see?
Or should the US stop wasting its resources on armaments and rebuild its industrial base to serve the American people?
Michael Hudson has done a lot to bring down such an epic struggle to practical terms. Are we heading towards what I described as techno-feudalism – which is the AI format of rent-seeking turbo-neoliberalism? Or are we heading to something similar to the origins of industrial capitalism?
Michael Hudson is a socialist living the past. Perhaps Escobar shouldn't assume that our energy intensive lifestyles are sustainable, or that globalism has a future. It is techno-optimists who believe in a bright future. Those who question it are labelled Luddites, Malthusians and Doomers.
“ Or should the US stop wasting its resources on armaments and rebuild its industrial base to serve the American people?”
Yo:
https://wolfstreet.com/2023/12/02/the-eyepopping-factory-construction-boom-in-the-us/
I would trust Wolf Richter as far as I can throw him. Trade numbers will tell the tale.
I didn’t see anything in the Sputnik article about debt.
Michael Hudson understands that the “national debt” is not a crisis, but private debt is. The U.S. economy is crippled by mortgage debt, credit card debt, student loan debt, business loan debt, car loan debt, payday loan debt, corporate and municipal bond debt, etc. etc.
This, plus the disintegration of social cohesiveness, has (in my opinion) doomed the USA to a coming breakup and a collapse.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/unpacking-the-boom-in-us-construction-of-manufacturing-facilities
Wow, that reads like monetarist propaganda.
"has not crowded out private spending"
"Modern Supply-Side Economics"
MSSE folks. MSSE is in da house!
Counting your chickens before they hatch and insisting these chickens will be magnificent.
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