Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance

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And I think President Biden feels the same way. He is obviously pivoting towards Asia and has left Europe, and England, and Ukraine, and the Baltics just to go their own way.

Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals

He was arrested actually in the United States, and he was held as what he claimed to be an “economic hostage.” And this is the beginning of this campaign we now see against Alex Saab from Venezuela, Meng Wanzhou from China, and also there’s a North Korean businessman whom the U.S. is trying to imprison. Somebody is going to have to fund this. And in the past, countries running a budget deficit, which Reagan and Bush quadrupled America’s foreign debt from 1981 to 1992 – who is going to buy this debt? Because if we make Americans buy this debt, we’re going to have to pay high interest. Karl Kautsky, Der erste Mai und der Kampf gegen den Militarismus, Neue Zeit 30 (1912), Vol. 2, p. 107-108 (translated from German).So it was Japan, Germany, France, other countries that ended up with all these dollars that are spent abroad. And from their point of view, they want to see how they can decouple not only from the United States, but from the West. They don’t look at there as being any competition between China and the United States, certainly not industrial competition.

Super Imperialism: The economic strategy of American empire Super Imperialism: The economic strategy of American empire

The other major growth is in pharmaceuticals and medical care. It’s way up, medical insurance, 10 or 15 percent. And in the new edition of Super Imperialism, I quote the debates that occurred in the House of Lords, when the House of Lords saw exactly what was going to happen. MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s right. There’s been a rewriting. America got rich by being a mixed economy, where the government took an active role in subsidizing basic infrastructure.

Close the IMF, abolish debt and end development: a class analysis of the international debt crisis - Harry Cleaver

And now you have a situation where the U.S. is being outpaced by China in 5G and demanding that the U.K. ban 5G.
So what is happening here? How will the U.S. fare in a world where it can no longer foster dependency on its own technology? And what will it do to remedy the situation? Bob Rowthorn, Imperialism in the Seventies: Unity or Rivalry?, in: New Left Review, 59 (1971), 31; Michael Hudson: Super imperialism: the economic strategy of American empire, New York, 1972.

We Make the Rules | Michael Hudson Super Imperialism interview We Make the Rules | Michael Hudson Super Imperialism interview

It’s as if you’re going to the grocery store and you give them an IOU and then they ask, well, you know, you ran up a bill last month and you owe us 50 dollars. We have your IOU. The United States two years ago, more than two years ago, thought that it was going to really hurt Russia by putting sanctions on agricultural exports to Russia, and said, boy, now you’re going to suffer. You can’t make a profit if your labor costs, and your economy, and your transport costs, and your health costs are so high. But you can make a monopoly rents. Immediately Herman Kahn hired me to the Hudson Institute and gave a very large grant for me to explain to the government how imperialism was working. And the U.S. government used this as a how-to-do-it book. We have one power. We don’t have economic power. We don’t have productivity. We don’t have competitive power. But we can destroy you, and we’re willing to destroy you, because otherwise we’re going under.It’s a very interesting book. This guy Frederic Pierucci, he was previously was an executive at the French transport company Alstom. And the U.S. government accused him of so-called corruption. And he was kind of the first case of like a Meng Wanzhou, before Meng Wanzhou, a few years before her. The other is something that you had briefly in Rome before it collapsed, and you’re now idealizing in the United States: it’s an economy with no government at all. You get rid of all government power to regulate or tax business. So now Europe has a huge shortage of gas and oil, and they’re of course blaming Russia, and they’re doing all the typical things that they do.

Super imperialism: the origins and fundamentals of U.S. world

All they care about is getting rich for the next 20 years. They don’t care if they leave a bankrupt America in their place. That’s their business plan. So the United States could feel secure, secure that it could starve Honduras to death if Honduras didn’t do what it wanted, and was dependent on the U.S. for food. They’ll have to go to work for an employer. Because the health is going to, insurance is going to come from the employer. And if they don’t go to work for the employer, they won’t get health care, and they can go broke very easily.

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MAX BLUMENTHAL: Ben, maybe we can put Professor Hudson’s book on screen now and tell everyone where they can find it, the new edition. And America said, we’re going to make you a loan, called the British Loan, but as a result, you’re going to have to keep your own pound sterling at five dollars a sterling. You’re going to have to keep it at a high price.