SHARMINI PERIES: Come January 20th Donald Trump is placed to take power in Washington D.C., and there’s one thing that everyone is wondering about is what kind of economic policies will he implement that we should really worry about it. Well there’s been one economist, Michael Hudson, who’s been thinking hard and taking a close look on the economics profession and how it misleads the general public in favor of the top 1%.
Michael Hudson joins us today to talk about his forthcoming book, J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Survival in an Age of Deception. Michael is a is a distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City Thanks Michael for joining us.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be back in Baltimore.
PERIES: So Michael, your new book, J is for Junk Economics actually is a sequel if I may say, to Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. So give us a sense of the impetus for the new book.
HUDSON: Killing the Host was a historical narrative of how the financial sector rose to power, and how it sought to take over government and resist the tendency to democratization by restoring a financial oligarchy. Europe’s 1848 revolutions sought to free economies from landlords, monopolies and the banks. By the late 19th century there was a counter-move in economics that redefined the idea of free markets.
When Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and even Marx wrote about free markets, they meant…