Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy

Finance as Class Warfare

Finance as Class Warfare By John M Repp A review of Killing the Host (2015) Michael Hudson The wealth of the 1% comes from the 99%. The 99% are enriching the 1%. There are many ways this happens, for example low wages and high prices. But increasingly, today, the 99% redistribute their wealth through indebtedness. In order to try and live in dignity, the 99%, or at least two-thirds of them that have debts, pay off their debts with interest as they educate themselves, buy houses or small businesses, buy a car, and use their charge cards. Debt peonage is ancient, much older than the industrial revolution and this older pattern is becoming more prominent every day Since the crash of 2008, millions of people here and around the world have lost businesses, homes, and jobs. Today, many others despair at their not getting ahead financially. Too many blame themselves, thinking there is something wrong with their ability or drive. If they understood the economic, political, and financial system in which we live, maybe they would not blame themselves and we could find a collective solution to our problems. Michael Hudson, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City has just written a book entitled Killing the Host (2015). Hudson writes that the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) along with the monopoly control of natural resources like oil and gas is the parasite. Finance i.e. banks (what we call Wall Street) is the leader of the parasitic forces. The host is the productive economy like manufacturing and farming and needed services like health care and education. Even more sinister is the fact that, just like in biology, a successful parasite often inserts behavior-modifying enzymes into the host so the host acts like the parasite is part of itself and does not try to reject the parasite. In this case, the behavior modifying enzymes are a set of false ideas dominating the economics departments of leading American ...