Michael Hudson — Corona Debt Jubilee

Even before the novel coronavirus appeared, many American families were falling behind on student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other payments. America’s debt overhead was pricing its labor and industry out of world markets. A debt crisis was inevitable eventually, but covid-19 has made it immediate.

Massive social distancing, with its accompanying job losses, stock dives and huge bailouts to corporations, raises the threat of a depression. But it doesn’t have to be this way. History offers us another alternative in such situations: a debt jubilee. This slate-cleaning, balance-restoring step recognizes the fundamental truth that when debts grow too large to be paid without reducing debtors to poverty, the way to hold society together and restore balance is simply to cancel the bad debts....

It may be premature to call for a debt jubilee. That would probably be appropriate if there is a debt-deflationary depression, which could realistically happen as a result of the pandemic. So it is good to have it on the table.

Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of Neoliberalism
Corona Debt Jubilee
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

Zero Hedge — Canceling Debt And The Debate Over 5,000 Year Old Economic Policy

Michael Hudson filtering up.

Zero Hedge
Canceling Debt And The Debate Over 5,000 Year Old Economic Policy
Tyler Durden

John Siman — Everything You Thought You Knew About Western Civilization Is Wrong: A Review of Michael Hudson’s New Book, And Forgive Them Their Debts

Must-read.

Naked Capitalism
Everything You Thought You Knew About Western Civilization Is Wrong: A Review of Michael Hudson’s New Book, And Forgive Them Their Debts

John Siman

Charles Goodhart and Michael Hudson — Some ways to introduce a modern debt Jubilee

The increasing income and wealth inequalities within countries is one of today’s great social concerns. This column describes how the tendency towards increasing indebtedness in much earlier societies was held in check by debt-cancellation Jubilees, and discusses ways to deal with today’s debt overhang and accompanying wealth inequalities. The funding of a modern Jubilee could come mostly, perhaps entirely, from a land/or property tax.

Vox.eu
Some ways to introduce a modern debt Jubilee

Charles Goodhart, Emeritus Professor in the Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics, and Michael Hudson, President, The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends; Distinguished Research Professor of Economics, University of Missouri

Michael Hudson – Charles Goodhart — Could/Should Jubilee Debt Cancellations be Reintroduced Today?

Michael Hudson and Charles Goodhart team up.

Longish and detailed but an easy read.

Counterpunch
Could/Should Jubilee Debt Cancellations be Reintroduced Today?
Michael Hudson – Charles Goodhart

also

Irrespective of what we may think of Syria, this is little but a full-scale assault on international law and the normative system embedded in the UN Charter that has taken decades of hard work to build, a fundamental cornerstone of the management and civilizational development of the world order system.

Seen in comparison with the other attempts at undermining the UN – which began in the 1990s in Bosnia-Herzegovina – this should be a cause of deep concern among people in the truly civilizational corners of our world.

And it can’t be sold to the world under the headline of a Responsibility to Protect.…

Naked power grab.

The New US Syria “Strategy”, a Recipe For Continued Disaster
Jan Oberg