Wall Street's Financial Parasite is Killing its American Economic Host

Funny how every time you reach for a metaphor to describe the filthy super-rich who are destroying the country, the word that comes to mind is "parasite."

Susie Madrak at Croosk and Liars:

I've thought for a while that our leaders, both political and private sector, are actually trying to create another depression, but I wasn't quite clear on why. I mean, I figured they make money on it, of course, but I didn't connect all the dots.

This interview with liberal economist Michael Hudson is a few months old, but it has the ring of truth and explains so much:

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay, coming to you today from New York City. Now joining us is Michael Hudson. He's a distinguished research professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He's also the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, and Trade, Development, and Foreign Debt: A History of Theories of Polarization Versus Convergence in the World Economy. That's a mouthful. Thanks for joining us.

PROF. MICHAEL HUDSON, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY: Thank you.

JAY: So President Obama's deficit commission has reported. The press, the media, and most of the political punditry all seem far more worried about government debt than depression. Why?

HUDSON: Because they're essentially appointed by the banking interests. When the government runs into debt, it has to borrow from the banks. They want to scale down government debt in order to scale down government taxes. So it's part of a one-two punch against the economy, basically. To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem. That's what they're trying to bring about, because you need a depression if you're going to lower wages by 20 percent.
JAY: And why do they want to do that?

HUDSON: Because they have the illusion that if you pay labor less, somehow you re going to make the economy more competitive, and the economy can earn its way out of debts --meaning their employers, the banks and the companies and make more profits and pay more bonuses and stock options, and somehow their constituency, Wall Street and the corporate economy, will become richer if they can only impoverish the economy.

So essentially you can think of it as between a parasite and the host economy. A smart parasite in nature actually is in a symbiosis with the host and tries to steer to new food. It wants the host to find new food, doesn't want it to get bigger; the parasite wants itself to get bigger. But to do that, it has to take over the host's brain and make the brain think that the parasite, in this case the host, is the industrial economy, the real economy, production and consumption.

The parasite is basically the financial sector. That's the deficit commission. That's the largest financier of the Obama administration. Obama appointed Wall Street lobbyists for the deficit commission, and basically their mind is a one-track mind: reduce labor's wages. So what we have here is a dumb parasite, not a parasite. That's the problem that's facing the American economy today. The problem is that the parasite's not only taken over the brain of the economy, which was supposed to be the government, but it's taken over its own brain in the process. And it actually imagines that corporations can make larger profits and the industrial, the financial system can survive if they just bring on a depression. In fact, it'll be the exact opposite.

JAY: Well, back up a step, because if you go into the recent crisis, ... the amount of consumer debt as a result of lack of real wages and real demand is, I've always understood, is one of the underlying reasons for the crisis. You create this bubble, but it's based on artificial debt. So if you take out even more consuming power by driving down wages, you take out even more consuming power by cutting unemployment insurance, you take out even more consuming power by various new kinds of taxes they're even talking about in terms of consumer taxes, so don't they actually exacerbate the problem, exacerbate the crisis? You're saying they want to.