The Strategic Empire: Debt & the Dollar
https://michael-hudson.com/2025/06/the-strategic-empire-debt-the-dollar/
作者：Michael 2025年6月28日 访谈 去美元化 永久链接
格伦·迪森：大家好，欢迎！今天，我们邀请到经济学教授迈克尔·哈德森，共同探讨美国帝国的战略。当我们探讨帝国时，我们通常倾向于关注军事能力和部署，但众所周知，帝国也需要经济基础。为了探讨这个问题，我们将探讨迈克尔·哈德森教授的一本杰作，即《超级帝国主义》，它阐述了美国帝国的经济战略。我会在书的简介中附上这本书的链接。请务必阅读，欢迎回来收听节目。
迈克尔·哈德森：格伦，谢谢你的邀请。
格伦·迪森：是的，讨论完这个问题之后，我们会探讨美国帝国的经济战略。听听您如何看待这些经济基础，嗯，不如您这本书初版出版时那么稳固，这很有意思。但我认为一个好的切入点是您如何看待您书中提到的“美国世界秩序的诞生”这一部分。美国帝国的经济战略基础是什么？
迈克尔·赫德森：嗯，除了1898年战争之外，美国人从未像欧洲那样尝试过公开的军事殖民主义。结果却是金融殖民主义和金融帝国主义。而真正建立这样一个帝国的尝试，直到1944年和1945年二战结束才真正开始。但这一切的根源都在于第一次世界大战的结束，当时一战的和解最终迫使美国偿还其参战前借给英国、法国和其他盟国的战争债务。
战争结束后，欧洲人期待着盟国之间能够相互免除债务，这在当时是常态，例如拿破仑战争之后的惯例，因为这一切都被认为是战争努力的一部分，不仅提供军队，还提供资金和购买武器的资金。但美国却说，好吧，我们同意你们的意见。当然，一旦我们加入你们一方对抗德国，我们就不会考虑向你们收取战争的所有费用。但在我们参战之前，情况就完全不同了。我们是中立方，我们希望你们偿还你们所欠的战争债务。债务就是债务。
后来，盟军转而攻击德国，说我们不想偿还美国债务。坦白说，我们没钱偿还美国算出来的我们欠的债务。我们要让德国支付赔款。到了1921-22年，当这一切尘埃落定，这基本上成了惯例。
所以我不得不说，欧洲在某种程度上也参与其中。所有欧洲国家，包括德国，都认为债务就是债务。如果这是官方债务，如果是盟军强加给德国的战争赔款，那显然超出了德国的能力。德国所有政党，甚至包括社会民主党和反战党，都一致认为这些债务必须偿还。
结果我们知道。德国只有一种偿还方式，因为它失去了其主要的、生产力最高的钢铁工业——阿尔萨斯-洛林地区。 《凡尔赛条约》使德国财政陷入瘫痪。它偿还债务的唯一途径就是将其货币——德国马克——投入外汇市场购买美元，最终变成美元，以偿还其欠协约国的债务，而协约国却将这些债务转嫁给美国，作为其对协约国之间债务的偿还。结果，德国陷入了恶性通货膨胀。美国不想让德国自己赚钱偿还协约国债务，因为这会威胁到美国的工业。
因此，美国通过了一项关税法案，禁止进口贬值的货币，也就是德国货币。这样一来，德国就没有任何偿还能力了。结果，美国投资者借钱给德国城市和地方政府。这些城市为了资助自己的地方预算而借入美元，然后把美元交给了德国国家银行。德国国家银行用这些美元偿还协约国债务，协约国再用这些美元偿还美国债务。
因此，由此形成的是一种循环流动，而这一切最终都基于对黄金的需求。美国在第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战期间国际实力的增强，都反映了其日益增长的黄金实力，所有主要货币都可以兑换黄金。到德国崩溃为纳粹政权时，大量资本从欧洲流向美国。
这些国家导致美国的黄金储备进一步增加。因此，到二战结束时，美国控制了世界上绝大部分的货币黄金。由于欧洲遭受重创，美国也得以掌控和平后国际贸易和金融体系的运作方式。
因此，美国利用其权力创建了国际货币基金组织、世界银行、国际贸易组织和双边外交，旨在迅速吞并曾经的大英帝国。美国通过向英镑提供贷款来平衡其国际收支，并在二战后恢复元气，从而维持了英镑的稳定。
条件是，英国必须开放英镑区，让印度和其他在二战期间积累了黄金和英镑余额的国家能够使用这些余额，这些余额不仅限于英国工业，也包括美国。因此，美国基本上有一系列由约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯提出的计划，试图确保战后秩序不会失衡到所有黄金和权力都流向美国。
美国拒绝了这些计划。他们创建了国际货币基金组织和世界银行，主要是为了服务于美国的国家利益。我不知道你是否想让我详细阐述。例如，世界银行的职责是向其他国家提供贷款，帮助它们发展经济。但最初，欧洲，以及现在的全球南方国家，在当时被称为发展中国家。
但世界银行从二战至今的政策都是不向那些在美国控制的任何商品上实现自给自足的国家提供贷款。而二战以来，美国的国际收支平衡很大程度上依赖于粮食出口以及对石油工业的控制，正如我们今天所看到的。因此，世界银行根本没有尝试遵循其自身经济学家的建议。
世界银行开展了一系列国家研究，其对拉丁美洲或中东的每一项研究都表明，必须进行土地改革。必须让这些国家的农业像美国通过《农业调整法》那样，大力组织政府支持农业发展，支持粮食生产，使这些国家实现自给自足。从历史上看，这是自给自足的主要目标。美国和世界银行基本上是通过贷款来资助国际贸易对美国的依赖，而国际货币基金组织正是为此而生的。国际货币基金组织运用了美国和欧洲在第一次世界大战后奉行的那种自我毁灭的经济哲学。
第一次世界大战后，英国的约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯与来自法国和美国的反德经济学家之间展开了一场激烈的辩论，他们认为，是的，这些债务并非无法偿还。任何国家只要将本币贬值到足以使其出口具有竞争力的水平，就能够偿还任何数额的外债。在实践中，国际货币基金组织的理念是，如果各国仅仅降低劳动力成本，就像它有一套劳动价值理论一样，如果各国能够实施紧缩政策，削减政府预算，避免出现预算赤字，从而向经济注入资金，那么通货紧缩和低工资就能使这些国家偿还外债。自1945年成立以来，国际货币基金组织就一直奉行这一政策。
这种通货紧缩的紧缩理念在很大程度上阻碍了全球南方国家、中东和亚洲国家自二战以来，在不得不偿还外债以弥补与美国的贸易逆差的同时，这些国家却不得不借贷。随着这些贸易逆差不断扩大，各国纷纷争相获取美元。实际上，这意味着需要用黄金来偿还债务，将外国债权人、美国政府的利益置于一切之上，同时也将美国债券持有人和银行的利益置于自身国内发展之上。
你可以想象一下，究竟发生了什么事，威胁到了美国建立的这种动态，这种动态本质上是为了使自己成为劳动分工和生产专业化的受益者：美国作为领先的工业国，其他国家作为其原材料供应国和低工资制造商。这被称为二元经济结构。一个经济体是美国和程度较小的欧洲，另一个经济体是全球南方国家和那些无法自给自足的国家。那么，是什么终结了这一切呢？
1950-51年朝鲜战争爆发后，美国黄金储备迅速增加。
1945年至1950年间，美国的黄金储备实际上已增至全球货币黄金总量的80%。这意味着，美国拥有黄金，并坚持所有主要国家的货币都以黄金计价，这意味着美国拥有压倒性的金融实力。1950年，由于与朝鲜战争相关的军事开支，美国首次出现国际收支逆差。从20世纪50年代开始，一直到70年代末，美国一直处于国际收支逆差状态，其解决方式是向那些接收美国抛售美元的国家支付黄金。而整个逆差都是军事开支造成的。
我先是在大通曼哈顿银行担任国际收支分析师，后来在会计师事务所安德森会计师事务所工作，负责分析美国的国际收支，结果表明所有赤字都与军事赤字有关。你可以想象一下20世纪60年代末越南战争期间发生了什么。我在大通银行工作时，每个星期五早上，我们都会查看美联储关于本周美国黄金储备状况的报告。当戴高乐将军收到美国在法属印度支那、越南、柬埔寨和老挝等地抛售的美元时，美国需要向法国输送多少黄金？这些美元都被送往法国，并被法国兑换成黄金。
德国也获得了大量美元，而其他国家从美国获得的军事开支，又花在了德国的工业出口上。因此，我们每周都会看到，对美国黄金储备的索偿权不断上升。显而易见，如果美国冷战时期的开支继续以当时的速度增长，那么到某个时候，它将耗尽足够的黄金来合法地覆盖美国纸币。1971年之前，你口袋里的每一美元都必须有25%的黄金储备作为支撑。到了1971年，尼克松总统意识到情况已不再如此。
他关闭了黄金储备窗口，并表示，我们再也无法用黄金来支付我们在亚洲乃至全球的军事开支了。美国政府内部陷入了恐慌。一年后，差不多就在1971年8月美国放弃金本位制的一年后，我的《超级帝国主义》出版了，时间大概是1972年8月或9月。结果，据我所知，这本书的最大买家是中央情报局和国防部，他们通过华盛顿的书店购买了这本书。
我在德崇证券的朋友们，那些投资银行家们，来找我，说，你看，你在学术界干什么？我们打算邀请你来参加我们的年会演讲。赫尔曼·卡恩也会去。他会喜欢你的演讲，还会给你提供一份工作。接受吧，离开学术界。
所以我确实向他们解释说，美国停止以黄金支付并不一定意味着美国权力的终结。恰恰相反，一旦外国不再能用美元购买美国黄金，考虑到当时的国际金融外交安排，他们只有一个实际选择：他们用美元做什么？他们购买当时最安全的投资——美国国债、国债、国库券。
于是，美国在海外花费军费时，接受国把美元交给了中央银行，换成了本国货币。各国央行将这些美元投资于美国国债，这不仅为美国的对外军费开支提供了资金，也为美国国内主要以军事性质为特征的预算赤字（即军工复合体）提供了资金。我指出，实际情况是，其他国家别无选择，只能依靠本国央行通过循环利用美元，为美国国内的军费开支提供资金，而不是通过终结美国通过黄金供应对世界经济的控制来制造灾难。赫尔曼·卡恩雇佣了我。我去了哈德逊研究所工作。
他说，你知道，你为什么指望你在新学院的大约50名研究生最终会……也许有人将来会成为参议员什么的？如果你加入哈德逊研究所，我会带你去白宫介绍你，我们会签合同，你会成为所有这些事情的政府顾问。这似乎很有道理。于是，国防部给了哈德逊研究所一笔8.5万美元的资助，比我为《超级帝国主义》获得的预付款要多得多，让我可以往返于战争学院、白宫和其他场所，解释我刚才说的话。美元本位制，我可以
它取代了金本位，构成了国际金融的国库券标准，这实际上锁定了其他国家对美国海外支出的财政支持。脱离金本位实际上取消了对军事支出的限制。
我和赫尔曼·卡恩在白宫对财政部官员发表过一次演讲，我们说，黄金，你可以把它看作是和平的金属，因为如果其他国家必须用黄金来弥补国际收支赤字，那么任何发动战争的国家，任何在海外需要巨额军事开支的国家，以及任何需要承担巨额赤字的国家，都将耗尽黄金，并在以黄金为基础的体系中失去影响力。
财政部的人立刻说，我们不希望这样。我们不希望这样，因为是美国在参战。是美国几乎花费了全世界所有的军事预算。我们不希望黄金在任何美国无法控制的体系中发挥作用。如果我们必须将美元兑换成黄金，我们就无法控制黄金外流。因此，实际上，剥夺其他国家将美元兑换成黄金的能力，意味着它们被纳入了金融体系。
正是在那时，美国真正成为了一个帝国，因为整个世界金融体系，也就是它的税收体系、财政体系、货币创造，基本上都由美国财政部指挥，用于资助美国所谓的帝国在世界各地建立800个军事基地以及发动自20世纪70年代以来一直在进行的战争所需的成本。直到今年，其他国家才愿意加入这个体系，因为地缘政治的现实促使它们支持美国的军费开支，同时也因为别无选择。
如今，随着特朗普总统和共和党向国会提交预算案，美国的债务、国内债务以及对外国央行和外国投资者（包括沙特阿拉伯和挪威等私人准政府基金）的外债都已巨额增加。这些投资者已经意识到，各国央行持有的外债本应与黄金等值，是最安全的资产，但却无力偿还。美国不可能、也不会、也不愿以某种方式偿还其他国家借给美国的资金，这些资金主要是国库券，但也包括美国机构、房利美和政府机构，这些机构的偿还金额略高于财政部，甚至包括沙特阿拉伯和挪威持有的公司证券。美国绝不可能愿意偿还这些债务，无论是通过出口（因为它已经去工业化，不再提供出口服务）还是将其产业出售给外国买家。
直到今年，美国还一直声称，如果外国无力偿还财政赤字和国际收支逆差，就必须通过私有化公共设施、向外国人出售基础设施、出售矿产权、向外国投资者出售土地来弥补。美国不愿做它坚持要求其他国家做的事情，因为这是它所创造的世界贸易和投资的基础。因此，其他国家意识到这种双重标准，他们实际上并没有获得可以转换成美国工业、农业、基础设施或其他任何东西所有权的储蓄。这些只是纸币而已。
因此，你们第一次开始寻求美元的替代品。嗯，迄今为止，人们唯一能达成共识的替代品是黄金。1973年，当我和赫尔曼·卡恩访问白宫时，赫尔曼带来了一张世界地图。地图上标注的是各国政府的信任程度。那些国家包括北欧、整个欧洲、美国、英语国家，以及那些民众不信任政府的国家。好吧，你可以称他们为全球大多数。大多数人都不信任政府。
然后，他又提到了支持黄金和商品货币的国家。比如印度、亚洲、全球南方国家。他们想要的是安全的东西，而不是欠条。信任纸币的国家是北欧和英语国家。所以，他们对纸币的信念就是“债就是债”。这正是美国在第一次世界大战后开始积累黄金的原则。
但是，美国，尤其是国会面前的当前预算，却在说，嗯，是的，债务就是资产负债表上的债务。是的，在资产负债表上，我们欠外国的钱比我们能想到的任何偿还方式都要多。但仅此而已。这是一笔永远无法偿还的债务。
这就像你去杂货店，想用欠条付款，杂货店会说，你上周欠了不少钱。你知道，你得还。
顾客会说，好吧，我付不起。但你可以用这笔债务，或许可以把这张欠条交给给你提供鸡蛋、奶制品或蔬菜的农场。如果这张欠条能作为对顾客的债权流通，那么从技术上讲，它就成了债务。
现在，很多金融体系和世界金融体系都建立在这种无力偿还的债务之上。可以说，这正是美国帝国的关键所在，因为它是美国能够在海外扩张，并成为历史上第一个无需偿还战争债务或其他欠外国债务的国家的关键。这就是美国能够达到的双重标准，使其成为一个独一无二的国家，或者说一个不可或缺的国家。这就是为什么现在其他国家都在购买黄金，你可以看到金价上涨，以及为什么他们试图意识到，我们不能把所有的美元储备都花在黄金上。
难道我们就不能创造一种由其他国家持有的替代纸币吗？金砖国家正在讨论这个问题。而这种货币不可能由其他国家持有，因为发行一种货币需要议会来决定，谁将从这种货币中受益？如果你发行这种货币，它将被用于什么用途？谁来花它？
你必须有一个像真正的欧洲那样的机构来决定谁将获得正在发行的欧元的收益，只不过美国创建欧元区的方式，使得它实际上无法维持足够的赤字来从它现在被迫陷入的经济衰退中恢复过来。所以，世界正处于进退维谷的境地。这就是我的“超级帝国主义”的全部含义。我尝试将其更新到现在，但基本主题就是这样。
格伦·迪森：嗯，我觉得很有意思的是，美国在二战后最初的强大力量，显然建立在它作为信用国家的地位之上。当然，还有军事力量，以及它在世界银行、国际货币基金组织和美元体系中的特权地位。但它作为一个赤字国家，其不断增长的债务成为了进一步巩固帝国实力的源泉，这很独特，不是吗？但无论如何，这似乎一直都只是一种暂时的模式。我记得在90年代和21世纪初，华盛顿的政治领导人曾认为，实际上，我们的债务是实力的象征。
这表明世界信任我们的经济和货币。然而，如果这种情况不可持续，到某个时候就会碰壁。我今天早上看了看债务时钟，它已经快要达到37万亿美元了，而且这种增长还在加剧。所以，到了一定时候，你确实需要一些替代方案，而这些方案似乎正在出现。
你也提到了地缘政治的事实。我想，冷战时期地缘政治的一个事实就是，当时的两个主要竞争对手，无论是苏联还是中国，都是共产主义国家，基本上与这种经济治国方略脱钩，而正如你所说，美国在资本主义世界的盟友都必须优先考虑地缘政治的事实。也就是说，你不能容忍太多的经济争吵。所以，你知道，当时存在一些激励机制来防止资本主义工业国家之间像二战前那样的竞争。
但是，我们现在要去哪里呢？因为，再说一次，债务模式似乎已经耗尽，地缘政治的事实也发生了变化。现在，你面临的主要竞争对手，无论是中国、俄罗斯还是其他国家，都在拥抱经济治国之道。我猜，美国帝国的根基是如何被侵蚀的？
迈克尔·赫德森：债务模式尚未耗尽。特朗普发表了多次演讲，国会也支持他，称任何试图建立美元替代品的国家，我们都会对其征收特别关税，税率甚至高达500%。他说，任何试图从美元转向中国支付体系的国家都将被视为敌人，我们将阻止他们进入美国市场。他意识到，美国的实力不再是债权国，而恰恰是因为它是一个债务国。
凯恩斯曾开玩笑说，如果你欠银行一千美元，你就有麻烦了。如果你欠银行十亿美元，银行就有麻烦了。这就是美国的优势所在。它欠其他国家太多钱了，如果它不还，比如说，如果它没收了俄罗斯在美国和布鲁塞尔的存款，它就会没收这些存款，然后这些存款就会消失。债务基本上就被取消了。
美国不愿取消那些无力偿还的全球南方债务，但它阻止任何国家试图摆脱美元。
美元化被视为战争行为。财政部长早在1974年和1975年就向我解释过这一点。当时正值石油战争爆发，沙特阿拉伯和欧佩克国家将油价翻了两番，以回应美国将粮食价格翻了两番。美国告诉他们，如果他们可以随意定价，美国也同意，因为美国控制着全球大部分石油产业，包括国内石油生产。而且，随着油价上涨，美国石油公司拥有价格保护伞。
然而，允许欧佩克国家提高油价的条件是，这些国家的所有出口收入都必须回流到美国。这不一定非要以国债的形式，也可以是股票和债券，但只能是少数股权。所以，我想，沙特国王们买下了道琼斯工业平均指数中所有股票的10亿美元。他们将储蓄分散到美国债券和股票市场，但这种方式并不涉及任何控制其持有股票公司的权力，这与大多数试图在公司管理中拥有发言权的股东形成了鲜明对比。这就是我们今天的处境。
想象一下，当沙特阿拉伯、科威特和阿拉伯联合共和国都持有大量美国证券时，近东地区正在发生什么。他们目睹了美国攫取俄罗斯的储蓄。他们目睹了美国通过英国没收了委内瑞拉的石油黄金储备和英格兰银行。整个过程始于伊朗霍梅尼时代，即伊朗推翻国王的革命，当时伊朗试图偿还其外债的到期利息，而大通曼哈顿银行拒绝支付。
伊朗被视为违约，并立即被取消抵押品赎回权。其余持有美国债务的近东国家则深陷其中，不敢采取任何反对美国当前对伊朗军事行动的行动，因为他们所做的一切，无论是支持巴勒斯坦还是支持伊朗，或任何与美国在近东的外交政策相悖的行为，都会导致美国将这些国家的储蓄全部收入囊中，并可随意冻结或没收。这就是美国作为债务国对其他国家拥有的权力，也是特朗普所说的，今天任何试图去美元化的行为都是一种战争行为，就像50年前各国在1974年或1975年被告知的那样。
格伦·迪森：嗯，不过还有一个古老的真理，那就是任何过度依赖胁迫的体系最终都会开始，我想，随着时间的推移，它会逐渐衰败。还有，嗯，全世界，美国欠全世界的钱，所以美国坐在他们的储蓄罐里，不能随时取用。这似乎只能在一定程度上发挥作用，我能理解委内瑞拉黄金被盗之类的事情。但看起来，窃取俄罗斯主权基金真的有点太过分了，因为当人们对这个体系失去信任时，它就无法真正发挥作用了。
我们看到，不仅像中国这样的反对者担心，因为他们知道永远无法收回所有资金，而且像印度这样的国家也担心二次制裁和其他美国盟友。
那么，我猜，美国帝国这种新的变化还能持续多久呢？
因为，在我看来，如今推动中国发展的关键因素之一正是寻找替代方案，因为他们正在为与美国几乎永无休止的贸易战做准备，而且他们无法真正将所有事情都外包出去，从金融稳定到美国的善意。所以，世界其他国家肯定也在寻找替代方案，以摆脱美国的金融控制。
迈克尔·赫德森：嗯，你完美地总结了这个困境。信任已经消失，但目前还没有其他选择。所以，你问题的答案是，这个体系还能维持多久，直到出现替代方案。正因如此，美国如今的外交政策，为了维护其所谓的金融帝国以及对世界贸易和投资的控制，其基础是阻止任何可能出现的替代方案。
显然，拥有最大国际收支和贸易顺差的国家，也就是中国这些产油国，是这种替代方案的合理支持者。正因如此，美国才将中国列为目标，并将任何看起来强大到足以创造替代方案的国家视为敌人。美国试图通过制裁来阻止和阻止他们创造替代形式的国际货币储蓄，这适得其反，但这是美国的战略，或者说，试图组织欧洲外交及其代理人的外交，
卫星试图以某种方式延缓这种正如你所指出的不可避免的发展。
是的，总有一天美国再也无法享用免费午餐了。阻止免费午餐的第一步是让其他国家认识到免费午餐的存在，并且他们实际上放弃了失去控制权的资金，实际上资助了美国，如果他们为了确保资金真正物有所值而采取任何行动，美国就会对他们采取激进的行动。问题是，美国控制德国政客、欧洲政客、亚洲政客，尤其是欧佩克国家政客的能力，能在短期内持续多久？
从长远来看，他们意识到美国做不到。但从短期来看，他们可以采取一些策略。问题在于，他们使用的策略过于强硬，以至于与战略背道而驰。他们越是采取强制、威胁和欺凌其他国家的手段，就越是在破坏美国真正成为一个足够有活力的经济体，从而承诺真正有能力偿还其他国家的战略。
我认为美国的计划正是特朗普政府所希望的；那就是美国能够创造互联网垄断、计算机垄断、人工智能垄断、芯片制造垄断，并以某种方式利用其垄断收益扭转国际收支逆差，重建世界强国。这不过是白日梦，因为要实现技术主导地位，就需要研发。而由于金融部门和企业，那些本应发展这种技术领先地位的私营企业，只顾眼前利益，他们把大部分收入都用于苹果和其他国家，并回购自己的股票，以股息的形式支付，以支撑股价。所以，美国经济金融化的方式实际上削弱了其维持全球金融实力的能力，因为它导致了美国经济的去工业化，这让其他国家更加担心它们投资于美国的储蓄的去向，以及它们究竟能做些什么？
所以，你们在过去两周，也就是上个月看到的情况非常令人惊讶。美国的利率一直在上升，但美元却一直在贬值。这是历史上第一次，一个国家，比如美国，在加息后反而亏损。货币外流，而不是吸引其他国家流入世界。正如欧洲和亚洲国家所说的，套利，我们可以通过在本国廉价借款，购买这些高收益的美国国债，也就是利率为4.5%的10年期美国国债，来赚取更高的利率。
突然之间，它就失效了。这正是财政部和那些真正在思考如何支付的人感到恐慌的原因。美国正陷入二战后英国的境地，步履蹒跚，难以生存。不同之处在于，目前，只要欧洲和近东国家拒绝接受中国、亚洲和俄罗斯作为替代方案，他们就不愿意接受任何其他替代方案。这正是这场战争的根本原因，美国坚持新冷战，声称中国是我们生存的敌人。我们将试图通过乌克兰战争耗尽俄罗斯的经济。
我们正在竭尽全力，破坏其他国家成为美元有吸引力的替代品的能力。这种尝试是为了维持美元化，阻止去美元化，从而终结国库券本位，使美国无法从国库券本位或金本位中获益。这不仅是理解美国外交的关键，也是理解美国当前针对伊朗的军事行动的一部分，也是其试图控制整个近东地区的一部分，部分原因是利用以色列作为其代理人，以及叙利亚和伊拉克的“伊斯兰国”和“基地”组织作为其代理人。这解释了为何会出现如此看似怪异的国际军事局势。
人们会问，伊朗究竟怎么会对美国构成威胁？它之所以对美国构成威胁，是因为它存在，而美国并没有将其作为控制整个近东地区以及近东石油从世界其他地区吸引的所有贸易顺差的关键。正因如此，美国才认为伊朗、伊朗战争以及摧毁伊朗符合美国的利益。伊朗的角色是作为美国在近东地区最后一个潜在的替代选择，可以取代美国控制近东地区，使其沦为附庸国，就像美国多年来一直将拉丁美洲经济体作为附庸国一样。
格伦·迪森：但这是摆脱
当前的困境是，要么在这场新的工业革命中建立一些重要的科技垄断，要么在世界各地建立准殖民地。我的意思是，所有这些举措，即使是乐观的，似乎也只是在拖延问题。有哪些可能的路径？我的意思是，如果你为现在关于超级帝国主义的书写续集，如果你想要更可持续的发展，美国接下来会走向何方？
因为看起来，科技领导层似乎无法垄断任何东西，因为中国的存在，还有这些殖民地。显然，它似乎也无法把伊朗变成殖民地。那么，我们究竟在关注什么？好吧，如果你有一个，对学者来说可能不太有吸引力的选择，但如果你有一章来推测我们未来的发展方向，你会看到什么？
迈克尔·赫德森：美国保持偿付能力经济体的唯一途径是放弃试图用帝国统治世界。帝国不赚钱。这是历史的教训。帝国耗费巨资，最终帝国的权力会走向破产，就像英国帝国的解体，最终将其货币权力移交给美国一样。法兰西帝国也灭亡了。帝国不赚钱。
所以，美国生存的唯一途径就是再工业化。这意味着经济去金融化。你说我们活在短期内。我们如何才能迈向长期？金融部门活在短期内。只要美国经济的中央计划从政府转移到华尔街和其他金融中心，这些金融中心就有三个月到一年的时间框架。
他们关注的是本季度的股价走势，因为首席财务官和首席执行官的奖金就是基于股价。所以，美国的经济心态本质上是新自由主义的心态，即活在短期利益中，用经济手段而不是通过生产性的工业、农业和商业来赚钱。所以，美国必须像所有其他国家一样，成为一个普通的国家。它必须是一个平等的国家。
美国和其他国家之间必须平等，都遵循同一套规则。这对国会来说是令人厌恶的。这里仍然存在着一种民族主义，一种民粹主义的民族主义，它声称我们不想成为另一个国家。我们不想按照其他国家遵循的规则生活。我们希望继续主宰其他国家，因为我们担心，如果其他国家有能力在外交上独立，他们可能会做出一些我们不喜欢的事情。
只要你抱有这种心态，你最终就会把自己置于世界其他国家的对立面。你将失去贸易能力，失去让你的经济成为吸引其他国家投资磁石的能力。其他国家不可能在美国投资，指望从美国企业的增长中获利，因为这种增长纯粹是金融性质的。股票、债券、房地产价格、由债务融资的资产价格通胀，制造越来越多的债务来抬高房地产价格、债券价格和股票价格。这就是2008年之后零利率政策的真正目的。
美国已经从工业资本主义经济转变为金融资本主义经济，这种经济实际上根本不是老式的资本主义，而是纯粹的金融经济。你可以说，它更接近于新封建经济，而不是英国、德国和美国在二战后（19世纪末至第一次世界大战）所形成的那种工业经济，那种最初赋予它们世界霸权的经济。那种工业的、生产力的、非金融的强权在西方已不复存在。所以问题不仅在于美国，还在于从美国、西欧及其主要盟友传播开来的新自由主义经济理念。因此，美国与中国、亚洲和全球南方国家之间的真正冲突，不仅仅是关于如何保持和保存国际收支盈余的冲突；而是经济体系之间的冲突。
其他国家会建立一个非军事性质的经济体系吗？这个体系不以创造金融财富为基础，而是像中国一样，通过建设公共基础设施来构建自身，以实际的工业增长而非寻租为基础。而这在某种程度上被排除在现有的经济模式之外。美国已经变成了一个食利经济，而不是一个工业经济。它靠金融赚钱。它靠利率赚钱。它通过创造垄断来赚钱，比如在科技领域。
部门。
但这些都不是基于实际的生产成本和成本。它们全都基于特权和市场的特殊扭曲，这与亚当·斯密、约翰·斯图尔特·密尔甚至马克思所探讨的完全不同。如今的资本主义形式是古典经济学家和马克思都未曾预料到的。他们都认为国家会为了自身利益行事。如果你预测美国将会发生什么，以及欧洲的替代方案是什么，并且认为它们会为了自身利益行事，那么你必须面对这样一个事实：这些国家，所有这些国家，没有一个是为了自身利益行事。
他们所遵循的经济模式、新自由主义模式、军事模式和外交制度模式，最终证明并非符合自身利益，而是自我毁灭的。所以我只能解释为什么它是自我毁灭的。我认为，正如你所暗示的，其他国家自然会效仿创造真正的财富，而不是金融财富。中国和俄罗斯的实际GDP增长如此迅速是有原因的。中国和俄罗斯的GDP不包括租金上涨、利息和罚款上涨以及资本利得。这并非金融性质的，而是现实的。
这场斗争在于短期内生活在不现实中，还是长期生活在现实中。你打算如何实现这一点？对我来说，我所能做的就是重复我今天刚才对你们说的话。如果人们理解这一点，至少这是尝试接受帝国替代方案的第一步，任何国家主宰另一个国家的情况都将结束。中国做不到。没有哪个国家能够以牺牲世界其他国家为代价而成为一个帝国，除非世界其他国家退缩并尝试创造替代方案。
格伦·迪森：是的，如今缺乏理性是我主要担忧之一，因为你确实看到外交政策和经济政策越来越不受国家利益和理性的左右。但正是这种调整的必要性，让我对特朗普的总统任期略感乐观，因为至少他谈到了再工业化。至少他谈到了美国需要扮演不同的角色。他挑战了北约扩张主义，而北约扩张主义正是这一霸权体系的一个关键体现。
看起来，即使他没有明确表态，他或多或少直觉地意识到，为了拯救共和国，你必须放弃帝国。所以，他看起来确实意识到了这一点，但当然，他把一切都搞砸了。当然，这次对伊朗的攻击更是雪上加霜。不过，在我们结束讨论之前，您认为短期内会发生什么，而不是长期内会发生什么？您提到美国试图提高利率以吸引资本，但结果却是资本外逃。那么，您预计，如果不是在接下来的几个月或几周内，会发生什么？
迈克尔·赫德森：其他国家正在争相退出，而特朗普的政策正迫使它们走向退出。他的关税政策本质上是在威胁，如果它们不同意停止与中国的贸易，不拒绝去美元化，不实质上向美国屈服，就剥夺它们进入美国市场的资格。它们不会听从。而其他国家的反应是，好吧，我们不会接受你们的条件。
如果你们要把关税提高到40%、60%，那就去做吧。我们当然会的。你们这样做就是阻止我们与美国进行贸易。我们会对你们征收关税，然后你们走你们的路。我们走我们的路。所以，如果特朗普本人有什么计划的话，我会如何瓦解美国帝国？我会像唐纳德·特朗普那样做。你赶走其他国家，然后刺激他们说，你认为没有其他选择吗？我会对你们采取强硬态度，就像我对俄罗斯、中国、伊朗和中东那样强硬一样。我要对你们关闭美国市场。
特朗普说过，如果你们试图购买收益率为4.5%的美国国债，我将对你们购买的债券收取10%的费用和关税。所以你们实际上会在债券上亏钱。即使美国真的支付4.5%的利率，美元兑欧元也会下跌。美元兑欧元已经下跌了10%。欧元之前曾一度升至120，现在又回到了接近平价的水平。
其他国家的美元正在贬值，以本国货币计算。所以特朗普正在加速这位“客人”的离去。他正在对他们关闭美国市场。这意味着，各位，你们自己行动吧。自己签订协议吧。当然会有，尽管美国的附庸国德国、法国和英国的政客们基本上都在投票反对他们自己民众的投票，就像美国一样
国会想要对伊朗发动战争，这与民意调查中美国人所宣传的背道而驰。
这种情况不可能持续下去。它必须是暂时的，否则就会引发一场革命。你必须记住，19世纪的工业资本主义本身就是一场革命。为了使英国工业更具竞争力，工业家们必须终结当时最强大的既得利益集团——房地产利益集团——的权力。他们必须战胜上议院的权力。他们必须改变整个政治体系。他们必须扩大选举范围，实现政治民主化。这是一场革命。
这种革命如今正在全球大多数国家中重演。欧洲的工业界必须摆脱封建主义的残余。地主阶级，以及国际银行家为帮助国王偿还他们欠下的战争债务而建立的垄断企业。而如今，这些都是食利者利益，土地租金、垄断租金和利息。这正是全球南方和全球大多数国家正在努力解决的问题。这就像欧洲为实现工业化和成为资本主义国家而推翻的封建利益集团，如今却变成了外国利益集团。
外国投资者拥有他们的原材料租金、自然资源租金和土地租金。外国投资者拥有他们的主要垄断企业。现在，他们又将公共基础设施私有化，使其成为垄断企业，例如英国的泰晤士水务公司，并让这些国家背负外债，从而获得利益。如今，其他国家为掌握自身命运、自主权和主权而进行的斗争，与欧洲当年反对其从封建主义遗留下来的国内利益的斗争非常相似。当今世界，除美国以外的世界，必须面对这样一个事实：我们不再有封建主义，而是拥有一个食利者利益的上层建筑，而这些利益并非生产经济的一部分。
我们又回到了亚当·斯密、约翰·斯图尔特·密尔和马克思所说的“它们是经济的两个组成部分”的立场。有生产经济，就有食利经济、流通经济、金融、工业、房地产和垄断。我们必须思考：什么是国民生产总值？什么是产品？产品真的就是金融部门和房地产部门通过租金赚取的全部收入吗？还是说产品就是我们实际生产出来的产品，就像中国在没有食利阶级的情况下生产出来的产品？
去美元化之战实际上就是要消灭这些国家现有的食利阶级，而且这些国家也无力偿还它们所欠的外债。特朗普的关税阻止了其他国家获得足够的出口收益，从而无法赚取美元来偿还债券持有人和欠有美元债务的银行。所以，这些巨额债务将演变成一场蓄意而为的债务拒付，这些债务是令人厌恶的。因为所有这些债务，都是自1945年以来，在美国主导下，国际货币基金组织和世界银行奉行的本质上是掠夺性的亲美路线的理念下累积起来的，最终非但没有帮助其他国家偿还债务，反而阻碍了它们偿还。如果一个债权国不让一个债务国通过与其本国产业竞争，实现足够的出口来偿还债务，那么，无论从经济还是道德角度来看，这笔外债都无法自立。它是不可持续的。
因此，不仅美国帝国不可持续，而且整个债务的上层建筑、垄断的上层建筑、私有化的上层建筑，以及撒切尔主义和里根主义式的世界经济金融体系，都是不可持续的。所以我们正在应对一场真正的经济体系冲突。有些人称之为文明的冲突，但实际上，这是经济体系的冲突。你可以说，这是19世纪初工业资本主义发展前景与金融资本主义灾难性现实之间的矛盾，美国单一地缘政治中心日益以剥削和掠夺的方式为自身利益服务。
格伦·迪森：迈克尔，非常感谢。如果有人想了解更多关于美国帝国经济战略及其崩溃原因的信息，请再次阅读本书简介，并查找迈克尔·赫德森著作《超级帝国主义》的链接。感谢你对这些重要主题的探讨，希望很快能再次见到你。
迈克尔·赫德森：格伦，谢谢你给我机会解释我的哲学。
The Strategic Empire: Debt & the Dollar
https://michael-hudson.com/2025/06/the-strategic-empire-debt-the-dollar/
By Michael June 28, 2025 Interviews de-dollarization Permalink
GLENN DIESEN: Hi everyone and welcome. Today we are joined by Michael Hudson, Professor of Economy, to discuss the strategies for the American Empire. Now when we look at empire, we often tend to look at military capabilities and deployment but, as we know, empires also require an economic foundation. So to explore this, we’re gonna look into one of Professor Michael Hudson’s great books, which is Super Imperialism, the economic strategy of American Empire. So I will put a link to the book in the description. So please make sure to have a look and yeah welcome back to the program.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Thanks for having me, Glenn.
GLENN DIESEN: And yeah, after we address the, we’ll look at the economic strategy for the American Empire it would be interesting to get your take on how some of these economic foundations are, well, less stable now than they were when your first version of this book came out. But I thought a good place to start would be how you see the, well, what you name one of the sections of your book, the birth of the American World Order. What is the foundation for the economic strategy of the American Empire?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the Americans never attempted, apart from the War of 1898, they have not attempted military overt colonialism in the sense that Europe did. It has turned out to be financial colonialism and financial imperialism. And the actual attempt to create an empire as such wasn’t really implemented until 1944 and 1945, when World War II ended. But the roots of all of it were found at the end of World War I, when the settlement of World War I ended up imposing American demands for repayment of the war debts that the United States had lent to Britain, France, and other allies before the United States had entered the war.
Well, when the war ended, the Europeans expected what would be normal practice and what was the practice after the Napoleonic Wars, for instance, that the Allies would forgive the debts to each other because this was all supposed to be part of the war effort, not only supplying armies, but supplying the funds and the money to buy the arms. But the United States said, well, we agree with you. Of course, we will not think of charging you for all the expenses of the war once we entered it on your side against Germany. But before we entered the war, that was something else. We were a neutral party, and we expect you to pay the war debts that you took on. A debt is a debt.
Well, the Allies then turned on Germany and said, well, we don’t want to have to pay the debts to the United States. Quite frankly, we don’t have the money to pay the debts that the United States has calculated that we owed. We’ll make Germany pay reparations. And by 1921-22, when all of this was set up, that essentially became the rule.
So I have to say that Europe was somewhat complicit in this. All of the European countries, including Germany, believed that a debt was a debt. And if that was the official debt, if it was the reparations imposed on Germany to pay for the war by the Allies against it, it was clearly beyond its ability. All of the parties in Germany, even the Social Democrats and the anti-war parties, agreed that the debts had to be repaid.
Well, we know the result. Germany had only one way to pay because it had lost its main, most productive steel industry, its lands, Alsace de Lorraine. It was financially crippled by the Versailles Treaty. And the only way that it could pay the debts was to throw reichsmarks, its currency, onto the foreign exchange market to buy the dollars, what ended up the dollars, to repay its debts to the Allies that the Allies simply passed on to the United States as their payment of the inter-ally debts. Well, the result is that Germany had hyperinflation. The United States didn’t want to enable Germany to earn the money to pay the Allies and to pay it because that would have threatened American industry.
So the United States passed a tariff against importing currencies with depreciating currencies, namely Germany. So Germany was left without any way of paying. What happened was the American investors lent German cities and local states money to borrow. The cities that borrowed their dollars in order to fund their own local budgets turned the dollars over to the Reichsbank. The Reichsbank used these dollars to pay the Allies, and the Allies paid the United States.
So what was established was a circular flow, and it was all based ultimately on the demand for gold. And America’s buildup of international power between World War I and World War II all reflected its increasing power of gold, against which all of the major currencies were convertible. And during, by the time that Germany collapsed into Nazism, there was a massive flight of capital out of Europe to the United States that led to the U.S. gold supply growing even more. So that by the time World War II ended, the United States controlled the great bulk of the world’s monetary gold. And because Europe was devastated, the United States was also in a position to dictate how the international trade and financial system was going to operate upon the return to peace.
And so the United States used its power to create the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, international trade organizations, and bilateral diplomacy, basically to very quickly absorb what had been the British Empire. The United States had kept the sterling afloat by lending sterling the money to balance its international payments and recover after World War II.
The condition was that Britain had to open the sterling area to let India and other countries that had built up their gold and their sterling balances during World War II to be able to spend these balances, not limited to British industry, but to the United States. And so the United States, basically, there were a number of plans to try to, by John Maynard Keynes, to create some assurance that the post-war order wouldn’t be so unbalanced that all the gold and all the power would flow to the United States.
The United States rejected them. And they created the IMF and the World Bank basically to serve U.S. national interests. I don’t know if you want me to go into the details. For instance, the World Bank was supposed to lend other countries money to develop their economies. But first, Europe, and then what are now the Global South countries, were called developing countries at that time.
But the World Bank policy from World War II, ever down to today, was not to provide loans for countries to be self-sufficient in any kinds of commodities that the United States controlled. And the United States balance of payments since World War II was based very largely on food exports as well as control of the oil industry, as we’re seeing today. And so there was no attempt at all by the World Bank to follow the recommendations of its own economists.
The World Bank undertook a series of country studies and every study that it did of Latin America or the Middle East said, well, you have to have land reform. You have to enable farming to do in these countries what the United States did in the United States with its Agricultural Adjustment Act, very strongly organizing government support of farming to support grain to become independent and be able to feed yourself. That was a prime aim of self-sufficiency, historically. The United States and the World Bank basically made loans to finance international trade dependency on the United States, and that was where the International Monetary Fund came in. The monetary fund applied the same self-destructive economic philosophy that the United States and Europe had followed after World War I.
There was a great debate after World War I between John Maynard Keynes in England and the anti-German economists from France and from the United States, saying, Yes, the debts really are not unpayable. Any country can pay any foreign debt volume at all if it depreciates its currency to such a low point that its exports become competitive. And in practice, the IMF philosophy is if countries simply lowered the cost of labor, it had a labor theory of value, as it were, if countries can impose austerity and cut back government budgets not to run a budget deficit to pump money into the economy, then deflation and low wages will enable these countries to pay their foreign debt. That has been the policy of the International Monetary Fund ever since its foundation in 1945.
And that deflationary austerity philosophy has been largely responsible for preventing the Global South countries and Middle Eastern and Asian countries from finance being able to finance themselves at the same time that they have to pay foreign debts to pay the loans that they had to undertake in order to finance their trade deficits with the United States since World War II. And as these trade deficits have grown and grown and grown, countries have scrambled to obtain the dollars. And in effect, that meant the gold to pay the debts that they had to pay, putting the interests of foreign creditors, the United States government above all, but also United States bondholders and banks above their own domestic development.
Well, you can imagine what happened to threaten this dynamic that the United States had put in place to make essentially to make itself the beneficiary of the division of labor and the specialization of production between the United States as the leading industrial nation and other countries as suppliers of raw materials to it and low-wage manufacturers. There was what was called a dual economy structure. One economy for the United States and to a lesser extent Europe, and the other economy of the Global South countries and countries that were not self-sufficient. Well, what ended all of this started in 1950-51 with the Korean War.
Between 1945 and 1950, the United States gold stock had actually increased to 80% of the world’s monetary gold. Now, that meant that the United States owning gold and the insistence that all the currencies of major countries be defined in terms of gold meant that the United States had an overwhelming financial power. In 1950, for the first time, the United States moved into a balance of payments deficit as a result of its military spending connected to the Korean War. And from the 1950s on, right down through the end of the 1970s, the United States moved into balance of payments deficit that was settled by having to pay gold to the countries that were receiving the dollars that the United States was throwing off. And the entire deficit was a result of military spending.
I worked first for the Chase Manhattan Bank as their balance of payments analyst, and then for Arthur Anderson, the accounting firm, analyzing the U.S. balance of payments, showing that the entire deficit was military in character. Well, you can imagine what happened during the Vietnam War of the late 1960s. When I was at Chase, every Friday morning, we would look at the Federal Reserve reporting of what is the U.S. gold stock doing this week. How much gold did America have to send to France when General de Gaulle was receiving the dollars that America was throwing off in what had been French Indochina, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos? These dollars were all sent to France that were cashed in for gold by France.
Well, Germany was also obtaining a lot of dollars that other countries receiving, American military spending, were spending on German industrial exports. So we would watch, week by week by week, the claims on the American gold stock rising. And it was obvious that if America’s Cold War spending continued at the rate it was going then, at some point, it would run out of enough gold that was needed to legally cover the U.S. paper currency. Every dollar prior to 1971, the dollar bills that you had in your pocket had to be backed 25% by the gold supply. And by 1971, President Nixon realized that this was no longer the case.
He closed the gold window and said, we cannot afford to pay the cost of our military spending in Asia and the whole world in gold anymore. There was some panic within the United States government. Well, a year after, almost to the month, a year after the United States went off gold in August 1971, my Super Imperialism was published in, I think, August, September 1972. And it turned out that the largest purchasers, I’m told, were the CIA and the Defense Department, who’d bought it through the Washington bookstores.
And my friends at Drexel Burnham, the investment bankers, came to me and said, look, what are you doing in academia? We’re going to invite you to address our annual meeting. Herman Kahn will be there. He’s going to love your presentation and he’s going to offer you a job. Accept it, leave academia.
So indeed, I explained to them that the ending of America’s payment in gold did not have to mean the end of American power. Just the opposite, that once foreign countries no longer could use their dollars to spend on U.S. gold, they had only one practical choice, given the arrangement of international financial diplomacy at the time. What did they use their dollars for? They bought the safest investment there was, U.S. Treasury securities, Treasury bonds, Treasury bills.
And so what happened was, as the United States spent military spending abroad, it got the recipients, the, turned their dollars over to the central banks for their own local currency. The central banks invested these dollars in U.S. Treasury securities, and that financed not only foreign military spending by the United States, but it financed the budget deficit that within the United States was primarily military in character, the military-industrial complex. And I pointed out that what had happened was that, instead of being a disaster by ending the United States control of the world economy through its gold supply, other countries really had no alternative but to have their own central banks themselves finance U.S. military spending domestically by recycling their dollars. Well, Herman Kahn hired me. I went to work for this Hudson Institute.
He said, you know, why are you hoping that your classes of maybe 50 graduate students at the New School are going to end up, maybe somebody’s going to be a senator or something later. If you join the Hudson Institute, I’ll take you to the White House and introduce you and we’ll get a contract and you’ll become a government advisor in all of this. And it seemed to make sense. And so the Defense Department gave the Hudson Institute an $85,000 grant, much more than I’d gotten as an advance for Super Imperialism, for me to go back and forth to the War College and to walk to the White House and other venues to explain what I just said. That the U.S. dollar standard, which I called the Treasury Bill Standard of international finance, had replaced the gold standard and that essentially locked other countries into the financial support of Americans spending abroad. And that going off gold essentially removed the limit on military spending.
I gave one talk at the White House to Treasury officials with Herman Kahn, and we said, gold is, you can think of it as the peaceful metal, because if other countries have to pay their balance of payments deficits in gold, any country waging war, any country entailing a very major military expenditure abroad and to fight a war, always entails running a big deficit, is going to have to run out of gold and lose its power in a system that’s based on gold.
Well, immediately the Treasury people said, well, we don’t want that. We don’t want because it’s America that is going to war. It’s America that’s spending almost all of the world’s military budget. And we don’t want gold to play a role in any system that the United States cannot control. And we can’t control gold outflows if we have to convert our dollars into gold. So, actually, to deprive other countries of any ability to cash in their dollars into gold means they’ve been co-opted into a financial system.
And it’s at that point that America truly became an empire because the entire world’s financial system and it was therefore its tax system, its fiscal system, its money creation was basically directed by the U.S. Treasury to finance the costs of what America claimed were the needs of its empire in creating its 800 military bases all over the world and then waging the wars that it’s been fighting since the 1970s. And that is until this year, other countries were willing to be part of this system because the facts of geopolitics led them to support U.S. military spending, but also because there wasn’t an alternative.
Well, today, with President Trump’s budget that he and the Republicans have sent to Congress, the American debt, domestic debt has been so great, and it’s foreign debt to foreign central banks and to foreign investors, including private quasi-government funds, such as Saudi Arabia and Norway, have realized that the foreign debt that central banks hold that was supposed to be as good as gold and the safest asset to buy, cannot be paid. There is no way that the United States can or would or is willing to somehow pay the amount of money that other countries hold as loans to the United States, mainly treasury bills, but also U.S. agencies, Fannie Mae, government agencies pay a little bit more than the Treasury, and even corporate securities such as Saudi Arabia holds and Norway holds. There is no way that America is willing to pay these debts, either by exporting because it’s deindustrialized and it’s not running an export service anymore, or by selling off its industry to foreign buyers.
The United States until this year,a has said that if foreign countries could not pay their finances and their balance of payments deficits, they had to do so by privatizing their public utilities, selling off their infrastructure to foreigners, selling off their mineral rights, selling off their land to foreign investors. The United States is not willing to do what it’s insisted that other countries do as the basis of world trade and investment that it’s created. So other countries realize this double standard, that they’re really not getting savings that can be converted into ownership of U.S. industry or agriculture or infrastructure or anything else. They’re just paper dollars.
And so for the first time, you’re having a move to seek an alternative to the U.S. dollars. Well, the only alternative so far that people can agree upon is gold. And when Herman Kahn and I went to the White House in 1973, Herman brought a map of the world. And there was a map of countries that trusted governments. And that was Northern Europe, Europe as a whole, the United States, the English-speaking countries, countries whose populations did not trust governments. Well, you could call them the global majority. Most people didn’t.
Then he had countries that supported gold and commodity money. Well, there were countries like India, Asia, Global South countries. They wanted something secure, not an IOU. The countries that trusted paper money were Northern Europe and the English-speaking countries. So you have this faith in paper money that is “A debt is a debt.” And that was the principle on which America began to accumulate gold after World War I.
But the United States, certainly the current budget that is before Congress, is saying, well, yes, a debt is a debt on the balance sheet. Yes, on the balance sheet, we owe foreign countries more money than there’s any way we can see can be repaid. But that’s it. It’s a debt that will never be repaid.
It’s as if you went to the grocery store and tried to pay in an IOU, and the grocery store would say, well, you run up quite a tab in the last week. You know, you got to pay it. And the customer will say, well, I can’t pay. But you can use this debt to maybe you can give this IOU to the farm that’s giving you the eggs and the dairy or the vegetables that you’re selling. And somehow, if only this IOU could be circulated as a claim on the customer, then it would be, technically, it’s a debt.
Well, a lot of the financial system and the world financial system are now based on that kind of debt that there’s no ability to pay behind it. And that is what has become the key, you could say, to the American empire, because it’s the key to America’s ability to spend abroad and be really the first nation in history that does not have to pay its war debts or other debts that it has run up to foreign countries. That’s the double standard that America has been able to achieve to make it the unique nation, or the indispensable nation. And that is why, right now, other countries are buying gold, and you can see the gold price going up and why they’re trying to realize, well, we can’t spend all of our dollar holdings on gold.
Isn’t there some way we can create an alternative paper currency owed by other countries? Well, you have the BRICS talking about that. And you really can’t have such a currency by other countries because to issue a currency, you need a parliament to say, well, who’s going to get the benefit of this currency? And if you issue the currency, what’s it going to be spent on? Who’s going to spend it?
You’d have to have something like a real Europe deciding who’s going to get the result of Euros that are being created, except the United States created the Eurozone in a way that it really can’t run enough of a deficit to recover from the downturn that it’s now been forced into. So, the world is in a quandary. And that’s what my Super Imperialism is all about. And I’ve tried to update it to the present, but that’s the basic theme.
GLENN DIESEN: Well, I find this to be fascinating that the U.S., initially, the massive power after World War II, was obviously based on America’s position as a credit nation. And obviously, yeah, the military forces, privileged position in the World Bank, IMF, and the U.S. dollar. But it’s quite unique, though, isn’t it, that it became its, as a deficit country, its growing debt became the source for further imperial strength. But nonetheless, this seems to have always been a temporary model. I do remember back in the 90s and early 2000s when you had political leaders in Washington arguing that, well, actually, our debt is a sign of strength.
It shows that the world trusts our economy and trusts our currency. However, this, if it’s not sustainable, at some point you’ll hit a wall. And I looked at the debt clock this morning and it’s almost running into 37 trillion and this rise has only intensified. So at some point you do need alternatives which appear to be emerging.
You also mentioned, you said facts of geopolitics. I guess one of the facts of geopolitics during the Cold War was simply that the main two rivals, be it the Soviets and the Chinese, were Communist states, largely decoupled from this kind of economic statecraft, while the allies of the United States in the capitalist world all had to prioritize, as you said, the facts of geopolitics. That is, you couldn’t really allow too many economic squabbles to go along. So, you know, there were some incentives to prevent rivalry between the capitalist industrial nations as you’ve had prior to World War II.
But where are we heading now, though? Because, again, the debt model seems to have exhausted itself and the facts of geopolitics have changed. Now you have the key rivals, be it China, Russia, and others, who are also embracing economic statecraft. How are the foundations, I guess, of the American empire eroding?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The debt model has not exhausted itself. And Trump has given a number of speeches, and Congress has backed him up, saying any country that is moving to establish an alternative to the dollar, we’re going to hit with special tariffs, up to 500% even. He said, any attempt by countries to shift out of the dollar to the Chinese payment system towards China will be treated as an enemy and we will block their access to the United States market. What he’s, he realizes that America’s power is no longer a creditor country, but its power is precisely because it’s a debtor country.
Keynes made a joke saying that if you owe a thousand dollars to a bank, then you’re in trouble. If you owe a billion dollars to the bank, the bank’s in trouble. And that’s the United States’ strength. It owes so much money to other countries that if it doesn’t pay, for instance, if it grabs the Russian savings that were held in the United States and in Brussels, it’ll confiscate it, then the savings, poof, disappear. The debt is basically annulled.
The United States is unwilling to annul Global South debt that can’t be paid, but it has any attempt by countries to break away from the United States dollar and the dollarization is treated as an act of war. Now, that was explained to me by the Treasury Secretary, already in 1974 and 75, with the oil war when Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries quadrupled the price of oil in response to the United States quadrupling the price of grain. And the United States told them that if they could charge whatever price of oil they wanted to, that was fine with the United States because the United States controlled much of the world’s oil industry, including domestic oil production. And the United States oil companies had a price umbrella as the price of oil went.
However, the condition for letting OPEC countries raise the price of oil was that all of their export earnings would be recycled into the United States. It didn’t have to be only in treasury securities. It could be in stocks and bonds, but only a minority ownership. So the Saudi kings bought, I think, a billion dollars of every stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. They spread their savings over the U.S. bond and stock market in a way that did not involve any ability to control the companies whose stocks they owned, in contrast to most stockholders who try to have some voice in the company’s management. So that’s the situation we have today.
Imagine what’s happening in the Near East now when Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Republics all own and have huge holdings of U.S. securities. They’ve seen the United States grab Russia’s savings. They’ve seen the United States through England confiscate Venezuela’s oil gold holdings and the Bank of England. And the whole process began with the Iranian Khomeini, the Iranian revolution against the Shah, when Iran tried to pay the interest due on its foreign debt and Chase Manhattan refused to make the payment.
Iran was counted as default and immediately foreclosed upon. The rest of the Near Eastern countries that are major holders of American debt are locked in to, they’re fearful of acting in any way that would oppose the current fight U.S. buildup against Iran because anything they do, whether it’s to support the Palestinians or to support Iran or anything that is at odds with U.S. diplomacy in the Near East, would result in the United States holding all of their savings in its own pocket under their control, able to freeze them or confiscate them at will. That’s the power that America has as a debtor over other countries and that’s why Trump has said, any attempt to de-dollarize is an act of war today just as they were told 50 years ago in countries were told way back in 1974, 75.
GLEN DIESEN: Well, there’s also an old truth though that is any system which becomes too dependent on coercion will eventually begin to, I guess, degrade over time and there’s, well, the whole thing that the whole world, that America owes money to the whole world so America sits on their piggy bank or their savings and can’t take it whenever they want. It’s it seems as if it only works to such an extent and I can appreciate the theft of Venezuelan gold and all of this. But it looked as looked as if the stealing of the Russian sovereign funds was really one step too far because when there’s no trust anymore in the system, it can’t really work.
And we see not just the opponents such as China being worried because they know they’re never going to get all their money back but also countries like India are concerned about secondary sanctions and other American allies.
So, how long can this, I guess, a new changing character of the American empire continue?
Because, well, from my perspective, one of the key things driving China these days is exactly the search for alternatives because they are preparing themselves for an almost never-ending trade war with the United States, and they can’t really outsource everything from their financial stability to the goodwill of the United States. So, surely the rest of the world is looking for alternatives to escape U.S. financial control.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you’ve summarized the dilemma perfectly. Trust is gone, but so far there’s no alternative. So, the answer to your question is to how long this system can last until there’s an alternative. And that’s why the United States’ foreign policy, now, to maintain what you could call its financial empire and control of world trade and investment is based on preventing any alternative that might come, be developed.
Obviously, the countries running the strongest balance of payments and trade surpluses are the logical sponsors of such an alternative, China, oil-producing countries. This is why the United States has designated China, and any country that looks powerful enough to create an alternative is viewed as an enemy. And the U.S. tries to prevent and preempt their creating an alternative form of international monetary savings by imposing sanctions on them, which are counterproductive, but it’s the United States strategy, or trying to organize European diplomacy and diplomacy of its proxies and satellites to somehow delay this development that, as you point out, it’s inevitable.
Yes, someday the United States cannot get a free lunch anymore. And the first step in preventing a free lunch is for other countries to recognize that there is a free lunch and that they’re essentially giving up money that loses their control over it and actually funds the United States willing to take aggressive actions against them if they do anything to try to ensure real value for their money. Well, the question is, how long can the U.S. ability to control German politicians, European politicians, Asian politicians, especially OPEC country politicians, how long can it actually threaten them to live in the short run?
In the long run, they realize the U.S. cannot do it. But living in the short run, they can do tactics. The problem is that the tactics that they’re using are so heavy-handed that they’re the opposite of strategy. The more they go to tactics of enforcing and threatening and bullying other countries, the more they’re destroying the strategy of actually making the United States a sufficiently viable economy to promise to actually have something to repay other countries with.
I think the U.S. plan is what the Trump administration hoped for; it is that America can create an internet monopoly, a computer monopoly, an artificial intelligence monopoly, a chipmaking monopoly, and somehow use its monopoly earnings to reverse the balance of payments deficit and reestablish world power. That’s a pipe dream because, in order to achieve technological dominance, you need research and development. And because the financial sector and corporations, the private corporations that are supposed to be developing this technological lead, live in the short run, they’re using most of their income for Apple and the other countries and buying off their own stocks and paying out as dividends to support their stock prices. So, the way in which the American economy is being financialized is actually undercutting its ability to maintain its financial power over the world because it’s resulted in deindustrializing the United States economy, which makes other countries feel even more queasy about what’s happening to their savings invested here and what on earth can they do?
So, what you’ve seen in the last two weeks, last month, is something very surprising. The United States’ interest rates have been going up and up, but the dollar has been going down. This is the first time in history that when a country has raised its interest rates, like the United States, it actually loses. There’s an outflow of currency instead of attracting other countries to the world. Arbitrage, as European and Asian countries say, well, we can make a higher interest rate by borrowing cheap in our countries and buying these high-yielding Treasuries, 10-year Treasury securities at 4.5% interest.
Well, all of a sudden, it doesn’t work anymore. And that is what is panicking the Treasury and people who are actually trying to figure out how are we going to pay. The United States is turning into the condition that England was in after World War II of limping along and being unable to survive. The difference is that there, right now, is no alternative that European and Near Eastern countries are willing to accept as long as they refuse to accept China and Asia and Russia as an alternative. That’s exactly what is underlying the war, of America’s insistence of the new Cold War, saying that China is our existential enemy. We are going to try to drain Russia’s economy by the war in Ukraine.
We’re doing everything we can to disrupt the ability to other countries to be an attractive alternative to the dollar. This attempt to maintain dollarization and prevent de-dollarization and therefore ending the Treasury Bill standard in a way that America cannot benefit either from the Treasury Bill standard or a gold standard. This is the key to understanding not only American diplomacy, but the American military action against Iran today is part of its attempt to control the entire Near East, partly using Israel as its proxy and ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq as its proxies. This is the key to why you have such a seemingly bizarre international military situation.
How on earth would it can, people are saying, how is Iran a threat to the United States? Well, it’s a threat to the United States because it exists, and the United States does not control it as the key to controlling the overall Near East and all of the balance of trade surplus that Near Eastern oil draws in from the rest of the world. That’s what makes the United States think of Iran, the war in Iran, and the destruction of Iran as being in the United States’ interest. It’s the role of Iran as the last potential alternative in the Near East to U.S. control of making the Near East a client economy, like it has made Latin American economies clients for so many years.
GLENN DIESEN: But this is the only path out of the current dilemma that is either establish some important tech monopolies in this new industrial revolution or establish, I guess, quasi-colonies around the world. I mean, it just appears that all of these initiatives, even if one is optimistic, amounts to just kicking the can down the road. What are possible pathways? I mean, if you wrote a sequel to your book now on super imperialism, where could the United States go from here if you want something more sustainable?
Because it appears that the tech leadership is not going to monopolize anything with the presence of China and it’s also these colonies. Obviously, it’s not going to be able to make a colony out of Iran either, it seems. So, what exactly are we looking at? Well, if you had a, not an attractive option for an academic, but if you had a chapter of future speculation where we’re heading, what would you see?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The only way that the United States can remain a solvent economy is to give up the attempt to run the world with an empire. Empires do not pay. That’s the lesson of history. Empires cost a lot of money, and in the end, the imperial power goes broke, just as Britain went broke with its empire, ending up turning its monetary power over to the United States. The French Empire went under. Empires don’t pay.
So the only way the United States can exist is re-industrializing. That means definancializing its economy. You point out that we’re living in the short run. How do we move to the long run? The financial sector lives in the short run. As long as the United States economy has shifted its central planning away from government to Wall Street and to the other financial centers, these financial centers have a timeframe of three months to a year.
They’re looking at what is the stock price doing for this quarter, because that’s what the bonuses of the chief financial officer and the CEOs are based on: their stock price. So you’re having an economic mentality in the United States that is essentially the neoliberal mentality of living in the short run, making money financially instead of in a productive industrial, agricultural, and commercial way. So the United States would have to be just another country, like all other countries. It would have to be an equal.
There would have to be parity between the United States and other countries, all following the same set of rules. That is anathema to Congress. There’s still a nationalism and a populist nationalism here that says we don’t want to be another country. We don’t want to have to live by the rules that other countries live by. We want to continue to be able to dominate other countries because we worry that if other countries have the ability to become independent diplomatically, they may do something that we don’t like.
Well, as long as you have this mentality, you’re going to end up setting yourself against the rest of the world. You’re going to lose your ability to trade and make your economy an investment magnet for other countries. There’s no way that other countries can invest in the United States with the hope of making money from American corporate growth because the growth that’s occurring is only financial in character. Stocks and bonds, real estate prices, asset price inflation financed by debt, creating more and more debt to bid up the price of real estate, bid up the price of bonds, and bid up the price of stocks. That’s what the zero interest rate policy was all about after 2008.
The United States has been transformed from an industrial capitalist economy into a finance capitalist economy that actually is not old-fashioned capitalism at all, but is purely financial. You could say it’s closer to a neo-feudal economy than to the kind of industrial economy that Britain, Germany, and the United States were becoming after World War, at the end of the 19th century, up to World War I, the kind of economy that gave them all of their world power in the first place. That kind of industrial, productive, non-financial power no longer exists in the West. So the problem’s not only the United States, it’s the neoliberal economic philosophy that has spread from the United States, Western Europe, and America’s major allies. So the real conflict between the United States and let’s say China, Asia, and the Global South is not simply a conflict over how they’re going to hold and save their balance of payment surpluses; it’s a conflict of economic systems.
Are other countries going to create an economic system that is not military in character, that does not base itself on making financial wealth, but makes itself by creating public infrastructure, such as China does, base itself on actual industrial growth, not rent-seeking. And that’s sort of been left out of the economic models that are made. America’s turned into a rentier economy, not an industrial economy. It makes money financially. It makes money for interest rates. It makes money by creating monopolies, such as in the tech sector.
But none of these are based on the actual cost of production and cost. It’s all based on special privileges and special distortions of the market away from everything that Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and even Marx talked about. What you have today is a form of capitalism that none of the classical economists or Marx anticipated. They all thought countries are going to act in their self-interest. And if you’re forecasting what is going to happen to the United States and what the alternative is for Europe, and you think, well, they’ll act in their self-interest, you have to deal with the fact that countries are, none of these countries are acting in their own self-interest.
They’re acting in an economic model, a neoliberal model, a military model, a diplomatic institutional model that turns out not to be in their self-interest, but is self-destructive. So all I can do is explain why it’s self-destructive. And I think that the natural tendency, as I think you’ve hinted at, is for other countries to follow the creation of real wealth, not financial wealth. And there’s a reason why China has been growing so rapidly with its real GDP and Russia with its GDP. China’s GDP and Russia’s GDP does not include an increase in rents, an increase in interest and financial penalties, and capital gains. It’s not financial in character. It’s real in character.
The fight is between living in unreality in the short run or reality in the long term. How are you going to bring that about? For me, all I can do is say what I’ve just said to you today. If people understand this, at least that’s step one in trying to accept the alternative that the empire is, any country dominating another country is over. China would not be able to do it. No country is able to be an empire at the rest of the world’s expense without the rest of the world pulling back and trying to create an alternative.
GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, the lack of rationality these days is one of my main concerns because you do see foreign policy and economic policy being less and less dictated by national interest and reason. But this was the need to adjust is one of the reasons I was a bit optimistic about Trump’s presidency, because at least he talked about reindustrialization. At least he talked about the need for the US to have a different role. He challenged NATO expansionism, which was a key manifestation of this hegemonic system.
It looked as if he kind of, if he didn’t put words on it, more or less intuitively recognized that, you would have to let go of the empire in order to save the republic. So he, it looked as if he was, but, of course, he made a mess out of everything. And of course, this attack on Iran now makes it even more so. But yeah, well, before we wrap this up, what do you think is, not the long term, is going to happen now in the short term? You mentioned that the United States attempts to raise interest rates to attract capital, but instead you have capital flight. So how, what do you expect, if not over the months to come, the weeks to come?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Other countries are running for the exit and Trump’s policies are driving them to the exit. His tariff policy essentially threatens to deny them the U.S. market if they don’t agree to stop trading with China, to refuse to de-dollarize, and essentially to surrender their economies to U.S. directions. They’re not going to do it. And the response by other countries is going to say, well, we’re not going to accept your terms.
If you’re going to raise the tariffs to 40%, 60%, do it. Of course, we will. What you’re doing is stopping us from trading with the United States. We’ll have tariffs against you, and you go your way. We’re going ours. So Trump himself is, if there were any plans of any plans, how do I break up the American empire? I would do just exactly what Donald Trump is doing. You drive other countries away and you prod them to say, you think there’s no alternative? I’m going to be so aggressive towards you, just as I’m aggressive towards Russia, towards China, towards Iran and the Middle East. I’m closing the U.S. market to you.
Trump has said that if you try to move your, to buy U.S. Treasury bonds yielding 4.5%, I’m going to charge a fee and a tariff fee on your buying bonds of 10%. So you’ll actually lose money on the bonds. And even if the United States does pay 4.5%, the dollar will be falling against the Euro. It’s fallen 10% against the Euro already. The Euro was up to 120 before. Now it’s back near parity.
Other countries are losing in their own currency the valuation of the dollars they have. So Trump is speeding up the parting guest. He’s closing off the U.S. market to them. And that means go it alone, folks. Make your own agreement. And certainly there will be, despite the fact that the politicians of America’s client countries, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, Britain, are all basically voting against what their own populations vote for, just as American Congress in wanting to press for war in Iran is voting against what the opinion polls sold the Americans for.
This cannot last. It has to be temporary or there’ll be a revolution. And you have to remember that industrial capitalism itself in the 19th century was revolutionary. In order for British industry to become competitive, the industrialists had to end the power of the most powerful vested interests of their day, the real estate interests. They had to overcome the power of the House of Lords. They had to change the whole political system. They had to widen the vote to democratize politics. That was a revolution.
This is the kind of revolution that is recurring today in the global majority countries. Industry in Europe had to throw off the remnants of feudalism. The landlord class, the monopolies that had been created by international bankers to help kings pay the war debts that they ran up. Well, today, these were all rentier interests, land rent, monopoly rent, and interest. This is the problem that the Global South and global majorities are fighting. It’s like the equivalent of what were the feudal interests that Europe overthrew to industrialize and become capitalist countries, are today, foreign interests.
Foreign investors own their raw material rents, their natural resource rent, their land rent. Foreign investors own their major monopolies. And now that they’ve privatized public infrastructure into monopolies, like Thames Water in England, and run these countries into foreign dollar debt so that they own interest. The fight by other countries today to gain control of their own destiny, their own autonomy, their own sovereignty is very similar to the fight that Europe had against its own domestic interests that were carried over from feudalism. The world today, the rest of the world outside of the United States, has to cope with the fact that we don’t have feudalism anymore, but what we have is a superstructure of rentier interests that are not part of the production economy.
We’re back in the position of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and Marx saying, they’re two parts of the economy. There’s a production economy, and then there’s the rentier economy, the circulation economy, finance, industry, real estate, and monopolies. There has to be a way of thinking about, what is gross national product? What is a product? Is a product really all the money that the financial sector and the real estate sector makes in rents, or is it what we actually produce, like what China is producing without a rentier class?
The fight of de-dollarization is really involves getting rid of the rentier class that these countries have, and also they cannot afford to pay the foreign debt that they’ve run up. Trump’s tariffs prevent other countries from earning enough export returns to earn the dollars to pay the bondholders and banks that have debts owed in U.S. dollars. So they’re going to be huge defaults that turn into a very conscious and deliberate debt repudiation of what are odious debts, because all these debts that have been run up since 1945 as a result of a U.S.-sponsored philosophy of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on essentially predatory pro-U.S. lines have ended up not helping other countries pay, but preventing them from paying. And if a creditor country will not let a debtor country pay by exporting enough in competition with its own industry, then there’s no economic or moral claim that this foreign debt is a viable debt. It’s unviable.
So not only is the American empire unviable, but the whole superstructure of debt, the superstructure of monopolies, the superstructure of privatization and financial Thatcherizing and Reaganizing the world economy are unviable. So we’re dealing with a real clash of economic systems. Some people call this a clash of civilizations, but it’s really a clash of economic systems. And you could say it’s between the promise of industrial capitalism as it was developing in the beginning in the 19th century and the disastrous reality of finance capitalism with a single geopolitical center in the United States run increasingly in its own interest in exploitative, predatory fashion.
GLENN DIESEN: Well, Michael, thank you so much. And for anyone who wants to know more on the economic strategy for the American Empire and also why this is collapsing, again, go to the description and look for the link to Michael Hudson’s book, Super Imperialism. So thank you for going through these important topics and I hope to have you back on soon.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, thank you for giving me a chance to explain my philosophy, Glenn.
Transcription and Diarization: hudsearch
Editing and Review: Chris Platania-Phung
Photo by Brandon Griggs on Unsplash
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MICHAEL HUDSON: Thanks for having me, Glenn.
GLENN DIESEN: And yeah, after we address the, we’ll look at the economic strategy for the American Empire it would be interesting to get your take on how some of these economic foundations are, well, less stable now than they were when your first version of this book came out. But I thought a good place to start would be how you see the, well, what you name one of the sections of your book, the birth of the American World Order. What is the foundation for the economic strategy of the American Empire?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the Americans never attempted, apart from the War of 1898, they have not attempted military overt colonialism in the sense that Europe did. It has turned out to be financial colonialism and financial imperialism. And the actual attempt to create an empire as such wasn’t really implemented until 1944 and 1945, when World War II ended. But the roots of all of it were found at the end of World War I, when the settlement of World War I ended up imposing American demands for repayment of the war debts that the United States had lent to Britain, France, and other allies before the United States had entered the war.
Well, when the war ended, the Europeans expected what would be normal practice and what was the practice after the Napoleonic Wars, for instance, that the Allies would forgive the debts to each other because this was all supposed to be part of the war effort, not only supplying armies, but supplying the funds and the money to buy the arms. But the United States said, well, we agree with you. Of course, we will not think of charging you for all the expenses of the war once we entered it on your side against Germany. But before we entered the war, that was something else. We were a neutral party, and we expect you to pay the war debts that you took on. A debt is a debt.
Well, the Allies then turned on Germany and said, well, we don’t want to have to pay the debts to the United States. Quite frankly, we don’t have the money to pay the debts that the United States has calculated that we owed. We’ll make Germany pay reparations. And by 1921-22, when all of this was set up, that essentially became the rule.
So I have to say that Europe was somewhat complicit in this. All of the European countries, including Germany, believed that a debt was a debt. And if that was the official debt, if it was the reparations imposed on Germany to pay for the war by the Allies against it, it was clearly beyond its ability. All of the parties in Germany, even the Social Democrats and the anti-war parties, agreed that the debts had to be repaid.
Well, we know the result. Germany had only one way to pay because it had lost its main, most productive steel industry, its lands, Alsace de Lorraine. It was financially crippled by the Versailles Treaty. And the only way that it could pay the debts was to throw reichsmarks, its currency, onto the foreign exchange market to buy the dollars, what ended up the dollars, to repay its debts to the Allies that the Allies simply passed on to the United States as their payment of the inter-ally debts. Well, the result is that Germany had hyperinflation. The United States didn’t want to enable Germany to earn the money to pay the Allies and to pay it because that would have threatened American industry.
So the United States passed a tariff against importing currencies with depreciating currencies, namely Germany. So Germany was left without any way of paying. What happened was the American investors lent German cities and local states money to borrow. The cities that borrowed their dollars in order to fund their own local budgets turned the dollars over to the Reichsbank. The Reichsbank used these dollars to pay the Allies, and the Allies paid the United States.
So what was established was a circular flow, and it was all based ultimately on the demand for gold. And America’s buildup of international power between World War I and World War II all reflected its increasing power of gold, against which all of the major currencies were convertible. And during, by the time that Germany collapsed into Nazism, there was a massive flight of capital out of Europe to the United States that led to the U.S. gold supply growing even more. So that by the time World War II ended, the United States controlled the great bulk of the world’s monetary gold. And because Europe was devastated, the United States was also in a position to dictate how the international trade and financial system was going to operate upon the return to peace.
And so the United States used its power to create the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, international trade organizations, and bilateral diplomacy, basically to very quickly absorb what had been the British Empire. The United States had kept the sterling afloat by lending sterling the money to balance its international payments and recover after World War II.
The condition was that Britain had to open the sterling area to let India and other countries that had built up their gold and their sterling balances during World War II to be able to spend these balances, not limited to British industry, but to the United States. And so the United States, basically, there were a number of plans to try to, by John Maynard Keynes, to create some assurance that the post-war order wouldn’t be so unbalanced that all the gold and all the power would flow to the United States.
The United States rejected them. And they created the IMF and the World Bank basically to serve U.S. national interests. I don’t know if you want me to go into the details. For instance, the World Bank was supposed to lend other countries money to develop their economies. But first, Europe, and then what are now the Global South countries, were called developing countries at that time.
But the World Bank policy from World War II, ever down to today, was not to provide loans for countries to be self-sufficient in any kinds of commodities that the United States controlled. And the United States balance of payments since World War II was based very largely on food exports as well as control of the oil industry, as we’re seeing today. And so there was no attempt at all by the World Bank to follow the recommendations of its own economists.
The World Bank undertook a series of country studies and every study that it did of Latin America or the Middle East said, well, you have to have land reform. You have to enable farming to do in these countries what the United States did in the United States with its Agricultural Adjustment Act, very strongly organizing government support of farming to support grain to become independent and be able to feed yourself. That was a prime aim of self-sufficiency, historically. The United States and the World Bank basically made loans to finance international trade dependency on the United States, and that was where the International Monetary Fund came in. The monetary fund applied the same self-destructive economic philosophy that the United States and Europe had followed after World War I.
There was a great debate after World War I between John Maynard Keynes in England and the anti-German economists from France and from the United States, saying, Yes, the debts really are not unpayable. Any country can pay any foreign debt volume at all if it depreciates its currency to such a low point that its exports become competitive. And in practice, the IMF philosophy is if countries simply lowered the cost of labor, it had a labor theory of value, as it were, if countries can impose austerity and cut back government budgets not to run a budget deficit to pump money into the economy, then deflation and low wages will enable these countries to pay their foreign debt. That has been the policy of the International Monetary Fund ever since its foundation in 1945.
And that deflationary austerity philosophy has been largely responsible for preventing the Global South countries and Middle Eastern and Asian countries from finance being able to finance themselves at the same time that they have to pay foreign debts to pay the loans that they had to undertake in order to finance their trade deficits with the United States since World War II. And as these trade deficits have grown and grown and grown, countries have scrambled to obtain the dollars. And in effect, that meant the gold to pay the debts that they had to pay, putting the interests of foreign creditors, the United States government above all, but also United States bondholders and banks above their own domestic development.
Well, you can imagine what happened to threaten this dynamic that the United States had put in place to make essentially to make itself the beneficiary of the division of labor and the specialization of production between the United States as the leading industrial nation and other countries as suppliers of raw materials to it and low-wage manufacturers. There was what was called a dual economy structure. One economy for the United States and to a lesser extent Europe, and the other economy of the Global South countries and countries that were not self-sufficient. Well, what ended all of this started in 1950-51 with the Korean War.
Between 1945 and 1950, the United States gold stock had actually increased to 80% of the world’s monetary gold. Now, that meant that the United States owning gold and the insistence that all the currencies of major countries be defined in terms of gold meant that the United States had an overwhelming financial power. In 1950, for the first time, the United States moved into a balance of payments deficit as a result of its military spending connected to the Korean War. And from the 1950s on, right down through the end of the 1970s, the United States moved into balance of payments deficit that was settled by having to pay gold to the countries that were receiving the dollars that the United States was throwing off. And the entire deficit was a result of military spending.
I worked first for the Chase Manhattan Bank as their balance of payments analyst, and then for Arthur Anderson, the accounting firm, analyzing the U.S. balance of payments, showing that the entire deficit was military in character. Well, you can imagine what happened during the Vietnam War of the late 1960s. When I was at Chase, every Friday morning, we would look at the Federal Reserve reporting of what is the U.S. gold stock doing this week. How much gold did America have to send to France when General de Gaulle was receiving the dollars that America was throwing off in what had been French Indochina, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos? These dollars were all sent to France that were cashed in for gold by France.
Well, Germany was also obtaining a lot of dollars that other countries receiving, American military spending, were spending on German industrial exports. So we would watch, week by week by week, the claims on the American gold stock rising. And it was obvious that if America’s Cold War spending continued at the rate it was going then, at some point, it would run out of enough gold that was needed to legally cover the U.S. paper currency. Every dollar prior to 1971, the dollar bills that you had in your pocket had to be backed 25% by the gold supply. And by 1971, President Nixon realized that this was no longer the case.
He closed the gold window and said, we cannot afford to pay the cost of our military spending in Asia and the whole world in gold anymore. There was some panic within the United States government. Well, a year after, almost to the month, a year after the United States went off gold in August 1971, my Super Imperialism was published in, I think, August, September 1972. And it turned out that the largest purchasers, I’m told, were the CIA and the Defense Department, who’d bought it through the Washington bookstores.
And my friends at Drexel Burnham, the investment bankers, came to me and said, look, what are you doing in academia? We’re going to invite you to address our annual meeting. Herman Kahn will be there. He’s going to love your presentation and he’s going to offer you a job. Accept it, leave academia.
So indeed, I explained to them that the ending of America’s payment in gold did not have to mean the end of American power. Just the opposite, that once foreign countries no longer could use their dollars to spend on U.S. gold, they had only one practical choice, given the arrangement of international financial diplomacy at the time. What did they use their dollars for? They bought the safest investment there was, U.S. Treasury securities, Treasury bonds, Treasury bills.
And so what happened was, as the United States spent military spending abroad, it got the recipients, the, turned their dollars over to the central banks for their own local currency. The central banks invested these dollars in U.S. Treasury securities, and that financed not only foreign military spending by the United States, but it financed the budget deficit that within the United States was primarily military in character, the military-industrial complex. And I pointed out that what had happened was that, instead of being a disaster by ending the United States control of the world economy through its gold supply, other countries really had no alternative but to have their own central banks themselves finance U.S. military spending domestically by recycling their dollars. Well, Herman Kahn hired me. I went to work for this Hudson Institute.
He said, you know, why are you hoping that your classes of maybe 50 graduate students at the New School are going to end up, maybe somebody’s going to be a senator or something later. If you join the Hudson Institute, I’ll take you to the White House and introduce you and we’ll get a contract and you’ll become a government advisor in all of this. And it seemed to make sense. And so the Defense Department gave the Hudson Institute an $85,000 grant, much more than I’d gotten as an advance for Super Imperialism, for me to go back and forth to the War College and to walk to the White House and other venues to explain what I just said. That the U.S. dollar standard, which I called the Treasury Bill Standard of international finance, had replaced the gold standard and that essentially locked other countries into the financial support of Americans spending abroad. And that going off gold essentially removed the limit on military spending.
I gave one talk at the White House to Treasury officials with Herman Kahn, and we said, gold is, you can think of it as the peaceful metal, because if other countries have to pay their balance of payments deficits in gold, any country waging war, any country entailing a very major military expenditure abroad and to fight a war, always entails running a big deficit, is going to have to run out of gold and lose its power in a system that’s based on gold.
Well, immediately the Treasury people said, well, we don’t want that. We don’t want because it’s America that is going to war. It’s America that’s spending almost all of the world’s military budget. And we don’t want gold to play a role in any system that the United States cannot control. And we can’t control gold outflows if we have to convert our dollars into gold. So, actually, to deprive other countries of any ability to cash in their dollars into gold means they’ve been co-opted into a financial system.
And it’s at that point that America truly became an empire because the entire world’s financial system and it was therefore its tax system, its fiscal system, its money creation was basically directed by the U.S. Treasury to finance the costs of what America claimed were the needs of its empire in creating its 800 military bases all over the world and then waging the wars that it’s been fighting since the 1970s. And that is until this year, other countries were willing to be part of this system because the facts of geopolitics led them to support U.S. military spending, but also because there wasn’t an alternative.
Well, today, with President Trump’s budget that he and the Republicans have sent to Congress, the American debt, domestic debt has been so great, and it’s foreign debt to foreign central banks and to foreign investors, including private quasi-government funds, such as Saudi Arabia and Norway, have realized that the foreign debt that central banks hold that was supposed to be as good as gold and the safest asset to buy, cannot be paid. There is no way that the United States can or would or is willing to somehow pay the amount of money that other countries hold as loans to the United States, mainly treasury bills, but also U.S. agencies, Fannie Mae, government agencies pay a little bit more than the Treasury, and even corporate securities such as Saudi Arabia holds and Norway holds. There is no way that America is willing to pay these debts, either by exporting because it’s deindustrialized and it’s not running an export service anymore, or by selling off its industry to foreign buyers.
The United States until this year,a has said that if foreign countries could not pay their finances and their balance of payments deficits, they had to do so by privatizing their public utilities, selling off their infrastructure to foreigners, selling off their mineral rights, selling off their land to foreign investors. The United States is not willing to do what it’s insisted that other countries do as the basis of world trade and investment that it’s created. So other countries realize this double standard, that they’re really not getting savings that can be converted into ownership of U.S. industry or agriculture or infrastructure or anything else. They’re just paper dollars.
And so for the first time, you’re having a move to seek an alternative to the U.S. dollars. Well, the only alternative so far that people can agree upon is gold. And when Herman Kahn and I went to the White House in 1973, Herman brought a map of the world. And there was a map of countries that trusted governments. And that was Northern Europe, Europe as a whole, the United States, the English-speaking countries, countries whose populations did not trust governments. Well, you could call them the global majority. Most people didn’t.
Then he had countries that supported gold and commodity money. Well, there were countries like India, Asia, Global South countries. They wanted something secure, not an IOU. The countries that trusted paper money were Northern Europe and the English-speaking countries. So you have this faith in paper money that is “A debt is a debt.” And that was the principle on which America began to accumulate gold after World War I.
But the United States, certainly the current budget that is before Congress, is saying, well, yes, a debt is a debt on the balance sheet. Yes, on the balance sheet, we owe foreign countries more money than there’s any way we can see can be repaid. But that’s it. It’s a debt that will never be repaid.
It’s as if you went to the grocery store and tried to pay in an IOU, and the grocery store would say, well, you run up quite a tab in the last week. You know, you got to pay it. And the customer will say, well, I can’t pay. But you can use this debt to maybe you can give this IOU to the farm that’s giving you the eggs and the dairy or the vegetables that you’re selling. And somehow, if only this IOU could be circulated as a claim on the customer, then it would be, technically, it’s a debt.
Well, a lot of the financial system and the world financial system are now based on that kind of debt that there’s no ability to pay behind it. And that is what has become the key, you could say, to the American empire, because it’s the key to America’s ability to spend abroad and be really the first nation in history that does not have to pay its war debts or other debts that it has run up to foreign countries. That’s the double standard that America has been able to achieve to make it the unique nation, or the indispensable nation. And that is why, right now, other countries are buying gold, and you can see the gold price going up and why they’re trying to realize, well, we can’t spend all of our dollar holdings on gold.
Isn’t there some way we can create an alternative paper currency owed by other countries? Well, you have the BRICS talking about that. And you really can’t have such a currency by other countries because to issue a currency, you need a parliament to say, well, who’s going to get the benefit of this currency? And if you issue the currency, what’s it going to be spent on? Who’s going to spend it?
You’d have to have something like a real Europe deciding who’s going to get the result of Euros that are being created, except the United States created the Eurozone in a way that it really can’t run enough of a deficit to recover from the downturn that it’s now been forced into. So, the world is in a quandary. And that’s what my Super Imperialism is all about. And I’ve tried to update it to the present, but that’s the basic theme.
GLENN DIESEN: Well, I find this to be fascinating that the U.S., initially, the massive power after World War II, was obviously based on America’s position as a credit nation. And obviously, yeah, the military forces, privileged position in the World Bank, IMF, and the U.S. dollar. But it’s quite unique, though, isn’t it, that it became its, as a deficit country, its growing debt became the source for further imperial strength. But nonetheless, this seems to have always been a temporary model. I do remember back in the 90s and early 2000s when you had political leaders in Washington arguing that, well, actually, our debt is a sign of strength.
It shows that the world trusts our economy and trusts our currency. However, this, if it’s not sustainable, at some point you’ll hit a wall. And I looked at the debt clock this morning and it’s almost running into 37 trillion and this rise has only intensified. So at some point you do need alternatives which appear to be emerging.
You also mentioned, you said facts of geopolitics. I guess one of the facts of geopolitics during the Cold War was simply that the main two rivals, be it the Soviets and the Chinese, were Communist states, largely decoupled from this kind of economic statecraft, while the allies of the United States in the capitalist world all had to prioritize, as you said, the facts of geopolitics. That is, you couldn’t really allow too many economic squabbles to go along. So, you know, there were some incentives to prevent rivalry between the capitalist industrial nations as you’ve had prior to World War II.
But where are we heading now, though? Because, again, the debt model seems to have exhausted itself and the facts of geopolitics have changed. Now you have the key rivals, be it China, Russia, and others, who are also embracing economic statecraft. How are the foundations, I guess, of the American empire eroding?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The debt model has not exhausted itself. And Trump has given a number of speeches, and Congress has backed him up, saying any country that is moving to establish an alternative to the dollar, we’re going to hit with special tariffs, up to 500% even. He said, any attempt by countries to shift out of the dollar to the Chinese payment system towards China will be treated as an enemy and we will block their access to the United States market. What he’s, he realizes that America’s power is no longer a creditor country, but its power is precisely because it’s a debtor country.
Keynes made a joke saying that if you owe a thousand dollars to a bank, then you’re in trouble. If you owe a billion dollars to the bank, the bank’s in trouble. And that’s the United States’ strength. It owes so much money to other countries that if it doesn’t pay, for instance, if it grabs the Russian savings that were held in the United States and in Brussels, it’ll confiscate it, then the savings, poof, disappear. The debt is basically annulled.
The United States is unwilling to annul Global South debt that can’t be paid, but it has any attempt by countries to break away from the United States dollar and the dollarization is treated as an act of war. Now, that was explained to me by the Treasury Secretary, already in 1974 and 75, with the oil war when Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries quadrupled the price of oil in response to the United States quadrupling the price of grain. And the United States told them that if they could charge whatever price of oil they wanted to, that was fine with the United States because the United States controlled much of the world’s oil industry, including domestic oil production. And the United States oil companies had a price umbrella as the price of oil went.
However, the condition for letting OPEC countries raise the price of oil was that all of their export earnings would be recycled into the United States. It didn’t have to be only in treasury securities. It could be in stocks and bonds, but only a minority ownership. So the Saudi kings bought, I think, a billion dollars of every stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. They spread their savings over the U.S. bond and stock market in a way that did not involve any ability to control the companies whose stocks they owned, in contrast to most stockholders who try to have some voice in the company’s management. So that’s the situation we have today.
Imagine what’s happening in the Near East now when Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Republics all own and have huge holdings of U.S. securities. They’ve seen the United States grab Russia’s savings. They’ve seen the United States through England confiscate Venezuela’s oil gold holdings and the Bank of England. And the whole process began with the Iranian Khomeini, the Iranian revolution against the Shah, when Iran tried to pay the interest due on its foreign debt and Chase Manhattan refused to make the payment.
Iran was counted as default and immediately foreclosed upon. The rest of the Near Eastern countries that are major holders of American debt are locked in to, they’re fearful of acting in any way that would oppose the current fight U.S. buildup against Iran because anything they do, whether it’s to support the Palestinians or to support Iran or anything that is at odds with U.S. diplomacy in the Near East, would result in the United States holding all of their savings in its own pocket under their control, able to freeze them or confiscate them at will. That’s the power that America has as a debtor over other countries and that’s why Trump has said, any attempt to de-dollarize is an act of war today just as they were told 50 years ago in countries were told way back in 1974, 75.
GLEN DIESEN: Well, there’s also an old truth though that is any system which becomes too dependent on coercion will eventually begin to, I guess, degrade over time and there’s, well, the whole thing that the whole world, that America owes money to the whole world so America sits on their piggy bank or their savings and can’t take it whenever they want. It’s it seems as if it only works to such an extent and I can appreciate the theft of Venezuelan gold and all of this. But it looked as looked as if the stealing of the Russian sovereign funds was really one step too far because when there’s no trust anymore in the system, it can’t really work.
And we see not just the opponents such as China being worried because they know they’re never going to get all their money back but also countries like India are concerned about secondary sanctions and other American allies.
So, how long can this, I guess, a new changing character of the American empire continue?
Because, well, from my perspective, one of the key things driving China these days is exactly the search for alternatives because they are preparing themselves for an almost never-ending trade war with the United States, and they can’t really outsource everything from their financial stability to the goodwill of the United States. So, surely the rest of the world is looking for alternatives to escape U.S. financial control.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you’ve summarized the dilemma perfectly. Trust is gone, but so far there’s no alternative. So, the answer to your question is to how long this system can last until there’s an alternative. And that’s why the United States’ foreign policy, now, to maintain what you could call its financial empire and control of world trade and investment is based on preventing any alternative that might come, be developed.
Obviously, the countries running the strongest balance of payments and trade surpluses are the logical sponsors of such an alternative, China, oil-producing countries. This is why the United States has designated China, and any country that looks powerful enough to create an alternative is viewed as an enemy. And the U.S. tries to prevent and preempt their creating an alternative form of international monetary savings by imposing sanctions on them, which are counterproductive, but it’s the United States strategy, or trying to organize European diplomacy and diplomacy of its proxies and satellites to somehow delay this development that, as you point out, it’s inevitable.
Yes, someday the United States cannot get a free lunch anymore. And the first step in preventing a free lunch is for other countries to recognize that there is a free lunch and that they’re essentially giving up money that loses their control over it and actually funds the United States willing to take aggressive actions against them if they do anything to try to ensure real value for their money. Well, the question is, how long can the U.S. ability to control German politicians, European politicians, Asian politicians, especially OPEC country politicians, how long can it actually threaten them to live in the short run?
In the long run, they realize the U.S. cannot do it. But living in the short run, they can do tactics. The problem is that the tactics that they’re using are so heavy-handed that they’re the opposite of strategy. The more they go to tactics of enforcing and threatening and bullying other countries, the more they’re destroying the strategy of actually making the United States a sufficiently viable economy to promise to actually have something to repay other countries with.
I think the U.S. plan is what the Trump administration hoped for; it is that America can create an internet monopoly, a computer monopoly, an artificial intelligence monopoly, a chipmaking monopoly, and somehow use its monopoly earnings to reverse the balance of payments deficit and reestablish world power. That’s a pipe dream because, in order to achieve technological dominance, you need research and development. And because the financial sector and corporations, the private corporations that are supposed to be developing this technological lead, live in the short run, they’re using most of their income for Apple and the other countries and buying off their own stocks and paying out as dividends to support their stock prices. So, the way in which the American economy is being financialized is actually undercutting its ability to maintain its financial power over the world because it’s resulted in deindustrializing the United States economy, which makes other countries feel even more queasy about what’s happening to their savings invested here and what on earth can they do?
So, what you’ve seen in the last two weeks, last month, is something very surprising. The United States’ interest rates have been going up and up, but the dollar has been going down. This is the first time in history that when a country has raised its interest rates, like the United States, it actually loses. There’s an outflow of currency instead of attracting other countries to the world. Arbitrage, as European and Asian countries say, well, we can make a higher interest rate by borrowing cheap in our countries and buying these high-yielding Treasuries, 10-year Treasury securities at 4.5% interest.
Well, all of a sudden, it doesn’t work anymore. And that is what is panicking the Treasury and people who are actually trying to figure out how are we going to pay. The United States is turning into the condition that England was in after World War II of limping along and being unable to survive. The difference is that there, right now, is no alternative that European and Near Eastern countries are willing to accept as long as they refuse to accept China and Asia and Russia as an alternative. That’s exactly what is underlying the war, of America’s insistence of the new Cold War, saying that China is our existential enemy. We are going to try to drain Russia’s economy by the war in Ukraine.
We’re doing everything we can to disrupt the ability to other countries to be an attractive alternative to the dollar. This attempt to maintain dollarization and prevent de-dollarization and therefore ending the Treasury Bill standard in a way that America cannot benefit either from the Treasury Bill standard or a gold standard. This is the key to understanding not only American diplomacy, but the American military action against Iran today is part of its attempt to control the entire Near East, partly using Israel as its proxy and ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq as its proxies. This is the key to why you have such a seemingly bizarre international military situation.
How on earth would it can, people are saying, how is Iran a threat to the United States? Well, it’s a threat to the United States because it exists, and the United States does not control it as the key to controlling the overall Near East and all of the balance of trade surplus that Near Eastern oil draws in from the rest of the world. That’s what makes the United States think of Iran, the war in Iran, and the destruction of Iran as being in the United States’ interest. It’s the role of Iran as the last potential alternative in the Near East to U.S. control of making the Near East a client economy, like it has made Latin American economies clients for so many years.
GLENN DIESEN: But this is the only path out of the current dilemma that is either establish some important tech monopolies in this new industrial revolution or establish, I guess, quasi-colonies around the world. I mean, it just appears that all of these initiatives, even if one is optimistic, amounts to just kicking the can down the road. What are possible pathways? I mean, if you wrote a sequel to your book now on super imperialism, where could the United States go from here if you want something more sustainable?
Because it appears that the tech leadership is not going to monopolize anything with the presence of China and it’s also these colonies. Obviously, it’s not going to be able to make a colony out of Iran either, it seems. So, what exactly are we looking at? Well, if you had a, not an attractive option for an academic, but if you had a chapter of future speculation where we’re heading, what would you see?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The only way that the United States can remain a solvent economy is to give up the attempt to run the world with an empire. Empires do not pay. That’s the lesson of history. Empires cost a lot of money, and in the end, the imperial power goes broke, just as Britain went broke with its empire, ending up turning its monetary power over to the United States. The French Empire went under. Empires don’t pay.
So the only way the United States can exist is re-industrializing. That means definancializing its economy. You point out that we’re living in the short run. How do we move to the long run? The financial sector lives in the short run. As long as the United States economy has shifted its central planning away from government to Wall Street and to the other financial centers, these financial centers have a timeframe of three months to a year.
They’re looking at what is the stock price doing for this quarter, because that’s what the bonuses of the chief financial officer and the CEOs are based on: their stock price. So you’re having an economic mentality in the United States that is essentially the neoliberal mentality of living in the short run, making money financially instead of in a productive industrial, agricultural, and commercial way. So the United States would have to be just another country, like all other countries. It would have to be an equal.
There would have to be parity between the United States and other countries, all following the same set of rules. That is anathema to Congress. There’s still a nationalism and a populist nationalism here that says we don’t want to be another country. We don’t want to have to live by the rules that other countries live by. We want to continue to be able to dominate other countries because we worry that if other countries have the ability to become independent diplomatically, they may do something that we don’t like.
Well, as long as you have this mentality, you’re going to end up setting yourself against the rest of the world. You’re going to lose your ability to trade and make your economy an investment magnet for other countries. There’s no way that other countries can invest in the United States with the hope of making money from American corporate growth because the growth that’s occurring is only financial in character. Stocks and bonds, real estate prices, asset price inflation financed by debt, creating more and more debt to bid up the price of real estate, bid up the price of bonds, and bid up the price of stocks. That’s what the zero interest rate policy was all about after 2008.
The United States has been transformed from an industrial capitalist economy into a finance capitalist economy that actually is not old-fashioned capitalism at all, but is purely financial. You could say it’s closer to a neo-feudal economy than to the kind of industrial economy that Britain, Germany, and the United States were becoming after World War, at the end of the 19th century, up to World War I, the kind of economy that gave them all of their world power in the first place. That kind of industrial, productive, non-financial power no longer exists in the West. So the problem’s not only the United States, it’s the neoliberal economic philosophy that has spread from the United States, Western Europe, and America’s major allies. So the real conflict between the United States and let’s say China, Asia, and the Global South is not simply a conflict over how they’re going to hold and save their balance of payment surpluses; it’s a conflict of economic systems.
Are other countries going to create an economic system that is not military in character, that does not base itself on making financial wealth, but makes itself by creating public infrastructure, such as China does, base itself on actual industrial growth, not rent-seeking. And that’s sort of been left out of the economic models that are made. America’s turned into a rentier economy, not an industrial economy. It makes money financially. It makes money for interest rates. It makes money by creating monopolies, such as in the tech sector.
But none of these are based on the actual cost of production and cost. It’s all based on special privileges and special distortions of the market away from everything that Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and even Marx talked about. What you have today is a form of capitalism that none of the classical economists or Marx anticipated. They all thought countries are going to act in their self-interest. And if you’re forecasting what is going to happen to the United States and what the alternative is for Europe, and you think, well, they’ll act in their self-interest, you have to deal with the fact that countries are, none of these countries are acting in their own self-interest.
They’re acting in an economic model, a neoliberal model, a military model, a diplomatic institutional model that turns out not to be in their self-interest, but is self-destructive. So all I can do is explain why it’s self-destructive. And I think that the natural tendency, as I think you’ve hinted at, is for other countries to follow the creation of real wealth, not financial wealth. And there’s a reason why China has been growing so rapidly with its real GDP and Russia with its GDP. China’s GDP and Russia’s GDP does not include an increase in rents, an increase in interest and financial penalties, and capital gains. It’s not financial in character. It’s real in character.
The fight is between living in unreality in the short run or reality in the long term. How are you going to bring that about? For me, all I can do is say what I’ve just said to you today. If people understand this, at least that’s step one in trying to accept the alternative that the empire is, any country dominating another country is over. China would not be able to do it. No country is able to be an empire at the rest of the world’s expense without the rest of the world pulling back and trying to create an alternative.
GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, the lack of rationality these days is one of my main concerns because you do see foreign policy and economic policy being less and less dictated by national interest and reason. But this was the need to adjust is one of the reasons I was a bit optimistic about Trump’s presidency, because at least he talked about reindustrialization. At least he talked about the need for the US to have a different role. He challenged NATO expansionism, which was a key manifestation of this hegemonic system.
It looked as if he kind of, if he didn’t put words on it, more or less intuitively recognized that, you would have to let go of the empire in order to save the republic. So he, it looked as if he was, but, of course, he made a mess out of everything. And of course, this attack on Iran now makes it even more so. But yeah, well, before we wrap this up, what do you think is, not the long term, is going to happen now in the short term? You mentioned that the United States attempts to raise interest rates to attract capital, but instead you have capital flight. So how, what do you expect, if not over the months to come, the weeks to come?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Other countries are running for the exit and Trump’s policies are driving them to the exit. His tariff policy essentially threatens to deny them the U.S. market if they don’t agree to stop trading with China, to refuse to de-dollarize, and essentially to surrender their economies to U.S. directions. They’re not going to do it. And the response by other countries is going to say, well, we’re not going to accept your terms.
If you’re going to raise the tariffs to 40%, 60%, do it. Of course, we will. What you’re doing is stopping us from trading with the United States. We’ll have tariffs against you, and you go your way. We’re going ours. So Trump himself is, if there were any plans of any plans, how do I break up the American empire? I would do just exactly what Donald Trump is doing. You drive other countries away and you prod them to say, you think there’s no alternative? I’m going to be so aggressive towards you, just as I’m aggressive towards Russia, towards China, towards Iran and the Middle East. I’m closing the U.S. market to you.
Trump has said that if you try to move your, to buy U.S. Treasury bonds yielding 4.5%, I’m going to charge a fee and a tariff fee on your buying bonds of 10%. So you’ll actually lose money on the bonds. And even if the United States does pay 4.5%, the dollar will be falling against the Euro. It’s fallen 10% against the Euro already. The Euro was up to 120 before. Now it’s back near parity.
Other countries are losing in their own currency the valuation of the dollars they have. So Trump is speeding up the parting guest. He’s closing off the U.S. market to them. And that means go it alone, folks. Make your own agreement. And certainly there will be, despite the fact that the politicians of America’s client countries, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, Britain, are all basically voting against what their own populations vote for, just as American Congress in wanting to press for war in Iran is voting against what the opinion polls sold the Americans for.
This cannot last. It has to be temporary or there’ll be a revolution. And you have to remember that industrial capitalism itself in the 19th century was revolutionary. In order for British industry to become competitive, the industrialists had to end the power of the most powerful vested interests of their day, the real estate interests. They had to overcome the power of the House of Lords. They had to change the whole political system. They had to widen the vote to democratize politics. That was a revolution.
This is the kind of revolution that is recurring today in the global majority countries. Industry in Europe had to throw off the remnants of feudalism. The landlord class, the monopolies that had been created by international bankers to help kings pay the war debts that they ran up. Well, today, these were all rentier interests, land rent, monopoly rent, and interest. This is the problem that the Global South and global majorities are fighting. It’s like the equivalent of what were the feudal interests that Europe overthrew to industrialize and become capitalist countries, are today, foreign interests.
Foreign investors own their raw material rents, their natural resource rent, their land rent. Foreign investors own their major monopolies. And now that they’ve privatized public infrastructure into monopolies, like Thames Water in England, and run these countries into foreign dollar debt so that they own interest. The fight by other countries today to gain control of their own destiny, their own autonomy, their own sovereignty is very similar to the fight that Europe had against its own domestic interests that were carried over from feudalism. The world today, the rest of the world outside of the United States, has to cope with the fact that we don’t have feudalism anymore, but what we have is a superstructure of rentier interests that are not part of the production economy.
We’re back in the position of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and Marx saying, they’re two parts of the economy. There’s a production economy, and then there’s the rentier economy, the circulation economy, finance, industry, real estate, and monopolies. There has to be a way of thinking about, what is gross national product? What is a product? Is a product really all the money that the financial sector and the real estate sector makes in rents, or is it what we actually produce, like what China is producing without a rentier class?
The fight of de-dollarization is really involves getting rid of the rentier class that these countries have, and also they cannot afford to pay the foreign debt that they’ve run up. Trump’s tariffs prevent other countries from earning enough export returns to earn the dollars to pay the bondholders and banks that have debts owed in U.S. dollars. So they’re going to be huge defaults that turn into a very conscious and deliberate debt repudiation of what are odious debts, because all these debts that have been run up since 1945 as a result of a U.S.-sponsored philosophy of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on essentially predatory pro-U.S. lines have ended up not helping other countries pay, but preventing them from paying. And if a creditor country will not let a debtor country pay by exporting enough in competition with its own industry, then there’s no economic or moral claim that this foreign debt is a viable debt. It’s unviable.
So not only is the American empire unviable, but the whole superstructure of debt, the superstructure of monopolies, the superstructure of privatization and financial Thatcherizing and Reaganizing the world economy are unviable. So we’re dealing with a real clash of economic systems. Some people call this a clash of civilizations, but it’s really a clash of economic systems. And you could say it’s between the promise of industrial capitalism as it was developing in the beginning in the 19th century and the disastrous reality of finance capitalism with a single geopolitical center in the United States run increasingly in its own interest in exploitative, predatory fashion.
GLENN DIESEN: Well, Michael, thank you so much. And for anyone who wants to know more on the economic strategy for the American Empire and also why this is collapsing, again, go to the description and look for the link to Michael Hudson’s book, Super Imperialism. So thank you for going through these important topics and I hope to have you back on soon.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, thank you for giving me a chance to explain my philosophy, Glenn.
Transcription and Diarization: hudsearch
Editing and Review: Chris Platania-Phung
Photo by Brandon Griggs on Unsplash
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