Almost all of the demand for oil that suddenly pushed prices up was speculative demand. People began to speculate not only in stocks and bonds and real estate, but also in commodities. The market went up for old tankers, which were used simply to store oil in. A lot of the oil was simply being stored for trading, not used.
Michael HudsonEvery government, from the Obama administration right through to Angela Merkel, the Eurozone and the IMF, promise to save the banks, not the economy.
Michael HudsonTextbooks don't teach people how to avoid paying any income tax. But that's what an army of tax lawyers and corporate tax accountants do.
Michael HudsonIf you look at payments to labor as a proportion of national income or gross domestic product, you find profits going way up, investment and savings going up.
Michael HudsonMost of these charges that people pay are economically unnecessary. There's no real cost behind them. There's no real value behind them. So, they're what the classical economist called empty pricing. Prices with no real cost value. What they called rent and fictitious capital. Capital claims on junk mortgage borrowers. The pretense is that all these debts can be paid but it's all fictitious, because everybody knows - at least on Wall Street everybody knows - that many debts can't be paid.
Michael Hudson