Trump and the neocons who run his foreign policy, want to use the pandemic to further their plan of ruining and weakening Iran; they hope to make Iran as dysfunctional, violent and chaotic as post war Iraq - Trita Parsi joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast

The Federal Reserve is directly buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets owned by the top 5%. This does not spur much new production or create jobs. Michael Hudson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast

https://vimeo.com/424166959

The Federal Reserve is directly buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets owned by the top 5%. This does not spur much new production or create jobs. Michael Hudson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, my name's Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Michael Hudson is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and also a professor at Peking University in Beijing. He's written or edited over 10 books on international finance, economic history and the history of economic thought. His newest book is J is for Junk Economics and most recently, And Forgive Them Their Debts, which Martin Wolf of the Financial Times cited as a Book of the Year for 2018.

Thanks for joining us, Michael.

Michael Hudson

It's good to be here, Paul.

Paul Jay

So with so much bad news in the world, and when the stock market crashed in late February, why didn't it stay crashed? Two months after the crash to 14 month lows, So at a certain point, almost historic lows,  the Nasdaq composite is closing in now on all time highs. Why? 

Michael Hudson

There is only one reason for a stock or bond prices to go up. And that's because of the flow of funds into the stock market. What had been supporting the stock market for the last 12 years was very largely stock buybacks by companies using their revenue to sort of close down their business, disinvest and buy their own stocks to at least keep the prices up. Well, what's flowing into the market right now? Obviously, it's not corporate profits buying their own stocks, and it's certainly not popular money coming into the market by small investors thinking that stocks are going to earn more. All this money is coming into the market from the 10 trillion dollar bailout via the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is going out directly and is buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets.

     Now, when it's putting this money into the stock market, it's buying stocks that are already issued and have long since —the proceeds have been spent on building factories or enterprises or as means of making money. So none of this bailout money, none of this 10 trillion going into the stock market has any effect at all on the real economy of production and consumption. It's solely to support the assets that are held almost eighty five percent by the wealthiest 10 percent of the economy.

So the Fed has revived the stock market downturn. It's come up, and what it said is, “Folks, you can bail out of the stock market, give us your junk bonds. That's sort of like the Statue of Liberty for wealthy people. Give us your stocks. Sell your bonds. We'll buy them all up at Federal Reserve expense and will purchase them. And we'll also do our own forward buying to manipulate the stock market by promising to buy our stock, so  the higher price in the forward market. So that's going to create a speculative demand for stock. So the speculative demand for stocks by Federal Reserve manipulation and the actual flow of funding money into the stock market from the government has been pushing it back up, giving the illusion of prosperity, at least for the 10 percent. 

Paul Jay

But are they actually straightforwardly buying stocks to they're buying corporate debt, which allows them to go buy their own stocks and also just making so much money, so cheap people can buy stock?

The Federal Reserve is directly buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets owned by the top 5%. This does not spur much new production or create jobs. Michael Hudson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast

https://vimeo.com/424166959

The Federal Reserve is directly buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets owned by the top 5%. This does not spur much new production or create jobs. Michael Hudson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, my name's Paul Jay, and welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Michael Hudson is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and also a professor at Peking University in Beijing. He's written or edited over 10 books on international finance, economic history and the history of economic thought. His newest book is J is for Junk Economics and most recently, And Forgive Them Their Debts, which Martin Wolf of the Financial Times cited as a Book of the Year for 2018.

Thanks for joining us, Michael.

Michael Hudson

It's good to be here, Paul.

Paul Jay

So with so much bad news in the world, and when the stock market crashed in late February, why didn't it stay crashed? Two months after the crash to 14 month lows, So at a certain point, almost historic lows,  the Nasdaq composite is closing in now on all time highs. Why? 

Michael Hudson

There is only one reason for a stock or bond prices to go up. And that's because of the flow of funds into the stock market. What had been supporting the stock market for the last 12 years was very largely stock buybacks by companies using their revenue to sort of close down their business, disinvest and buy their own stocks to at least keep the prices up. Well, what's flowing into the market right now? Obviously, it's not corporate profits buying their own stocks, and it's certainly not popular money coming into the market by small investors thinking that stocks are going to earn more. All this money is coming into the market from the 10 trillion dollar bailout via the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is going out directly and is buying stocks, bonds, junk bonds, mortgages, junk mortgages, all to prop up the value of assets.

     Now, when it's putting this money into the stock market, it's buying stocks that are already issued and have long since —the proceeds have been spent on building factories or enterprises or as means of making money. So none of this bailout money, none of this 10 trillion going into the stock market has any effect at all on the real economy of production and consumption. It's solely to support the assets that are held almost eighty five percent by the wealthiest 10 percent of the economy.

So the Fed has revived the stock market downturn. It's come up, and what it said is, “Folks, you can bail out of the stock market, give us your junk bonds. That's sort of like the Statue of Liberty for wealthy people. Give us your stocks. Sell your bonds. We'll buy them all up at Federal Reserve expense and will purchase them. And we'll also do our own forward buying to manipulate the stock market by promising to buy our stock, so  the higher price in the forward market. So that's going to create a speculative demand for stock. So the speculative demand for stocks by Federal Reserve manipulation and the actual flow of funding money into the stock market from the government has been pushing it back up, giving the illusion of prosperity, at least for the 10 percent. 

Paul Jay

But are they actually straightforwardly buying stocks to they're buying corporate debt, which allows them to go buy their own stocks and also just making so much money,

Cuba's interferon treatment shows promise in Cuba and China but is mostly ignored in the U.S. - James Early on theAnalysis.news podcast with Paul Jay

https://vimeo.com/421774304

Cuba's interferon treatment shows promise in Cuba and China but is mostly ignored in the U.S. - James Early on theAnalysis.news podcast with Paul Jay

Cuba's interferon treatment shows promise in Cuba and China but is mostly ignored in the U.S. - James Early on theAnalysis.news podcast with Paul Jay

https://vimeo.com/421774304

Cuba's interferon treatment shows promise in Cuba and China but is mostly ignored in the U.S. - James Early on theAnalysis.news podcast with Paul Jay

If Biden wins and doesn’t take on the deep structural changes that are needed, he will prepare the waters for the next Trump or worse. Rob Johnson on theAnalysis.news podcast with Paul Jay