Top 50 Michael Hudson Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Mathematically, debts grow exponentially at compound interest. Banks recycle the interest into new loans, so debts grow exponentially, faster than the economy can afford to pay.”

— Michael Hudson

2. “You have a choice. Either you can have more oil, or more clean water. Fracking is not good for the water supply.”

— Michael Hudson

3. “Stocks always go down much faster than they go up. That’s why it’s called a crash. People who put their money into the stocks will find, all of a sudden, that stock prices are no longer being supported by the debt leveraging that’s been holding them up.”

— Michael Hudson

4. “When they say inflation is bad, deflation is good, what they mean is, more money for us 1% is good; we’re all for asset price inflation, we’re all for housing prices going up, and we’re all for our stock and bonds prices going up. We’re just against you workers getting more income.”

— Michael Hudson

5. “Normally, if someone goes bankrupt, you wipe out the debt and get a fresh start. But that’s not permitted with student loans. So the effect is to impoverish many graduates with very high debts.”

— Michael Hudson

6. “When there’s deflation, it means that although most markets are shrinking and people have less to spend, the 1% that hold the 99% in debt are getting all the growth in wealth and income. Deflation means that income is being transferred to the 1%, that is, to the creditors and property owners.”

— Michael Hudson

7. “As you have to pay more interest and amortization on what you owe, you’re left with less and less money to buy goods and services – unless you borrow even more and go further into debt.”

— Michael Hudson

8. “We go forward with our heads held high, but look back and remember where we come from.”

— Michael Hudson

9. “Actually, high housing prices don’t help the economy. They raise the cost of living.”

— Michael Hudson

10. “There are so many currency exchange rate problems that people are buying gold as a safe haven. Right now, gold looks like a safe haven if international exchange rates break down.”

— Michael Hudson

11. “The price decline is a result of having to pay debts. That drains income from the circular flow between production and consumption – that is, between what people are paid when they go to work, and the things that they buy.”

— Michael Hudson

12. “The world’s politics are in turmoil, not to mention the Mideast, where the US has mounted attacks from Libya to Iraq to Syria, and ISIS is attacking governments in today’s pipeline rivalry.”

— Michael Hudson

13. “I think the less fracking there is, the better it is for the economy and society.”

— Michael Hudson

14. “The natural geopolitical arrangement is for Europe to be part of Eurasia, especially for Germany to develop trade and investment relationships with Russia.”

— Michael Hudson

15. “When we say “people worry” about inflation, it’s mainly bondholders that worry. The labor force benefitted from the inflation of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.”

— Michael Hudson

16. “I think we’re in the take-the-money-and-run stage of the economy. So the banks may go under, but the bankers, who make the policy, clean up.”

— Michael Hudson

17. “Deflation means a slowdown of income growth. Markets shrink, new capital investment and employment also taper off, so wages decline. That is what’s happening as deliberate policy in Europe and the United States. Falling or stagnant prices are simply the result of having less income to spend.”

— Michael Hudson

18. “The euro and the ECB were designed in a way that blocks government money creation for any purpose other than to support the banks and bondholders. Their monetary and fiscal straitjacket obliges the eurozone economies to rely on bank creation of credit and debt. The financial sector takes over the role of economic planner, putting its technicians in charge of monetary and fiscal policy without democratic voice or referendums over debt and tax policies.”

— Michael Hudson

19. “Deflation is a leakage from this circular flow, to pay banks and the real estate, called the FIRE sector – finance, insurance and real estate. These transfer payments leave less and less of the paycheck to be spent on goods and services, so markets shrink.”

— Michael Hudson

20. “Ponzi austerity schemes, just like Ponzi growth schemes, necessitate a constant influx of new capital to support the illusion that bankruptcy has been averted.”

— Michael Hudson

21. “If a lot of money goes into the stock market, it’ll push up prices, making money for stock speculators. Then the insiders can decide that it’s time to sell out, and the market will plunge.”

— Michael Hudson

22. “The myth is that if housing prices go up, Americans will be richer. What banks – and behind them, the Federal Reserve – really want is for new buyers to be able to borrow enough money to buy the houses from mortgage defaulters, and thus save the banks from suffering from more mortgage defaults.”

— Michael Hudson

23. “Inflation usually helps the economy at large, but not the 1% if wages rise. So the 1% says that it is terrible.”

— Michael Hudson

24. “More and more money is being extracted from of the production and consumption economy to pay the FIRE sector. That’s what causes debt deflation and shrinks markets. If you pay the banks, you have less to spend on goods and services.”

— Michael Hudson

25. “Basically, unless you’re willing to write down debts and save the economy, you’re going to have deflation and a steady drain in purchasing power – that is, shrinking markets.”

— Michael Hudson

26. “I don’t think that governments should permit speculation in raw materials, because they’re what the economy basically needs.”

— Michael Hudson

27. “Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall into the clutches of the wolf.”

— Michael Hudson

28. “John Stuart Mill was called a Ricardian socialist because classical economists were moving toward reforms they themselves characterized as social – and hence, as socialist. Most reformers referred to themselves as socialists of one kind or another, from Christian socialists to Marxist socialists and reformers across the political spectrum. The question was what kind of socialism “free market” capitalism would evolve into.”

— Michael Hudson

29. “Debt deflation is when there’s less money that people have to spend out of their paychecks on goods and services, because they’re paying the FIRE sector. Oil going down is a function of the supply and demand of oil in the market. It’s a separate phenomenon.”

— Michael Hudson

30. “The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.”

— Michael Hudson

31. “Europe is acting in a very self-destructive manner, but is doing so because it’s trying to be loyal to the United States.”

— Michael Hudson

32. “You’re having government spending on the economy being cut almost everywhere. That means that the only source of spending for growth has to come from borrowing from the banking system.”

— Michael Hudson

33. “Today, people are having to spend so much of their money, to acquire a house and to get an education that they don’t have enough to spend on goods and services, except by running into yet more debt on their credit cards and other borrowings.”

— Michael Hudson

34. “Europe is creating the flight of refugees that’s tearing it apart politically, and leading rightwing nationalist parties to gain power to withdraw from the Eurozone.”

— Michael Hudson

35. “What’s bad for the frackers usually is good for the rest of the world.”

— Michael Hudson

36. “Most of the European leaders look at themselves as having to follow the United States, because if the US opposes them, there will be a regime change.”

— Michael Hudson

37. “When Hillary Clinton said she’s going to do just what Obama does and we’re going to continue to recover, most people know that we’re not recovering at all. We’re shrinking.”

— Michael Hudson

38. “If you look at payments to labor as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, you find profits going way up, investment and savings going up.”

— Michael Hudson

39. “The aim of promoting low down payments is to push prices back up so that fewer houses are going to be in negative equity and fewer people are going to walk away from the mortgages. That will save the from taking a loss on their junk mortgage loans.”

— Michael Hudson

40. “Nothing could be better for the economy than to get rid of fracking.”

— Michael Hudson

41. “To set the stage for this discussion, it is necessary to explain that what is at work is an Orwellian strategy of rhetorical deception to represent finance and other rentier sectors as being part of the economy, not external to it. This is precisely the strategy that parasites in nature use to deceive their hosts that they are not free riders but part of the host’s own body, deserving careful protection.”

— Michael Hudson

42. “To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.”

— Michael Hudson

43. “Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services.”

— Michael Hudson

44. “It’s amazing that Europe says, “What are we going to do with these refugees?” It’s as if it doesn’t realize that being part of NATO and bombing these countries forces them to choose to live by fleeing, or to stay and get bombed.”

— Michael Hudson

45. “The collapse of Inter-Ally debts and German reparations in the 1920s showed that “debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.” What blocks this awareness among neoliberal economists is their fantasy is that all debts can be paid by squeezing out a large enough fiscal surplus. Neoliberals are incorrigible in preferring to indulge their pro-creditor and anti-labor sentiments in the face of the reality that fiscal austerity shrinks the economy and hence the ability to produce a surplus to pay creditors.”

— Michael Hudson

46. “The vast majority of $100 bills are abroad, not in the United States. So yes, of course there’s a use here but nowhere near as much as there’s a use for $100 bills abroad.”

— Michael Hudson

47. “If the economy is growing, people want to employ more workers. If you hire more labor, wages go up.”

— Michael Hudson

48. “Throughout history, the only way of restoring stability is to write down the debts. That is treated now as if it’s something that can’t be done. But it’s the only thing that’s going to revive the economy.”

— Michael Hudson

49. “People are putting their money into treasuries because they worry that the risk of putting their money into the bond market, the stock market or even the money markets is very high.”

— Michael Hudson

50. “The economy is being run primarily by the banks for their own interest.”

— Michael Hudson