Global Fracture: The New International Economic Order [Paperback]

Michael Hudson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0745323944 | ISBN-13: 978-0745323947 | Edition: 2

Hudson is one of the tiny handful of economic thinkers in today's world who are forcing us to look at old questions in startling new ways. Alvin Toffler, best-selling author of Future Shock and The Third WaveThis new and updated edition of Michael Hudson's classic political economy text explores how and why the US came to achieve world economic hegemony.Originally published as the sequel to Hudson's bestselling Super Imperialism, Global Fracture explores American economic strategy during a key period in world history. In 1973, many of the world's most indebted countries sought to free themselves of trade dependency and the debt trap by creating a New International Economic Order (NIEO). This aimed to improve the terms of trade for raw materials and build up agicultural and industrial self-sufficiency. Global Fracture shows how the US undermined this progressive initiative and instead pushed for financial dominance over the rest of the world. Today, the NIEO is a forgotten interlude, its optimism replaced by the financial austerity imposed by the IMF and the World Bank.Exploring how America achieved its economic aims, and tracing the implications this has had through subsequent decades, Michael Hudson covers various topics including trade embargoes, changing US attitudes to foreign aid, the rise of protectionism, government regulation of international investments, the impact on specific industries including the oil industry, the implications of the new economic order and the future of war.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"'Hudson is one of the tiny handful of economic thinkers in today's world who are forcing us to look at old questions in startling new ways.' Alvin Toffler, best-selling author of Future Shock and The Third Wave"

About the Author

Michael Hudson is an independent Wall Street financial economist. After working as an economist for the Chase Manhattan Bank and Arthur Anderson in the 1960s he taught international finance at the New School in New York, and is presently Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri (Kansas City). He has published widely on the topic of the US’s financial dominance, and has been an economic adviser to the Canadian, Mexican, Russian and US governments, and to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. His previous book for Pluto Press is Super Imperialism - New Edition (2003).

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Pluto Press; 2 edition (April 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745323944
• ISBN-13: 978-0745323947
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The original US monetary sin of 1971 and the dangerous world it made, June 18, 2009

By 

Clark Matthews (Hoboken, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Global Fracture: The New International Economic Order (Paperback)

It is not possible to understand the extent or gravity of today's global debt-derivatives crisis without the historical analysis of Dr. Michael Hudson's book. This book is an unblinking look at the ugly underside of a dollarized world economic system. But note: the "Global Fracture" it describes is not the present debt-derivatives crisis.

This book drills deep into the original sin of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system: the 1971 US repudiation of the gold standard for settlements by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. This led to the destabilization and tumultuous replacement of gold settlements by the present paper-based global exchange system based on US dollars and US debt instruments that can never be repaid. Originally published in 1977, this updated edition describes the postwar history of the dollar-based Bretton Woods system and its degeneration into today's exclusively debt-backed sovereign pyramid scheme. So be aware the book is about the beginnings of this mess in the 1970s -- it only tangentially summarizes the present grave risk of the system completely unraveling due to abuse, fraud, systemic corruption, oligarchy, and unilateralism. It's also interesting to note that many primary perpetrators of the gold repudiation of 1971 are still the central powerbrokers today -- Henry Kissinger foremost of all.

This is serious world economic history and analysis, not a glib gloss like Tom Friedman's globo-touts or an anecdotal personal perspective like John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." It's deeply incisive and far from 'economically correct. Read this to understand the true depth and complexity of the dollar meltdown, whose roots are to be found with the financial schemes and diktats of Kissinger and Nixon in the 1970s. This Nixon-era economic warfare aimed at forcing the EU and ASEAN to hold paper dollars and compel resource producers like OPEC to accept a US check at gunpoint for commodities.

Hudson's career began as a national economist at Chase 40 years ago -- where he analyzed developing countries' resources and debt carrying capacity in order to load them with all the debt they could bear. But he evolved into an unflinching if strident critic of the entire international debt framework and the fatal burden it imposes on the Third World. Most recently Hudson was chief economic advisor to Rep. Dennis Kucinich during Kucinich's 2008 presidential candidacy.