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

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4.7 out of 5 stars 87 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: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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 ›
2 Comments 75 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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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.
1 Comment 70 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsThis is a brilliant and well-written book
By T Stojanovic on February 7, 2016
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a brilliant and well-written book. I learned more from it about finance and economics than I did while studying for my degree in Economics (at an English university).
Actually it took me about a decade to forget all the crap they taught us there - it was pretty much all the Friedman corrupt mafia economics presented to us as the only possible way to structure the world. This book really helps to reverse the damage. I highly recommend it.
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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 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 starsEveryone should read this - especially those in the rust ...

Everyone should read this - especially those in the rust belt. It's not the company's fault, it is the external financial system that allows raiders and the current MBA's who only... Read more

Published 5 days ago by Bill Struve
5.0 out of 5 starsIf money is magical to you then prepare for an apprenticeship under a...

A book that should be required reading for any student interested in how wealth flows globally.

Published 8 days ago by Tard squeal
4.0 out of 5 starsRefreshing view of recent economic events

This book was on my Wish List and was given as a Christmas present by my wife. I was intrigued by the title along with my jaundiced view of investment bankers (IB) based on... Read more

Published 12 days ago by Geoffrey Atwater
5.0 out of 5 starsEasy to understand

Easy to understand for a 55 year old high school graduate

Published 19 days ago by Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 starsPreaching to the converted

Some interesting ideas, but laboured and repetitive. Plenty of assertions that despite how many times they are made does not necessarily make them correct e.g. Read more

Published 1 month ago by John R
5.0 out of 5 starsA well-deserved five stars...

I am about halfway through this book and I really am enjoying it. The book is fairly easy to follow as it goes through people and events in history and recent times. Mr. Read more

Published 1 month ago by C. R.
4.0 out of 5 starsRepetition is important when dealing with complexity like this, but...

This book opened my eyes to a world I have only been dimly aware of and unable to see clearly. It is clear, simple, rational and persuasive. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Steve Leeper
5.0 out of 5 starsand this is the best I've ever read

If you want to understand the economic system, read this book several times. I've read a lot about economics, and this is the best I've ever read.

Published 1 month ago by Doodlebug
5.0 out of 5 starsThis is one of the best books on economics published in the last fifty...

This is one of the best books on economics published in the last fifty years. The standard economic theory I learned at college proved more than useless in understanding how our... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Joseph Hobson Stowers III
5.0 out of 5 starsHudson presents a wonderful historical context to give our modern...

Hudson presents a wonderful historical context to give our modern economic policies some perspective. Read more

Published 2 months ago by InternetUser124901

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