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Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy Paperback – August 20, 2015

by Michael Hudson (Author)
4.9 out of 5 stars 39 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 440 pages
  • Publisher: ISLET (August 20, 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 3981484282
  • ISBN-13: 978-3981484281
  • Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 0.9 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsThey were (and are) measures designed to keep in place the ‘free lunch’ enjoyed by a new money-based social order
By Steven on September 2, 2015
Format: Paperback
Hudson’s book has to be the definitive book about what went wrong not just in 2008 but since the beginning of the 20th century. Hudson exposes the whole farce of ‘heroic’ measures taken by Wall Street’s men in Washington since 2008, i.e. the bailouts and ‘quantitative easings’, etc. for what they are – systematic policies designed to protect and extend the reach of a neo-feudal aristocracy based on control of the country’s government, particularly its ability to create money.

These policies were not just an honest mistake by desperate leaders trying to avoid the consequences of the wholesale looting of the US economy that began in earnest in the 1980s and culminated with the detonation of Warren Buffet’s “financial weapons of mass destruction” in 2008. They were (and are) measures designed to keep in place the ‘free lunch’ enjoyed by a new money-based social order, one under which power and privilege are derived from the creation of yet more “debts that can’t be repaid (and) won’t be”.

As Hudson notes, that ‘miracle of compound interest’ serves ultimately to insure financial crises as the big fish get bigger by eating the little fish (you) until the whole system collapses under the weight of a mathematical impossibility, i.e. the perpetual operation of the exponential function on which it is based.

“Killing the Host” can be viewed as a sequel, a sort of plot denouement, to Hudson’s “Super Imperialism” (SI) published almost a half century ago. In SI he details the historical roots of a new post-Bretton Woods international monetary system under which both Wall Street’s banks and the US government were freed from the constraints imposed by having to maintain the fiction of gold-backed money.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsFinance as Class Warfare
By John M. Repp on October 7, 2015
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Finance as Class Warfare
By John M Repp
A review of Killing the Host (2015) Michael Hudson
The wealth of the 1% comes from the 99%. The 99% are enriching the 1%. There are many ways this happens, for example low wages and high prices. But increasingly, today, the 99% redistribute their wealth through indebtedness. In order to try and live in dignity, the 99%, or at least two-thirds of them that have debts, pay off their debts with interest as they educate themselves, buy houses or small businesses, buy a car, and use their charge cards. Debt peonage is ancient, much older than the industrial revolution and this older pattern is becoming more prominent every day
Since the crash of 2008, millions of people here and around the world have lost businesses, homes, and jobs. Today, many others despair at their not getting ahead financially. Too many blame themselves, thinking there is something wrong with their ability or drive. If they understood the economic, political, and financial system in which we live, maybe they would not blame themselves and we could find a collective solution to our problems.
Michael Hudson, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City has just written a book entitled Killing the Host (2015). Hudson writes that the FIRE sector (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) along with the monopoly control of natural resources like oil and gas is the parasite. Finance i.e. banks (what we call Wall Street) is the leader of the parasitic forces. The host is the productive economy like manufacturing and farming and needed services like health care and education.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA suggestion
By R. York on September 20, 2015
Format: Paperback
I want to suggest to anyone that is going too read this book, too first read a paper that Hudson wrote in August of 2010 entitled, “From Marx to Goldman Sachs, the Fiction of Fictitious Capital”, it is in the achieves on his site. I think it will be a good induction to Hudson's knowledge of subject before they read the book.
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5.0 out of 5 starsGreat book!
By Hermit on August 25, 2015
Format: Hardcover
I'm sorry to see this is unavailable at this time - I wanted to buy a copy for a friend. It's a great book that explains much of the arcane dealings of high finance in a way even a biologist can understand! I heartily recommend​ this book!
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5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars
By Chuck Phillips on August 25, 2015
Format: Hardcover
I just heard Mr. Hudson on the Amy Goodman radio talk show. He knows his stuff.
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5.0 out of 5 starsFirst, I used the 'kindle version' as a review ...
By azaudigger on September 25, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
First, I used the 'kindle version' as a review, I read it twice and took notes. After dwelling on how to talk to others about it I simply bought a book to pass around. Unfortunately, the second person on the list, lost it!! I'd rather lose a friend than this book!
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5.0 out of 5 starsDr. Hudson explains...
By A Customer on August 25, 2015
Format: Hardcover
~~~

However highly though we do esteem the political-economic-historical critiques of the greatly accredited cognoscenti Drs. Niall Ferguson, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and Richard Wolff--even so, neither they nor any others have in our hearing so clearly and precisely critically explained the current global situation c.2015 as has Dr. Michael Hudson.

Aware people owe it to themselves to be informed.

~~~
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5.0 out of 5 starsYet there is a great deal more
By Will Morgan on November 25, 2015
Format: Paperback
Killing the Host
by Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson has become the indispensible deconstructivist of contemporary economics. I almost wrote "of our contemporary economy", but since that economy it is no longer 'ours', but rather the province of private banks whose chicanery remains beyond most citizen's conceiving, so I must alter my words. This is the story Mr. Hudson unfolds in his latest book.

The working metaphor of our economy is paracitism. Paracites trick hosts by disabling their defenses, gaining their foothold by convincing the host that no attack is underway. To do this successfully the parasite must ultimately control the host's brain. Similarly---the rentier economy of banks and high finance pretends to be benign and even neccessary, even as it swallows more and more of the real economy. Does this sound familar or frightening? If your answer is no, then it may be that your own brain has already been altered. This point deserves reflection, because some parasites do permanently alter the biology of their hosts. Mr. Hudson's analogy may thus have an even greater salience that he might prefer, one which might mean that it is now impossible to recover our former society.

No one can read this book and reflect on the lessons it offers without being impessed by the authors' scholarship, his careful marshalling of the evidence and his well-reasoned conclusions. This much has come to be expected from Mr. Hudson. Yet there is a great deal more.

In a famous letter written during his retirement Thomas Jefferson put it more or less Mr. Hudson does: " Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and the principle of spending money to be paid by futurity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

fantastic

Published 22 hours ago by Juan-Pedro Garces
4.0 out of 5 starsFinancial Parasitism Exposed

The author, whose economic resume reads very strongly in favor of his right to speak authoritatively on this topic, makes a powerful case for the proposition that the financial... Read more

Published 10 days ago by J. W. Livingston Jr.
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

As advertised

Published 10 days ago by Richard Mauro
5.0 out of 5 starsAbsolutely a must read "everything you need to know" about ...

Absolutely a must read "everything you need to know" about why we are where we are today. Buying another copy today and sending to my brother.

Published 1 month ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsThe one percent

Superb, helps us understand how we have been misled.

Published 1 month ago by bernard john christensen
5.0 out of 5 starsHudson: The 1% have no clothes!

Hudson is on the pulse of the modern managed-market mania that has superseded, amidst mad rationalizations of individual hubris and narcissism, the healthy exchange of material and... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Steven R. Walk
5.0 out of 5 starsThis book suffers from typos and is not published by a major academic...

Congratulations you have just struck gold. This book suffers from typos and is not published by a major academic press (they like would not touch it even though Hudson's business... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Stephen P. Sewall
5.0 out of 5 starsDebt quickly becomes modern slavery

Thanks for shining some light on debt to clarify what is happening... Can somebody do a similar analysis for the current state of healthcare, military, intelligence, & other... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Al
5.0 out of 5 starsI have some reservations, but all in all, this is a great book

If you grew up in this country before the 1970s, you experienced a world that is nothing like today. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Richard Morchoe
5.0 out of 5 starsOf 30 books I have recently read on the topics ...

Of 30 books I have recently read on the topics covered in this book, this one is by far the clearest and most direct. Read more

Published 1 month ago by K. S.

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