Luke McCarthy

“When other countries run sustained trade deficits, they must finance these by selling off domestic assets or running into debt — debt which they actually are obliged to pay. It seems that only the Americans are so bold as to say “Screw the world. We’re going to do whatever we want.” Other countries simply cannot afford the chaos from which the U.S. economy is positioned to withstand as a result of the fact that foreign trade plays a smaller role in its economy than in those of nearly all other nations in today’s interdependent world.

Using debtor leverage to set the terms on which it will refrain from causing monetary chaos, America has turned seeming financial weakness into strength. U.S. Government debt has reached so large a magnitude that any attempt to replace it will entail an interregnum of financial chaos and political instability. American diplomats have learned that they are well positioned to come out on top in such grab-bags.”
― Michael Hudson, The Bubble and Beyond

“That a system evolved in a given environment only proves it’s best at replicating itself in that environment. […] That doesn’t make it a system that we should want to live in, nor, more importantly, is it any indication of its ability to survive over the longer term. Environments change, sometimes rapidly, sometimes because of the system’s own ill-effects. Out-competing other systems rather than living harmoniously with them can eventually be self-destructive. Viruses are a good case and point. [...] The question is not whether share-trading and capitalism have out-competed other systems up until now, but whether their effects are consistent with their hosts’ survival.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present

“You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?”
― Raymond Carver, Cathedral

“Surprising as it may seem today, classical ideas of creating a free market were to be achieved by “socialist” reforms. Their common aim was to protect populations from having to pay prices that included a non-labor rent or financial tax to pay landlords and natural resource owners, monopolists and bondholders. The vested interests railed against public regulation and taxation along these lines. They opposed public ownership or even the taxation of land, natural monopolies and banking. They wanted to collect rent and interest, not make land, banking and infrastructure monopolies public in character.”
― Michael Hudson, J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception