"The Beginning of the End of Super Imperialism in 2020? "
The Keiser Report (E1483) (Janurary 2, 2020)
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/477272-end-of-super-imperialism/

[Program Introduction]

Continuing with their New Year’s Eve celebrations, the Keiser Report is joined by Dr Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of US World Dominance. Will 2020 see further decline in that super imperialism about which he first wrote all those decades ago? They discuss this and then turn to the upcoming elections in the US and whether or not he believes the stock market numbers will aid Trump. Finally, the discussion takes in Hudson’s views on uprisings globally and whether they herald the end of the age of neoliberalism.

[towards the end of the second part of the program]

[20:43] Michael Hudson: "Remember what happened after World War Two in Los Angeles. General Motors and the car companies bought up the public transportation systems and closed them down so that everybody would have to have cars and move out to the suburbs. So it was created. It was a planned economy, planned by the oil companies, by the banks, and by the real estate interests. And you should think of California as being centrally planned by the military industrial complex, the real-estate interests, and the intellectual property rights interests, Walt Disney, ... "

Max Keiser: "Let's talk about this global insurrection of banker occupation that we talk about here. There are uprising in Chile, Lebanon, all over the world against corruption, basically, against neo-liberal policies. So it's like Reagan and Thatcher, that era in the early eighties. Is it now come to the end of that era? Are we at the end of the Reagan/Thatcher Era that was started in the early eighties?"

Michael Hudson: "I would love to believe that. It's what I'm trying to bring about, and that's what your show is trying to bring about. We're trying to get over the cognitive dissonance and pierce the shell of the pretense that a "free market" is not a free market for criminals, not a free market for fraud. Not the kind of free market that Alan Greenspan believed in until suddenly he woke up and much to his surprise, he found that "Good Heavens! There's gambling going on here."

Max Keiser: "It's amazing. He had that foxhole conversion. ..."

Michael Hudson: "... if you only have two parties that are the same party with the same donor class. There has to be a political revolution in order to have an economic revolution here. How are you going to have that? That's really what we're talking about and your shows throughout 2020 are going to be about."

[23:48] Stacy Herbert: "Economists, Moody's, Yale University Economics Department, they all said that the data suggests that in fact Trump is going to win again based on the data."

Michael Hudson: "I don't have the data but I can see that Trump is going to win again, because the Democrats and the Democratic party have a problem. Who can they nominate that is so weak that he's guaranteed to lose to Trump? Because the Democratic candidate really is Trump. He is their policy. And the advantage of having Trump, not only does he follow the Democratic neoliberal policy, but the Democrats can say, 'That's not us.' So they can say 'It's not our homicide of the economy.'"

Max Keiser: "Well, Clinton and Tony Blair did The Third Way. To leave Left-wing policies. To be in The Middle, "centrists." But we have learned that "centrism" is right wing."

Michael Hudson: "To be a centrist means that you don't change the system. You don't change the dynamic. And if the economy is polarizing -- and every economy polarizes between debtors and creditors -- a centrist position means that you let the creditors control the economy and impoverish the debtors. And that's basically the policy of both parties, although I would anticipate that in the next four years is going to be another four years of pro-Wall Street Trump policy. Because the Democrats are throwing the election. It's like throwing a fight. Because they've made their bets on the other side."

Max Keiser: "Well, a lot of people like to quote Ben Franklin as saying 'What kind of government do you have? A Republic if you can keep it." I like to say his famous qoute: "A penny saved is a penny earned."

Michael Hudson: "But that's not how you make savings these days. You don't earn your money ..."

Max Keiser: "I'm cutting you off right there. Thanks for being on the show."