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

We found 5 Reddit comments about Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
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5 Reddit comments about Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy:

u/satanic_hamster · 2 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

> As I mentioned above, I'm looking for sources on this. The last time I had this thought was literally a decade or more ago, when my research was not detailed, but suggested that most wealthy, especially ultra-wealthy, has massive productive investments. I would think that those who don't get to watch their wealth get slowly eaten away by inflation and consumption, which, well, should happen to rich people who don't help society.

I understand, but that's not what I'm arguing.

> Do you know how these help society?

Because 'most' (hence not all) of what goes on in the financial sector is an overhead on GDP. I'd look into the brilliant work and research done by Michael Hudson on the financial economy.

> I'm agreeing with the morals here, but I can't agree with the execution. You've got someone who has successfully built businesses, you don't want arbitrary government rules deciding how to spend their money. Their wealth is a proven positive track record, and you don't want to disrupt that.

Yeah, but implicit in that statement are half a dozen moral assumptions that I may or may not share. The notion that a successful business was built solely and purely off their back is one of them. The notion of government rules as arbitrary is another. The notion of what constitutes a proven track record is another.

u/MasterOfExperts · 1 pointr/pics

Bro I am sorry. I was being a dick and to be honest I enjoy doing that. I sincerely apologise. Nonetheless just in case you can be arsed to read this reply I will tell you.

Basically Putin reversed the population contraction of Russia through natural means ie:birth rates.

When you first hear this - it sounds innocuous and doesn't seem important at all, especially here in the west where almost nobody talks about it. But for people in a country who previously avoided children for God knows how many different factors to now be having children speaks of a huge turnaround in the whole country. This turnaround is a consequence of more than one of Putin's policies.

Anyway I will give you some stuff to look at and to read if you care.

Honestly almost nobody reads the ancient greeks anymore. These are free. Pay particular attention when Aristotle talks about tyrants. It is very interesting to look at the the fight over border control in the US after reading what one of the greats of western civilization has to say.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html

I don't enjoy reading plato that much because the dialogue format is displeasing to me. I had to force myself to read these two.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.html
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

The next book is generally excellent, When he talks of the financial situation in eastern europe - i think he specifically devotes time to estonia - definitely one of the baltic states - I will say that the same happened in Russia which is how people like the owner of chelsea got their money. As an Irish individual I already knew about how Obama, Geithner and the European Commission bullied Ireland during the banking crisis - in fact to be honest it was worse than how Hudson describes - what happened to Ireland.

https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Host-Financial-Parasites-Bondage/dp/3981484282

Debunking economics is hard if you do not have a decent mathematical background. However, there is still enough information in the book regarding the flawed assumptions of modern economic theory that the book is still worth your while.

https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Keen/e/B0053YB68I?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1572021690&sr=1-1

I must confess here to have watched the documentary and I did not read the book - however I have watched a ton of this guys lectures on top of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY

Princes of the Yen. Look at his website and read the papers that you can get access to. Excellent stuff.

If you are interested in how population decline happened in the western roman empire due to fall of birth rates I will grab my folders and upload to you all material I have on the archaeological record and contemporary sources, but its effort so I will only do so if you reply and say all the above was genuinely interesting.

cya

u/patpowers1995 · 1 pointr/BasicIncome

Yes, derivatives circulated the money to buy houses, but only among rich investors, and its only real function was to spread the risk, and they arguably did more harm than good. For example, when a loan was made by a real estate banker, they typically sold the loans to Ginnie Mae, the government real estate "bank." That got the loan off the real estate bank's books. They got less profit from the loan, but their risk level went to 0.

Ginnie Mae then turned around and bundled those loans together into a financial instrument called a asset backed security. These ABSs were bought by big investors, reducing Ginnie Mae's exposure. And these ABSs could further be divided into tranches based on how risky the home loans in the mortgage-backed security were, with the riskier loans bringing in higher rates of return (though they had a much higher chance of turning into a loss -- the loans were risky for a reason). And it goes even beyond that ... Well Street investors invented a special kind of financial instrument called a credit default swap which paid off if a CDO failed. It was offered as a form of insurance, but it was essentially gambling, a bet that a CDO will fail. And there was no limit to credit default swaps ... anybody with money could buy as many credit default swaps as the could. (This is how Goldman Sachs and others made money from the financial crisis of 2007 ... they sold CDOs to their customers as good financial instruments to invest in, then turned around and bought credit default swaps on those same instruments, knowing they were rotten and would fail. It's called "fraud" and yes, bankers should have been put in jail because of it.)

Thing is, the only part of that whole process that actually helped the economy back outside the finanical markets was the original home loan made by the real estate bank. That's the money that gets contractors paid to build a house, or to upgrade and renovate. You could argue that Ginnie Mae helped originate more home loans by reducing risk for investment banks, but the other financial instruments don't really do anything but allow big investors to shift money from one account to another, and many people argue they were the CAUSE of the 2007 crash.

Plus, big investors are the ones who don't spend their money, but hide it overseas and in tax shelters.

The financial sector has become a parasite on the rest of the economy, and is slowly killing it. For more on that theme, try this book..

u/mothballette · 1 pointr/askaconservative

I am sorry to hear about your father. I am also in a position of being replaced. Not by illegals but by consolidation and layoffs resulting in more competition and lower pay (it's how Mitt Romney made off with his loot in a smash and grab form of capitalism). This is after eight years of post graduate education. I am now looking to get more education in an entirely different field.

I know there are people who don't want to work but are able, but we usually pay attention to the poorer among us who game the system and direct our ire towards them. It's time to take a look at the bigger scammers and leeches among us - or "parasites" as the economist Michael Hudson calls them.

It's a systemic, legal looting of the American people's wealth by the most powerful and connected institutions and people in this country - politicians in conjunction with the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate) - and neither Democrats nor Republicans are immune to this corruption. Financialization of empire precedes its downfall.

Highly regarded but little known, Michael Hudson is one of the few economists to predict and warn about the 2007-8 economic crisis (though he says everyone in finance knew but stayed silent). Listen to those who have accurately predicted events and have the integrity to speak rather than those who are always wrong (or complicit) but have a great microphone to America's ears. Hudson speaks in plain language and makes a whole lot of sense. He explains why your father lost his job and how I may lose mine, and until we know the root of our suffering we will never be able to address it effectively

Best wishes to you and your family.

Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy, by Michael Hudson:

https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Host-Financial-Parasites-Bondage/dp/3981484282