Selected Best Books of 2018: Economics by The Financial Times

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.

The Big Question: What happens when debts cannot be paid? Will there be a writedown in favor of debtors (as is routinely done for large corporations), or will creditors be allowed to foreclose (as is done to personal debtors and mortgagees), leading to the creditors' political takeover of the economy's assets - and ultimately the government itself? Historically, the remedy of record was the royal Clean Slate proclamation, or biblical Jubilee Year of debt forgiveness.

The Real Message of Jesus: Jesus's first sermon announced that he had come to proclaim a Clean Slate debt cancellation (the Jubilee Year), as was first described in the Bible (Leviticus 25), and had been used in Babylonia since Hammurabi's dynasty. This message - more than any other religious claim - is what threatened his enemies, and is why he was put to death. This interpretation has been all but expunged from our contemporary understanding of the phrase, ...and forgive them their debts, in The Lord's Prayer. It has been changed to ...and forgive them their trespasses (or sins), depending on the particular Christian tradition that influenced the translation from the Greek opheilēma/opheiletēs (debts/debtors).

Contrary to the message of Jesus, also found in the Old Testament of Bible and in other ancient texts, debt repayment has become sanctified and mystified as a way of moralizing claims on borrowers, allowing creditor elites and oligarchs the leverage to take over societies and privatize personal and public assets - especially in hard times. Historically, no monarchy or government has survived takeover by creditor elites and oligarchs (viz: Rome). Perhaps most striking is that - according to a nearly complete consensus of Assyriologists and biblical scholars - the Bible is preoccupied with debt forgiveness more than with sin.

In a time of increasing economic and political polarization, and a global economy deeper in debt than at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, ...and forgive them their debts documents what individuals, governments and societies can learn from the ancient past for restoring economic and social stability today.

This edition of Super Imperialism is the finalized version of the analysis that Michael Hudson first published in the wake of President Nixon severing the dollar's link to gold in August 1971. Closing the gold window had been imminent since the London Gold Pool was disbanded in 1968 in response to the U.S. overseas military spending that had pushed the balance of payments into steadily deepening deficit since the Korean War (1950-51).

This edition of Super Imperialism is the finalized version of the analysis that Michael Hudson first published in the wake of President Nixon severing the dollar's link to gold in August 1971. Closing the gold window had been imminent since the London Gold Pool was disbanded in 1968 in response to the U.S. overseas military spending that had pushed the balance of payments into steadily deepening deficit since the Korean War (1950-51).

The twelve articles collected in this volume describe how the most basic features of Western economic organization - money, markets, land tenure and enterprise - were created in the temples and palaces of the ancient Near East. The perspective on these topics originated in the five international colloquia organized by the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET) with Harvard University's Peabody Museum from 1994 to 2015. When these meetings began, most Assyriology, Egyptology and classical studies tended to accept the views of modern economic orthodoxy. Archaic social values were so different from today's views that there was resistance to recognizing the extent to which the Bronze Age economic takeoff, 3500-1200 BC, followed policies radically unlike our own.

Endorsements

Michael Hudson is the foremost expert on the financial and monetary systems of the antiquarian Western/Near Eastern World, from Mesopotamia to the Fall of the Roman Empire. In this work he totally demolishes the myth that money developed from a need to simplify barter transactions. Instead, money developed as a complement to credit/debt relationships, initially mainly between Temples and Kings as creditors and merchants and small farmers as debtors.

A second main theme is that many small farmers borrowed out of desperation, e.g. after bad harvests, so that the only way to prevent growing inequality was to introduce occasional debtor holidays via Jubilees or clean slates. But rich creditors, outside the ruling family, did not like to do this, and, whenever they controlled policy, land holding became centralized, and tax revenue declined, leading to collapse. Hudson's analysis poses the issue of whether debt forgiveness is feasible and/or desirable in the modern world.

-Charles Goodhart, author of Goodhart's Law and initial external member of Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee

While David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years exposed the myth of barter, Michael Hudson's brilliant book demonstrates that money's origins can be found in the temples and palaces of the Ancient Near East. Money was created to denominate debts to authorities incurred as rents and fees, and for the advance of land, seeds, animals and beer. As debts tended to grow faster than ability to pay, periodic debt cancellations restored liberty and the ability of communities to support themselves. Hudson warns that the rise of Western civilization's doctrine of the inviolability of debt drowns the majority of the world's population in unpayable debts and servitude to oligarchies. Social balance, growth, liberty, and resilience can only be restored with debt cancellations and Clean Slates.

-L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

Michael Hudson's research was a major influence on my husband David Graeber's anthropology of debt. David considered Michael the most innovative and important economic historian of the last half century. In this volume he describes how the most basic features of Western economic organization - money, markets, land tenure and enterprise - were created in the temples and palaces of the ancient Near East, not by individuals transacting on their own account.

-Nika Dubrovsky, David Graeber's partner and founder of the David Graeber Institute

This book traces the role of debt in Antiquity and suggests that it was the longlasting curse of interest-bearing loans being handed out that could not be repaid. It eroded the fabric of society.

How financial parasites and debt destroy the global economy. Professor Hudson continues the discussion on the financialization of capital and its global effects.

KILLING THE HOST exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate (the FIRE sector) have gained control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and governments. The FIRE sector is responsible for today's economic polarization (the 1% vs. the 99%) via favored tax status that inflates real estate prices while deflating the real economy of labor and production. The Great 2008 Bailout saved the banks but not the economy, and plunged the U.S., Irish, Latvian and Greek economies into debt deflation and austerity. This book describes how the phenomenon of debt deflation imposes austerity on the U.S. and European economies, siphoning wealth and income upward to the financial sector while impoverishing the middle class.

This 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 Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization's Oligarchic Turning Point

The Collapse of Antiquity, the sequel to Michael's ...and forgive them their debts, is the second and latest book in his trilogy on the history of debt. It describes how the dynamics of interest-bearing debt led to the rise of rentier oligarchies in classical Greece and Rome, causing economic polarization, widespread austerity, revolts, wars and ultimately the collapse of Rome into serfdom and feudalism. That collapse bequeathed to subsequent Western civilization a pro-creditor legal philosophy that has led to today's creditor oligarchies.

In telling this story, The Collapse of Antiquity reveals the eerie parallels between the collapsing Roman world and today's debt-burdened Western economies.

Endorsements

Scope

The Collapse of Antiquity is vast in its sweep, covering:

• the transmission of interest-bearing debt from the Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean world, but without the safety valve of periodic royal Clean Slate debt cancellations to restore economic balance and prevent the emergence of creditor oligarchies;
• the rise of creditor and landholding oligarchies in classical Greece and Rome;
• classical antiquity's debt crises and revolts, and the suppression, assassination and ultimately failure of reformers;
• the role played by greed, money-lust (wealth-addiction) and hubris, as analysed by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other ancient writers;
• Rome's End Time collapse into serfdom and pro-creditor oligarchic legacy that continues to shape the West;
• the transformation of Christianity as it became Rome's state religion, supporting the oligarchy, dropping the revolutionary early Christian calls for debt cancellation and changing the meaning of the Lord's Prayer and sin, from a focus on the economic sphere to the personal sphere of individual egotism;
• how pro-creditor ideology distorts recent economic interpretations of antiquity, showing increasing sympathy with Rome's oligarchic policies.

This 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 contribution of the American School of Political Economy (1848 to 1914) to America's wildly successful industrial development has disappeared from today's history books. American protectionists and technology theorists of the day were concerned with securing an economic competitive advantage and conversely, with offsetting the soil depletion of 19th century America's plantation export agriculture. They also emphasized the positive effect of rising wage levels and living standards on the productivity that made the American economic takeoff possible. The American School's Economy of High Wages doctrine stands in contrast to the ideology of free traders everywhere who accept low wages and existing productivity as permanent and unchanging givens, and who treat higher consumption, health and educational standards merely as deadweight costs. Free trade logic remains the buttress of today's financial austerity policies imposed on debtor economies by the United States, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. By contrast, the lessons of the American School of Political Economy can provide a more realistic and positive role model for other countries to emulate - what the United States itself has done, not what its condescending free-trade diplomats are telling them to do. The lesson is to adopt the protectionist policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that made America an economic superpower. Michael Hudson (Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Missouri, Kansas City) is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times, Counterpunch, and Global Research.

The twelve articles collected in this volume describe how the most basic features of Western economic organization - money, markets, land tenure and enterprise - were created in the temples and palaces of the ancient Near East. The perspective on these topics originated in the five international colloquia organized by the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET) with Harvard University's Peabody Museum from 1994 to 2015. When these meetings began, most assyriology, Egyptology and classical studies tended to accept the views of modern economic orthodoxy. Archaic social values were so different from today's views that there was resistance to recognizing the extent to which the Bronze Age economic takeoff, 3500-1200 BC, followed policies radically unlike our own.

Selected Best Books of 2018: Economics by The Financial Times

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.

The Big Question: What happens when debts cannot be paid? Will there be a writedown in favor of debtors (as is routinely done for large corporations), or will creditors be allowed to foreclose (as is done to personal debtors and mortgagees), leading to the creditors' political takeover of the economy's assets - and ultimately the government itself? Historically, the remedy of record was the royal Clean Slate proclamation, or biblical Jubilee Year of debt forgiveness.

The Real Message of Jesus: Jesus's first sermon announced that he had come to proclaim a Clean Slate debt cancellation (the Jubilee Year), as was first described in the Bible (Leviticus 25), and had been used in Babylonia since Hammurabi's dynasty. This message - more than any other religious claim - is what threatened his enemies, and is why he was put to death. This interpretation has been all but expunged from our contemporary understanding of the phrase, ...and forgive them their debts, in The Lord's Prayer. It has been changed to ...and forgive them their trespasses (or sins), depending on the particular Christian tradition that influenced the translation from the Greek opheilēma/opheiletēs (debts/debtors).

Contrary to the message of Jesus, also found in the Old Testament of the Bible and in other ancient texts, debt repayment has become sanctified and mystified as a way of moralizing claims on borrowers, allowing creditor elites and oligarchs the leverage to take over societies and privatize personal and public assets - especially in hard times. Historically, no monarchy or government has survived takeover by creditor elites and oligarchs (viz: Rome). Perhaps most striking is that - according to a nearly complete consensus of Assyriologists and biblical scholars - the Bible is preoccupied with debt forgiveness more than with sin.

In a time of increasing economic and political polarization, and a global economy deeper in debt than at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, ...and forgive them their debts documents what individuals, governments and societies can learn from the ancient past for restoring economic and social stability today.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL HUDSON is one of the foremost critics of contemporary finance capitalism and the worldwide power the 1% weilds because of government tax breaks and other favorable legislation. In THE BUBBLE AND BEYOND, he illuminates how the expansive and successful forces of 19th and 20th century industrial capitalism have been subverted by today's predatory finance capitalism, putting the entire world in a financial mess - and what can be done about it. A confusing labyrinth of geo-political issues impacts economic health and growth, and few are studied in the classroom or given space in the press. There is a way out of the labyrinth, however, as Professor Hudson demonstrates across 20 readable topics. PROFESSOR HUDSON'S most controversial claim is that Debts that can't be paid, won't be, leaving in question whether or not debt non-payment will lead to worldwide foreclosures - including sell-offs of public domain assets by debt-strapped local and national governments. This is already happening locally and globally - exactly what some of the 1% would like - creating a newly-poor feudalistic society with the 1% collecting all the usage fees. Alternatively, he suggests that the debts be written down in line with the ability to pay, as has been done by corporations via Chapter 11 bankruptcies and reorganizations throughout a more enlightened modern economic history as well as biblical record. In Professor Hudson's bold view, debt write-downs versus privatization and sell-offs of public domain assets are the economic issues that will dominate politics over the next generation. THE BUBBLE AND BEYOND is a compendium and brief history of economic thought and why it matters not only to Americans, but to people all over the world. You will find that you refer to it again and again as a fount of information, much of which has been out of favor for decades and/or suppressed by the financial interests. Professor Hudson provides chapter and verse, names names, and explains the mistakes and outright fraud that have often been committed in the name of political ideology - by both the right and the left. You will encounter all of the heroes and miscreants of economics, industry, and politics from the Bible and Babylon to present day banksters, misguided Fed policy-makers, and captains of the finance/insurance/real estate (FIRE) sector and the military-industrial complex. In one chapter after another, Professor Hudson tells who did what to whom - as well as who wins and who loses. This updated edition makes it plain where money goes versus where it might go - and ought to go. UPDATED EDITION with a NEW INDEX, LIST OF 47 EXHIBITS (illustrations, charts, graphs and models), a BONUS CHAPTER and BONUS SUMMARY, contemporary quotes, and author pull-out quotes.

How financial parasites and debt destroy the global economy. Professor Hudson continues the discussion on the financialization of capital and its global effects. KILLING THE HOST exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate (the FIRE sector) have gained control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and governments. The FIRE sector is responsible for today's economic polarization (the 1% vs. the 99%) via favored tax status that inflates real estate prices while deflating the real economy of labor and production. The Great 2008 Bailout saved the banks but not the economy, and plunged the U.S., Irish, Latvian and Greek economies into debt deflation and austerity. This book describes how the phenomenon of debt deflation imposes austerity on the U.S. and European economies, siphoning wealth and income upward to the financial sector while impoverishing the middle class.

J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS is an A-to-Z guide that explains how the world economy really works - and who the winners and losers are. The book includes more than 400 concise and acerbic entries, several essays, and a full topic index. Expanding on KILLING THE HOST: HOW FINANCIAL PARASITES AND DEBT DESTROY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, Prof. Hudson's new book 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.

To understand what's really going on, it's not necessary to re-invent the wheel; the major issues that guide healthy economies were known to the Ancients and were expanded upon by the classical economists of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, including 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. It is hoped that this book will deconstruct today's value-free, watered-down and deceptive economics that favor the wealthy, allowing the next generation to create a successful economy with proper checks and balances that will benefit everyone. This is a book you will want to refer to again and again.

In this survey of international economic thought, Michael Hudson rewrites the history of trade, development and debt theorizing. He shows that mainstream free-trade surveys are censorial in excluding the protectionist logic that has guided the trade policy of Europe and the United States, especially by leaving out discussion of the transfer problem and payment of international debts. He points out that most economists throughout history have focused as much on war financing as on trade and development. Free-trade ideology and IMF-style financial austerity under today's rules, rather than benefiting all parties and maximizing welfare, leave client nations severely indebted. By excluding dynamics that used to be central to trade theory such as emigration and technology transfer, today's global production and financial policies tend to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of dominant nations. Prof. Michael Hudson (Economics Department, University of Missouri, Kansas City) is a frequent contributor to The Financial Times, Counterpunch, and Global Research.

J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS is an A-to-Z guide that explains how the world economy really works - and who the winners and losers are. The book includes more than 400 concise and acerbic entries, several essays, and a full topic index. Expanding on KILLING THE HOST: HOW FINANCIAL PARASITES AND DEBT DESTROY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY, Prof. Hudson's new book 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.

To understand what's really going on, it's not necessary to re-invent the wheel; the major issues that guide healthy economies were known to the Ancients and were expanded upon by the classical economists of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, including 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. It is hoped that this book will deconstruct today's value-free, watered-down and deceptive economics that favor the wealthy, allowing the next generation to create a successful economy with proper checks and balances that will benefit everyone. This is a book you will want to refer to again and again.

Michael Hudson is one the world's foremost critics of contemporary financial capitalism. He is also one of a tiny handful of eminent economists who is leading us to look at old questions in startling new ways. Professor Hudson is the author numerous books on international finance and economic history, and a frequent contributor to leading newspapers and public affairs sites. There are few people alive who have taught me more than Michael Hudson. The incisive and brilliant essays in this book should really be assigned to every first-year student of economics. The fact they never will be is the ultimate testimony to the fact economics has betrayed its own most noble tradition - and Hudson here so magnificently embodies - to become a sheer instrument of power. David Graeber, author of Debt: the First 5,000 Years and co-organizer of Occupy Wall Street Michael Hudson... I consider to be the best economist in the West. The Saker Economist's theoretical edifice does not explain economic reality. Economists need to begin anew. Michael Hudson shows them the way. Paul Craig Roberts, Institute for Political Economy

This book contains the most important interviews and speeches that Prof. Hudson has given over the past decade (2003-2012). They span the political spectrum from COUNTERPUNCH.COM and KPFK radio's GUNS AND BUTTER to to iTULIP.COM and SANKT GEORGE in Berlin. It also includes his now-famous Rlmini, Italy, speeches that were given at a packed sports arena in early 2012 on the topic of how finance capitalism is pushing the world, starting with Europe, into austerity and neo-feudalism.

Hope and Change or Make America Great Again, these are just some of the recent promises political candidates have campaigned on to get elected. The temptation to put our trust in politicians and political parties is great. After all, there have been some great men and women who have run for office and done good things. Yet, even so, we have an expectation that one day someone will come along who can really fix things. Election after election, we keep waiting for that day to arrive.

But what if that day has already come? What if that candidate has already come on the scene? What if someone ran for the highest office and was able to keep his campaign promises? Would you vote for that person? What would that campaign look like? Turns out, it would look a lot like the Gospel of Mark.

The Campaign: Good News for a Partisan World looks at the Gospel of Mark like a political campaign. Mark comes complete with everything you need for a high-stakes contest. It has a reform candidate, primaries, slogans, campaign rallies in different towns, grassroots support, campaign promises, a party platform, opposition from the establishment, debates, false accusations, bribes, election eve sabotage, an assassination, and of course, a vote. Read this book and decide for yourself if The Campaign is really good news for a partisan world