The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism by Michael Hudson (May 2, 2022)

his book is based on the lecture series on finance capitalism Michael Hudson presented for the Global University for Sustainability. The book explains why the U.S. and other Western economies have lost their former momentum: A narrow rentier class has gained control and become the new central planner, using its power to drain income from increasingly indebted and high-cost labor and industry. The American disease of de-industrialization has resulted from the costs of industrial production being inflated by the economic rents extracted by this class under the system of financialized monopoly capitalism that now prevails throughout the West.

The book explains why the U.S.-China conflict cannot simply be regarded as market competition between two industrial rivals. It is a broader conflict between different political economic systems – not only between capitalism and socialism as such, but between the logic of an industrial economy and that of a financialized rentier economy increasingly dependent on foreign subsidy and exploitation as its own domestic economy shrivels. Professor Hudson endeavors to revive classical political economy in order to reverse the neoclassical counter-revolution.

The Bubble and Beyond by Michael Hudson (July 1, 2012)

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 and “fire sale and ” 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.

J Is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception by Michael Hudson (February 21, 2017)

J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS is an A-to-Z guide that explains how the world economy really works – and who are the winners and losers. The book includes more than 400 concise and acerbic entries, several essays, and a full topic index. In this entry, Hudson covers contemporary terms that are misleading or poorly understood as well as many important concepts that have been abandoned – many on purpose – from the long history of political economy. Two key concepts are RENT THEORY and DEBT, which explain how Unearned Income and the Financial Sector impoverish governments and populations the world over as power and riches flow upward into the hands of the few. Several additional essays provide background for key points and explore today’s uncertain political and economic environment. The major issues that guide healthy economies were known to the Ancients and were expanded upon by the classical economists of the 18th and 19th centuries, by the likes of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, E. Peshine Smith, Simon Patten, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and others of many political stripes whose aim was to leave the brutal legacy of feudalism behind. Their ideas and principles are brought back into the spotlight here.

…And Forgive Them Their Debts by Michael Hudson (November 13, 2018)

In …and forgive them their debts, renowned economist Michael Hudson – one of the few who could see the 2008 financial crisis coming – takes us on an epic journey through the economies of ancient civilizations and reveals their relevance for us today. For the past 40 years, in conjunction with Harvard’s Peabody Museum, he and his colleagues have documented how interest-bearing debt was invented in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, and then disseminated to the ancient world. What the Bronze Age rulers understood was that avoiding economic instability required regular royal debt cancellations. Professor Hudson documents dozens of these these royal edicts and traces the archeological record and history of debt, and how societies have dealt with (or failed to deal with) the proliferation of debts that cannot be paid – and their consequences. In the pages of …and forgive them their debts, readers will discover how debt played a central role in shaping ancient societies, and how it continues to shape our world – often destructively.

On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by David Ricardo (1817)

Adam Smith presented the free market framework in "The Wealth of Nations" and David Ricardo built the value theory on top of it. The path of value theory can be traced back to these two economists. As a founding father of value theory, David Ricardo contributed many aspects of its basis: 1) Labor theory of value. 2) Exchange value. 3) Value in use. 4) Rent. 5) Accumulation of inequality. 6) Protectionism. 7) Comparative advantage, and much more.

David Ricardo was one of those rare people who achieved both tremendous investing success and lasting fame. At age twenty-seven, after reading Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” Ricardo became consumed with the study of economics and put his intellect to work in print and in markets. The work is one of the most essential texts toward an understanding of capitalism and economics.

Hijacking Bitcoin: The Hidden History of BTC by Roger Ver (April 5, 2004)

Bitcoin was promised to be a liberating technology, a free market alternative to state-controlled money. But that promise was broken after a small group of insiders took over the project and fundamentally changed Bitcoin’s design.Few people know the true history of Bitcoin and its original design due to years of heavy censorship, social media engineering, and tight information controls online. Hijacking Bitcoin destroys the most popular narratives that surround Bitcoin and sets the historical record straight.Roger Ver’s passion and pain come through as he tells the story of a beloved project corrupted in front of his eyes. Written by one of the most prominent figures in the cryptocurrency industry, this book is impossible to ignore.From the inside Bitcoin has been captured and changed for the worse. That’s the undeniable conclusion of Hijacking Bitcoin. Chocked full of history and inconvenient truths, this book goes on a myth-busting rampage against the most popular narratives that surround BTC.Is Bitcoin truly decentralized? Is it supposed to be digital gold or digital cash? Did the original design really have scaling problems? Roger Ver addresses these questions head-on and provides uncomfortable answers.Roger Ver is the world’s first investor in Bitcoin startups and has been a prominent name in the cryptocurrency industry since the beginning. Yet, as he confesses in the introduction, this book is not a love story. It’s a devastating expose of the corruption, propaganda, and centralization of power in Bitcoin.

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