Book Recommendation

Uncategorized 1 Minute
Perhaps a warm-up to a piece on Keynesian economics. In this book, Michael Hudson sheds light on the nexus and the interplay between the three main political and social forces in Western societies, namely, high finance, social democracy, and right-wing fascism. Hudson hints that by suppressing social democracy, high finance fosters the environment for right-wing fascism in Western societies. Hudson also highlights that high finance creates the veneer of intellectualism through its creation of the “Austrian School” and “Chicago School” of economics. In reality, what these two “schools of thought” are promoting is the idea that the only proper role of government is to protect creditors against the “indebted 99 percent.” In turn, Obama’s bailout of high finance shows “how the capture of government by high finance appeared to be quite natural and hence acceptable.” Hudson attributes China’s success over the last four decades or so to “a revolution that cleared away landlordism and established state control of money creation and banking.” China’s success “contrasts sharply with the decelerating growth of the United States, Europe, and their associated ‘market democracies.’” Thus, the potential for the West to “dissolve into a Dark Age” whereby “culture and wealth survive only at the top of the increasingly steep economic pyramid.” As far as the “middle class” in the West is concerned, the middle class in the West ends up becoming a group of people “whose ambition is to rise” into the extractive and exploitative high finance class out of fear of what the social democratic and labor forces plan on doing. In the end, the high finance class fosters the “existing trends” which create polarization and thus fosters the poor political and social outcomes which result from polarization.

Published by adamazim1988

I have a Bachelor's Degree in History/Government and International Relations from George Mason University, and a Master's Degree in International Affairs with a Concentration in U.S. Foreign Policy from American University in Washington, DC. I was born in New York City, and have lived in Northern Virginia since childhood. I am an independent writer and an entrepreneur. I am also a book author.

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