A companion and follow-up to KILLING THE HOST: HOW FINANCIAL PARASITES AND DEBT DESTROY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS pulls back the curtain on the vocabulary and terms of today's tunnel-visioned, overly-mathematized economic lexicon.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The financial crisis was the result of the rise in debt overhead, which caused a slowing down of the business cycle and caused debt deflation.

The Bubble and Beyond, describes how the fabulous expansive forces of industrial capitalism have been subverted by a predatory finance capitalism. What the FED hailed as The Great Moderation has left the middle class to take on a lifetime of bank debt to obtain access to housing, education to get a job, an auto to drive to it, and simply to maintain living standards that wages and salaries no longer support. What has derailed the economy is the take-over of academic economics and politics by the financial sector in order to censor criticism and misrepresent statistics so as to give the impression that the economy can borrow its way out of debt. The reality is that income used to pay down today s debt overhead is not available to be spent on goods and services. The result is debt deflation, followed by austerity and the the "fire sale" or decay of infrastructure at the national and local levels. The most controversial claim by Prof. Hudson is that Debts that can t be paid, won t be. The question he poses is whether their non-payment will lead to worldwide foreclosures including sell-offs of the public domain by debt-strapped local and national governments or whether they will be written down in line with the ability to pay. This is the economic issue that will dominate politics over the next generation. Illustrated with charts and exhibits that make it plain where money goes versus where it should go.

An epic journey through the economies of ancient civilizations, and how they managed debt versus social instability. Shocking historical truths about how debt played a central role in shaping (or destroying) ancient societies (viz: Rome), and that the Bible is preoccupied with debt, not sin, which has been disturbingly inverted in modern times.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL HUDSON is one of the foremost critics of contemporary finance capitalism and the worldwide power "the 1%" weilds because of government tax breaks and other favorable legislation. In THE BUBBLE AND BEYOND, he illuminates how the expansive and successful forces of 19th and 20th century industrial capitalism have been subverted by today's predatory finance capitalism, putting the entire world in a financial mess - and what can be done about it. A confusing labyrinth of geo-political issues impacts economic health and growth, and few are studied in the classroom or given space in the press. There is a way out of the labyrinth, however, as Professor Hudson demonstrates across 20 readable topics. PROFESSOR HUDSON'S most controversial claim is that "Debts that can't be paid, won't be," leaving in question whether or not debt non-payment will lead to worldwide foreclosures - including sell-offs of public domain assets by debt-strapped local and national governments. This is already happening locally and globally - exactly what some of the 1% would like - creating a newly-poor feudalistic society with the 1% collecting all the usage "fees." Alternatively, he suggests that the debts be written down in line with the ability to pay, as has been done by corporations via Chapter 11 bankruptcies and reorganizations throughout a more enlightened modern economic history as well as biblical record. In Professor Hudson's bold view, debt write-downs versus privatization and sell-offs of public domain assets are the economic issues that will dominate politics over the next generation. THE BUBBLE AND BEYOND is a compendium and brief history of economic thought and why it matters not only to Americans, but to people all over the world. You will find that you refer to it again and again as a fount of information, much of which has been out of favor for decades and/or suppressed by the financial interests. Professor Hudson provides chapter and verse, names names, and explains the mistakes and outright fraud that have often been committed in the name of political ideology - by both the right and the left. You will encounter all of the heroes and miscreants of economics, industry, and politics from the Bible and Babylon to present day banksters, misguided Fed policy-makers, and captains of the finance/insurance/real estate (FIRE) sector and the military-industrial complex. In one chapter after another, Professor Hudson tells who did what to whom - as well as who wins and who loses. This updated edition makes it plain where money goes versus where it might go - and ought to go. UPDATED EDITION with a NEW INDEX, LIST OF 47 EXHIBITS (illustrations, charts, graphs and models), a BONUS CHAPTER and BONUS SUMMARY, contemporary quotes, and author pull-out quotes.

Hudson chronicles how the financial sector has become a parasite that has taken over the brain of the US economy.

Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.

The contribution of the American School of Political Economy (1848 to 1914) to America's wildly successful industrial development has disappeared from today's history books. American protectionists and technology theorists of the day were concerned with securing an economic competitive advantage and conversely, with offsetting the soil depletion of 19th century America's plantation export agriculture. They also emphasized the positive effect of rising wage levels and living standards on the productivity that made the American economic takeoff possible. The American School's "Economy of High Wages" doctrine stands in contrast to the ideology of free traders everywhere who accept low wages and existing productivity as permanent and unchanging "givens," and who treat higher consumption, health and educational standards merely as deadweight costs. Free trade logic remains the buttress of today's financial austerity policies imposed on debtor economies by the United States, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. By contrast, the lessons of the American School of Political Economy can provide a more realistic and positive role model for other countries to emulate - what the United States itself has done, not what its condescending "free-trade" diplomats are telling them to do. The lesson is to adopt the protectionist policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that made America an economic superpower. Michael Hudson (Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Missouri, Kansas City) is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times, Counterpunch, and Global Research.

A vivid history of the economics of greed told through the stories of those major figures primarily responsible. Age of Greed shows how the single-minded and selfish pursuit of immense personal wealth has been on the rise in the United States over the last forty years. Economic journalist Jeff Madrick tells this story through incisive profiles of the individuals responsible for this dramatic shift in our country’s fortunes, from the architects of the free-market economic philosophy (such as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan) to the politicians and businessmen (including Nixon, Reagan, Boesky, and Soros) who put it into practice. Their stories detail how a movement initially conceived as a moral battle for freedom instead brought about some of our nation's most pressing economic problems, including the intense economic inequity and instability America suffers from today. This is an indispensible guide to understanding the 1 percent.

Argues that public finance--the study of the government's role in economics--should incorporate principles from behavior economics and other branches of psychology.