Michael Hudson explained Yellen\'s speech at John Hopkins on Apr

嘴上示好，身体却很诚实：详解耶伦的经济战策略

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e3uYg0y_9s&ab_channel=%E5%9

June 1, 2023

Professor Michael Hudson explained Yellen's speech at John Hopkins on April 20.

Michael Hudson (born March 14, 1939) is an American economist, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, former Wall Street analyst, political consultant, commentator and journalist. He is a contributor to The Hudson Report, a weekly economic and financial news podcast produced by Left Out.[1]

Hudson graduated from the University of Chicago (BA, 1959) and New York University (MA, 1965, PhD, 1968) and worked as a balance of payments economist in Chase Manhattan Bank (1964–68). He was assistant professor of economics at the New School for Social Research (1969–72) and worked for various governmental and non-governmental organizations as an economic consultant (1980s–1990s).

<<<<<<>>>>>>

that's what was spelled out uh in this talk she said we will uh not compromise on these concerns even when they forced
trade-offs with our economic interests even if we have to stop all trade with China of course that's going to hurt
American workers who are buying uh many consumer goods from China if we can somehow stop all trade and investment
with China and create a crisis there and lead to a fall of the government it'll all be worth it
foreign [Music]
foreign a lot of developments in the last week
in America's strategy against China the United States is uh accelerated its
economic Warfare against China and uh announced that we're now in an all-out trade war with the intention of
preventing China from making a technological progress and to uh boycott
any support of its uh chip industry the president of Korea is today on the April
25th meeting in Washington with a president who's telling him not to
continue to export ship making Machinery or even ships out to China and is trying
to promise him that he can get the U.S market instead of the Chinese market and
using the military threats promising Korea the atom bomb and other arms to fight against China if he can convince
Korea to fight to the last Korean like the ukrainians are doing this would be a
great victory for the Biden Administration but all of this has been spelled out less than a week ago on
April 20th Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen gave a talk to the U.S
economic relationship group at Johns Hopkins school of advanced studies Johns
Hopkins is the University that publishes all of the World Bank reports and is a
training ground for American diplomats and uh basically she made an official
Declaration of economic War explaining how the United States intends to fight
to stifle China's remarkable economic growth if it can be done she's not she
is an economist she's not a military or a national security strategist but precisely for that reason her talk
outlined how the United States is fighting China not militarily on the battlefield but economically in order to
hurt its economy and hopefully stop its economic growth if you read her talk you
see something strange about a distinguishing characteristic of our times that uh it's women who are the
most belligerent and were-like voices today Janice yelston is in the tradition
of Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton and Victoria Newland in the United States and uh her counterparts
are Ursula Von delayan uh in the European Union and Anna Lisa bareback in
Germany uh pressing for uh war against uh Russia and against China in the
Ukraine and extending this into really a global fracture between the NATO group
and what president uh Putin calls uh the world majority of uh population these
are all voices of hatred against Russia uh and China and Russia's hated because
uh the United States thinks if it can pry Russia and the rest of central Asia
away from China they can isolate it and ultimately uh break it up as Miss Yellen
explains basically she and the rest of the Biden Administration have framed
this their hatred by claiming that the United States is surrounded by enemies headed by China and Russia now they make
this claim despite the fact that it's the United States that has attacked the near East and NATO that's uh attacked
other countries and had color Revolutions in the post-soviet states
and I have overthrown governments so despite the fact that the United States is the aggressor throughout the world if
you read American Media and you listen to the American diplomats it's America under attack and uh China is the leading
country that is attacking the United States so uh we're seeing an old trait
uh is the Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels uh explained during World War II the way to mobilize a
population to support a war is to say that their countries under attack and
that's exactly what the United States is saying today that's how the Roman papacy
uh in the 12th and 13th century basically set Western Europe against uh
the near East by saying that uh Christianity was under attack by uh the
Muslim uh threat and armies were sent that actually uh were directed mainly
against other Christian countries to try to establish uh Roman control by the
papacy over uh Germany France Spain and the other countries that it all uh went
to war with and most of all uh Byzantium the Byzantine Empire which was the main Christian Center at that time well the
parallel to that is America's uh nominally fighting Russia in Ukraine but
actually fighting Germany and Europe and using the against Russia to lock in its
control over its European allies so at any rate Nazi Germany militarized during
World War II claiming that it was the victim of other countries attack and uh
that's exactly what George Bush tried to do when he when America attacked Iraq uh
he lied that Iraq had biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction and if it didn't have them it was going to
try to get them it was the United States itself that had these weapons not uh Iraq in America
were getting an inside out picture that every single week it depicts China as
attacking the United States yes secretary Yellen stated that America needs to protect itself and her evidence
is to blame China for the fact that America is de-industrializing China has
been growing very rapidly and raising its uh national income and its living
standards most of the American population has been losing its living standards for the last uh 20 years real
wages have been going down and down the overhead of debt and rents have been going up and up the American voters are
in a state of malaise they know that they're suffering and uh the reason they're suffering is I've discussed in
these lectures before is because uh what used to be industrial capitalism has
turned into Finance capitalism naturally the finance capitalists that are steering the system are not going to
blame themselves they need an external enemy and China because of its success
is the most obvious country to label an enemy any country that is a success and
independent from the United States and is growing and keeping its wealth at home is declared an enemy of the United
States ipso facto that means automatically what actually has ended
American industrialization as I said is finance capitalism and financialization
privatization rent seeking absentee uh home ownership home ownership in the
United States has fallen by about 10 percentage points uh since 2008 as a
result of President Obama's uh support of the banks instead of uh Bank customers and so the financial sector is
trying to deny responsibility for calling this shrinkage American living
standards and uh how do you deny responsibility you say that somebody else is doing it and uh that is what
America's neoliberal economic uh courses teach students in the universities the
university economics courses applaud Finance capitalism as economic progress
because it does make rich people richer but it makes the bankers and real estate
owners and monopolist richer at the EXP events of the rest of the population but
the universities essentially say well if the magnitude of wealth of stocks and
bombs and real estate if the prices are going up that's how we measure progress
not in terms of how wages are going up or how living standards are going up or
how government health care and other infrastructure providing subsidized Services none of that really counts as
progress and in fact countries that try to build up their infrastructure with government support are basically to
blame for uh all of America's problems so when you listen to a speech by it
could be not only by a treasury secretary Yellen but by blinken and uh
Sullivan and the other National Security and secretaries and state it's exactly
the same narrative that you're that you're getting well miss Yellen blames
China specifically for the fact that it's government actively some subsidizes
your industrial modernization and uh you invest in public infrastructure
that's the opposite of the United States uh the United States England and Europe
are privatizing their public infrastructure and turning it into
monopolies to create Monopoly rent instead of to provide infrastructure
Services uh Health Care Transportation pensions at a subsidized rate basically
Yellen told her uh audience that in recent years she's quote seeing China's
decision to Pivot away from Market reforms toward a more State driven
approach her pretense and the big lie in American diplomacy is that a market
reform means the state doesn't do anything when the Americans say Market
reform they mean no government regulation at all no anti-monopoly
regulation no government investment in infrastructure it means find uh no
government forward planning all planning is to be shifted to Wall Street and the
banks and the purpose of that planning is to make money for the banks the financial sector and uh their customers
that is what Miss Yellen said very straightforward now the fact is that
every economy really is a mixed economy especially the United States which is just uh announced a few months ago a
huge subsidy program for ostensibly for environmentalism but it really means
that it's subsidizing its uh industry in conflict with a European industry three
that does not uh get any uh such subsidies so if the United States that's using its government to plan the economy
along military lines aiming at control of other countries but it's accusing
other countries of doing just what it's doing the American strategy is to
prevent China and other countries from becoming prosperous by government investment and support of their industry
which is exactly the way the United States uh has grown and I'll quote what
Miss Yellen said let me get her quote up she said well China has long used
government support to help its firms gain market share at the expense of foreign competitors in other words it
succeeded in producing Goods at a lower price than other countries can do but in recent years she says it's industrial
policy has become more ambitious and complex well you should be glad it's
ambitious and complex China has expanded support for its state-owned Enterprises
and domestic private firms to dominate foreign competitors in other words to
become more efficient than they are it has done so in traditional industrial
sectors as well as emerging Technologies this strategy has been coupled with
aggressive efforts to acquire new technological know-how and intellectual
property including through intellectual property theft and other illicit means
in other words when China is trying to develop its own technology instead of letting the United States take the lead
and buying the technology from the United States that is defined as Chinese aggression and that is why the United
States is fighting against China because China is efficient and that is defined
as an attack on America which is not efficient and quite frankly has no way
of being efficient until it moves away from financializing its economy
well what does all this mean to block China and other countries from joining
what uh Putin calls the world majority Ms Yellen describes the United States
economic approach to China as having three principal objectives and uh her
list reveals the Sinister and exploitive character of America's planned economic
attack on China the in other words she spelled out uh in her own words exactly
how America is going to attack China it's like a general explaining here is
how we're going to invade your country uh and destroy your economy what she wrote is first we will secure our
national security interests and those of our allies and partners and we will protect human rights by protecting human
rights she meant sinkhyan and other regions China has to be cut up and
divided into five countries it's wrong of you to have a single country of China you have to have each ethnic group
separate I think Young and the wiggers go their way North and South China have
to be broken up human rights is breaking up China so that it doesn't have a
single government anymore and uh so that there will be a free-for-all of privatization and monopolization you
will go back to the warlord type of economies of China's distant past thousands of years ago the whole few
thousand years she says has all been a mistake that she continues we will not
hesitate to defend our Vital interests even as our targeted actions may have an
economic impact they're motivated solely by our concerns over our security and
values our security means our ability to bomb other countries and defeat them militarily and our values is we should
uh be able to get rich in other countries should not have any role to
play except being our customers she says our goal is not to use these to gain
competitive Advantage economic Advantage but of course that's exactly her goals
the historical reality is that no technology has ever been able to be
monopolized by any country no country's been able to keep technology to itself
it's fluid and it's sort of just hopeless to to believe that you can prevent other countries from knowing how
to make things that you know how to make like computer chips or automobiles or
the things that uh China's making well the United States plan is to turn technology into a rent-seeking monopoly
in other words if the United States can control information technology and ship making then it can charge much more than
it actually cost uh to produce uh Goods with this technology it can make Monopoly rents the United States
realizes that it cannot survive by being an industrial country anymore because
it's de-industrialized it can only Survive by being a an international
monopolist in monopolizing technology especially military technology to
prevent other countries from having the technology to defend themselves American
lawyers and economists call this intellectual property technology is our property and you can't have it if it's
property and you use a technology that we say this technology is controlled by
the United States you'll have to pay us an enormous rent to use it and not develop it yourself at low cost well
it's clear that when uh Miss Yellen talks about National Security she's
talking about the ability of the United States to control other countries by paralyzing them with trade sanctions and
investment sanctions if they don't follow American dictates here's what she said to her audience at Johns Hopkins uh
the treasury Department has sanctions authorities to address threats related to cyber security and China's military
and civil Fusion we then carefully review foreign investments in the United
States for National Security risks and take necessary actions to address any
such risks and we are considering a program strict certain U.S outbound
Investments to specific sensitive Technologies with significant National
Security implications by National Security she means if uh we send
computer chips so that China can use sophisticated computers or develop up their own chips instead of being a
reliant on America's allies like a Holland or South Korea then we want to
prevent its achieving technological Independence so she concluded her talk
with an absurd attempt to deny that the United States is seeking International
economic dominance she says she's only we're only seeking to serve other
countries to help them in a peaceful way and if we have to bomb them it's because we love them and we're trying to help
them avoid Socialism or is the American General put it in the Vietnam War we had
to bomb The Village to save it this is the American attitude what she wrote is
these National Security actions are not designed for us to gain the competitive advantage to stifle China's economic and
technological modernization even though these policies may have economic impact
they are driven by straightforward National Security considering operations in other words China's threatening us
you're threatening Us by being independent you're threatening Us by being able to go your own way and if we
can't control you we feel threatened because we have to control other countries to maintain our International
Leadership in a unipolar world that's what was spelled out in this talk she
said we will uh not compromise on these concerns even when they force trade-offs
with our economic interests in other words even though American investors are
making a lot of money in high profits by setting up factories in China she says
National Security comes first and even if we have to stop all trade with China of course that's going to hurt American
workers who are buying many consumer goods in China but if we can somehow
stop all trade and investment with China and create a crisis there and lead to a fall of the government it'll all be
worth it now we're back to today on Korea's president is in Washington uh
meeting with President Biden to get his instructions as to how to sacrifice Korea's computer chip industry to
support the American war with China and the financial times has reported the aim
is to block China from obtaining or producing Advanced semiconductors the
report says the White House has asked South Korea to urge its chip makers not
to fill any Market Gap in China if Beijing bans Idaho based Micron from
selling chips as it tries to do to Rally allies to counter Chinese economic
influence in other words China has stopped buying ships from Micron a company in Idaho in retaliation for
America's blocking uh China from selling very goods here the United States made
the request to just as uh president Yoon sakil prepares to travel all about the
United States and let them know this is what we're going to talk about you'd think that the president of Korea would
have told this plane to turn around and fly back to Korea if that's the demand but he's coming to the United States uh
anyway to see well what did the United States have to offer to counter Chinese
influence China just this month lost its own National Security review in the mic
room Micron is one of the dominant players in the global it's called a memory chip Market alongside of South
Korea's Samsung economics and uh SK hints so uh it's not clear whether the
cyberspace administration of China is going to take punitive action but the stakes for micron are very high because
uh Micron has been selling most of its chips to China and if American companies
can't sell to China if China makes its own chips then the profits of American
computer companies will go down and they won't have enough money to invest in a
new technology and China is going to pull even further ahead in uh getting
more patents and more technological breakthroughs than are occurring in the
United States other U.S servers have spilled out of strategy in Greater
detail for instance one of the online discussion groups political said just a
week ago on April 18th that uh in addition to the expected executive order
on limiting uh U.S technology investment in China the U.S is also thinking of
banning the Chinese Tick Tock that's in the nose here in America every week
we've got to ban Tick Tock why because it's the most popular Pro application in
the internet and it's making a lot of money Yellen and the government says if China makes a profit in America it must
sell the company to the Americans so the Americans can make their profit not the Chinese this is explicitly a racist and
uh aggressive military attack China must not make profits in the United States
but it must let America buy a Chinese industry so we make profits in China
that is the basic asymmetry that underlines America's World diplomacy
today and that's why the world is splitting apart from the United States the article continues these moves would
come on the heels of aggressive trade action last year when the administration put in place new export rules that
explicitly sought to undermine beijing's prized microchip sector and passed
massive industrial policies aimed at breaking Reliance on the Chinese economy
at the time National Security adviser Jake Sullivan was clear that the goal of
the strategy was to preserve America's Competitive Edge meaning dominance in
the emerging high-tech Industries and what Sullivan said was quote we must
maintain as large a lead as possible in high-tech sectors like microchip so
Americas come right out and said this is not a market economy a market economy is
when the United States tells other countries what they can produce and what they can trade a market economy is an
economy controlled by Washington and by Wall Street it has nothing to do with consumers and investors buying and
selling and price competition if they've redefined what a market is and it's a
very highly militarized so spelling out the U.S plan in detail uh the political
art the political article points out that U.S policy makers Court last year
considered including up to five major Chinese Industries microchips artificial
intelligence Quantum Computing biotechnology and clean energy as areas
that China must be prevented from investing in and must rely on the United
States as just as Europe and other countries must rely on the United States in these industries well this has
nothing to do with National Security in the sense of of being militarily threatened the U.S plan is to use a
national security rhetoric an umbrella as an excuse for economic Warfare even
the financial times of London has an article by Martin sanbu uh just
yesterday on April 24th that points out the European commission president Ursula
Von delayan gave a speech just before her trip to China recently and she
described China as a systemic rival simply because it's an efficient
economic competitor she said if you're efficient that is an economic attack on
us because your efficiency and your Rising labor productivity prevents us
from dominating you the Financial Times article says quote she went much further
in threatening to block China's economic opportunities with Europe if Beijing
stays on its current Uh current course well something's changing Mr sand boo
said he said access to China for a European Union corporations increasingly
means expanding production facilities in China in other words we're now dealing
with European Chinese relations and the United States is trying to block Europe from dealing with China just as trying
to prevent Europe from dealing with Russia and buying Russian gas and
Russian grain and Russian oil the United States is trying to prevent European
firms from moving to China and the reason they're doing it is because now that European companies can't buy
Russian gas anymore the low price the gas prices way up so it will move to
China so uh if it buys Russian gas it can buy Russian gas in China but it'll
be much less expensive in China so the problem is that the European companies
are moving their own production to China and of course if they move their production to China who's going to be
working on the assembly lines Germany is not going to send its German labor to
China to work on the assembly lines and that is making in Germany Chinese workers will uh work on the assembly
lines the factories will be Chinese they'll be managed by by Chinese as the
European companies transfer their technology to China and that's what the United States is uh trying to block and
so the Financial Times article that well the way to block uh Europe's uh trade and investment with China is to get
labor support in it the government is telling labor well if uh if uh European
companies invest in China then you're not going to have a job in Europe anymore and you're not going to go to
China because you don't speak Chinese and uh China wants to employ its own labor there in the U.S view socialism is
the enemy of Labor raising living standards is socialistic and that's being denounced you make profits by
lowering wages not by raising them and uh so you're really having the world
divide into two different economic systems well the problem of course is that neither America nor Europe can
reverse what's been happening over the last uh 40 years since uh Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the
neoliberal turn that Europe is taken you can't reverse the privatization that's
taken place you can't reverse the debt overhead that's mounted up and taken place the Monopoly trading of Health
Care the dismantling of Public Health Services from England uh to the United
States and uh the dysfunctional Financial system that uh you've seen the
Swiss banks that are going bankrupt uh and dissolved in the last week right now
uh today as we're speaking Korea is being promised a wider U.S market if it
will stop exporting computer chips to China it's being forced to to chose the
United States tactic is you're either with us or against us and the United States will impose sanctions if Korean
companies continue to produce in China Samsung has factories in China and the
United States said if you don't close down these factories to prevent China from getting your computer chips we're
going to impose sanctions on you and you're going to lose the U.S market and then where will you be Korea not only
that but we won't defend you anymore from South Korea and in fact we're supporting uh Japan which is uh your
long-term enemy so uh the United States is trying to spend this week bullying
South Korea whose president is not anywhere near is uh friendly to China is
the last president is and we'll see uh what the Korean president imagines that
he can get away with that will not uh create a Revolt uh among Korean voters
so right now you're saying the whole world as a in an economic arena for the
economic war that is uh just as vicious and deadly as the military war that
Russia is fighting against NATO uh in Ukraine that's how I think over the next
few weeks you're going to see the strategy that uh secretary Yellen is
laid out and the foreign secretary blinken is going to be uh explaining you're going to see all of this break
out into the open much more at least in China if not in the American news media