Killing the Host
Killing the Host exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate have gained control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and governments. This book describes how the phenomenon of debt deflation imposes austerity on the United States and European economies, siphoning wealth and income upward to the financial sector while impoverishing the middle class. Killing the Host exposes how financial parasites and debt destroy the global economy. Hudson provides viable solutions to our economic problems, at a time when politicians have shown themselves unable to understand our economy much less fix it.
Michael Hudson argues that financial crises will continue unless we radically transform our economic and political structures, and reclaim the best ideas of classical economics.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Twelve Themes of this Book
The Parasite, the Host, and Control of the Economy's Brain
I. From the Enlightenment to Neo-Rentier Economies
The Financial Sector’s Rise to Power
The Long Fight to Free Economies from Feudalism’s Rentier Legacy
The Critique and Defense of Economic Rent, from Locke to Mill
The All-Devouring “Miracle of Compound Interest”
How the 1% holds the 99% in Exponentially Deepening Debt
Rentiers Sponsor Rent-Free National Income Statistics
The Failed Attempt to Industrialize Banking
II. Wall Street as Central Planner
The Stock Market as a Predatory Arena
From the Stock Market’s Origins to Junk Bonding
Finance vs. Industry: Two Opposite Sides of the Balance Sheet
The Bubble Sequence: From Asset-Price Inflation to Debt Deflation
The Bankers Saw It Coming, but Economists averted their Eyes
The Bailout Coup of 2008: Saving Wall Street instead of the Economy
The Giveaways get More Deeply Politicized and Corrupt
Wall Street Pretends to Insure against the Crash
Bailing out of Goldman via AIG
Wall Street Takes Control and Blocks Debt Write Downs
From Democracy to Oligarchy
III. Austerity as a Privatization Grab
Europe’s Self-imposed Austerity
The Neoliberal Conquest of Post-Soviet Latvia
Creation of the Troika and its pro-Rentier Agenda
High Finance turns Greek Democracy to “Junk”
Installing Technocrats as Proconsuls
The Troika’s Road to Debt Serfdom
Creditor Colonialism: U.S. Courts Block Debt Write Downs
Financial Austerity or a Clean Slate?
Is the Mode of Parasitism overshadowing the Mode of Production?
IV. There Is An Alternative
The Fight for the 21st Century