We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, August 31, 2015

Michael Hudson’s New Book: Wall Street Parasites Have Devoured Their Hosts — Your Retirement Plan and the U.S. Economy

Click here to access a book review by Pam Martens from Wall Street on Parade.
In his new book, “Killing the Host,” Hudson hones an exquisitely gripping journey from Wall Street’s original role as capital allocator to its present-day parasitism that has replaced U.S. capitalism as an entrenched, politically-enforced economic model across America.

This book is a must-read for anyone hoping to escape the most corrupt era in American history with a shirt still on his parasite-riddled back.
What Martens and Hudson and other such critics fail to understand and are concerned about is that we live in a system called capitalism which inevitably results in the accumulation of wealth by a tiny group of capitalists amid billions of poor, and such a system cannot sustain societies or their economies. It's not because of "greed" or parasites--it is endemic to the system of capitalism. It is only now when middle class people (people with retirement plans) are being adversely affected that liberal critics are alarmed.