Polarization, Then a Crash In December 2020, Lynn Fries, founder and producer of GPEnewsdocs interviewed the economist Michael Hudson. Lynn’s focus is on the global political economy.
Among contemporary economists Michael Hudson uses and refines terms that explain the specific brand of today’s finance capitalism. That includes the acronym “FIRE” and the term “Rentier Economy”. The FIRE sector, says Hudson, stands for Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. Hudson uses the term to make clear that we are experiencing a huge power shift from industrial to finance capitalism.
Lynn Fries wrote in a brief introduction on her website that she wanted to explore with Michael Hudson how: “Allied with landlords and monopolists, this powerful finance sector is extracting economic rents from the economy that’s impoverishing US government, as well as industry and labor. And how the chokehold of pro-finance, pro-rentier capitalism is reaching into the present COVID-19 crisis.”
TUC Radio presents excerpts from her 40 minute interview recorded on December 23, 2020.
Michael Hudson is research professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest – timely – book is … and forgives them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year.
Lynn Fries’ research and video-journalism began in NYC in 2007. From then to 2019 her work was core to developing The Real News Network. She left TRNN in 2019, following the departure of TRNN’s founders. For the full interview and a transcript go to gpenewsdocs.com/ or to the website of theAnalysis.news.
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