1694: The Year the World Changed

How Financial Extraction Was Invented—and Why We Mistook It for Reality “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until…

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The Permanent Bailout

How the Fed Bails Out the World With Your Savings “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises The Man Who Downgraded America In August 2011, Deven Sharma did something unprecedented. As president of Standard & Poor’s—one of the three major…

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Financialization: The Parasite and the Host

Wars. Waste. Wall Street. Welfare. “The economy doesn’t work for you — it works to extract from you.” —Michael Hudson Financialization is a word you have probably heard in economic news, but its true meaning is rarely explained. The popular media treats it as the natural growth of finance in…

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55% and Rising

The passive tipping point that could break both stocks and housing “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the fantasist pretends the sea isn’t there; the realist adjusts the sails.” —Adapted from William Arthur Ward What happens when markets stop asking, “Is this a good…

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Grazing on Value: Lessons from Uruguay

How a Trip to Uruguay Changed the Way I Think About Money “Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.” —Genesis 13:2 Three weeks ago, I stepped off a plane in Montevideo and spent two weeks exploring Uruguay—endless empty beaches, rolling green hills dotted with cattle, gauchos…

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From Gold to Code—and Back Again

Parallels Between 1929 and Today’s Financial Fragility “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933 In the final months of 1929, America looked unstoppable. Cities glowed with electric light. Streets swarmed with automobiles. Radios carried jazz, ball scores, and a steady stream of…

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Debt, Division, and Distraction

How a forgotten economist foresaw the crises we’re repeating today “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” — T. S. Eliot, Choruses from The Rock In 2025, global debt hovers at levels unseen since the Great Depression. Inequality has…

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