BRUCE LERRO—In Part I of my article, we began by distinguishing the social self from two forms of identity that are often confused with it: temperament and personality. The focus of part one is to show how very social (or even socialist) was the work of social psychologist George Herbert Mead. We discussed in detail the thirteen building blocks necessary for creating the social self. This self must construct both an objective and subjective identity. From here even by the age of eight the child must learn to navigate routine, mild-problematic and crisis situations. They do that by learning how to role-take and role-make.
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MICHAEL HUDSON—Well, for many years I was at the center of the university that promoted modern monetary theory, the University of Missouri at Kansas City. And that was created with a contribution by Warren Mosler to bring the faculty there. So yes, I’m one of the original modern monetary theory faculty people….And the theory is that it’s not really a theory – it’s the description of how banking really works. And I guess the leaders outside of academia are Dick Cheney and Donald Trump. They said that deficits don’t matter, we can simply do what banks do. Just like when you go into a bank and you take out a loan, the bank doesn’t have to have any money in it. It will write you a loan and it will deposit money in your account. And so, the bank asset goes up by your deposit and your asset goes up by the deposit. The bank has a credit to you, the loan IOU that you signed at interest. And the debt, what it’s had to borrow the money from the Federal Reserve, or something. Banks create their own credit money…Governments can do the same thing. The government can print whatever it wants. In fact, every time there’s a war, like World War I, all the observers thought that World War I was going to end in six months because governments would run out of money. Well, they didn’t run out of money, they printed the money. Just like America printed greenbacks in the Civil War. And the people don’t have to borrow money at all.
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EDITOR—Dr. Michael Hudson is a professor of Economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City, political consultant, commentator, and journalist. His career has focused on the study of debt, both external and internal, with an eye on what happens when the exponentially growing debts of a society outstrip the profits from the real economy. We talk about GDP is a false marker of prosperity, the growing influence of the rentier class, fantasies of joining the one percent, and why there’s never going to be another debt jubilee, even if it means the whole system has to fall apart. We continue the conversation about possible solutions in part 2.
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EDITOR—Dr. Michael Hudson is an American economist, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, former Wall Street analyst, political consultant, commentator and journalist. Dr. Steve Keen is an Australian economist and author. A post-Keynesian, he criticizes neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. Our conversation examines the false dichotomy of capitalism v. socialism and considers the true dichotomy, which is industrial capitalism v. finance capitalism. Hudson and Keen argue that the transition to finance capitalism, where unearned income is considered economic growth, has truly sown the seeds to ruin the world. Tell us what you think in the comments!
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THE GRAYZONE keeps track of the top stories relating to imperialist wars and crimes. In this episode, Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate return to cover the latest grisly and absurd developments in Israel’s assault on Gaza, and the dramatic political fallout at home.
