Super Imperialism. The Economic Strategy of American Empire. Third Edition

Michael Hudson has been a voice in the wind since the first Edition of Super Imperialism in 1973.. He has been blackballed, ridiculed & ostracized by mainstream economists. Why? Because he challenged conventional wisdom that Balance of Payments deficits were an anomaly & then later in history as "natural" .. Pure garbage. Wall street has gained the upper hand by maintaining the dollar as the world reserve currency. Hudson emphasizes the military nature of propping up the dollar. What he means by "Super" in Super Imperialism is the fact that Central Banks & Sovereign Wealth funds have absorbed inflationary US Treasury bonds/bills i.e., tribute has been paid by foreigners for the US to maintain global hegemon status while artificially propping up the domestic economy. Interestingly, the "09" August/September Issue of Foreign Affairs frankly discusses issues which Hudson has been writing about for 40 years. A whole subsection of economic thought could be based on Hudson's research. I highly recommend MH's website.... view his curriculum vitae/working papers etc to gain further insights.

I have searched hard to find a book that would help me understand today's credit crisis. Although I have found many good ones this is absolutely the best. It is a history the economic relationships between the US and the rest of the world in the 20th century, with the greatest attention given to the period between 1950 and 1974. These years laid the basis for the current form of economic domination of the world by the US, by establishing the principle that the US would not pay its debts except by selling more treasury bonds to its debtors. This has eventually led to the present 9 trillion dollar US debt, much of it held by foreign countries, including my own. The unsolved mystery is why the world allows this situation to continue, but Hudson hints at some answers. It is in these hints that I have found the most interesting ideas about how to understand the present situation. The book is difficult to read and poorly edited, but well worth the effort. Don't hope to read it in a hurry, because it is dense. I have read it twice already and will read it some more before I can feel I have squeezed all the juice out of it.

A remarkable work. It functions as both a novel theory of imperialism and a 20th century history of international finance. The two converge as Hudson shows how the former evolves from the latter, thereby elevating the US to a position economically and militarily astride the rest of the globe. Anyone who senses that behind the comforting rhetoric of Free World and Democracy, an aggressive empire lurks with contours and mechanisms unlike previous ones, should pick up the book. This second edition updates developments through 2002 and includes a fresh Introduction and Preface. It may be helpful to note that at the rather basic text-book level Hudson doesn't fill in the blanks. A familiarity with the rudimentary mechanics of international finance is assumed from the outset. Nonetheless, the prose remains accessible and the train of thought clearly stated, no minor accomplishments for a work of this sort. Moreover, I'm glad this new updated edition dispensed with Mc Carthy's Introduction to the previous edition, which needlessly entangled Super Imperialism in the tangential Marxian tradition. (Unfortunately reviewer Saltillo has responded to the older edition which may cause unnecessary confusion to review readers.) Also, the Preface and Introduction to the new edition effectively summarize the text, such that those wishing to absorb the main points without the details can stick with these prefatory sections. One note of caution. Super imperialism treats international financial policy as a purely governmental affair apart from private individuals, organizations, or special interests. This exclusive focus produces an impression of the state as an independent and autonomous entity, acting separately from the private interests surrounding it. Whether or not this is an accurate portrayal remains an open question. I don't fault the book for not addressing this basically Marxian issue; Hudson's correct in keeping a tight focus on governmental agency such that the contours of his theory can emerge. Nonetheless, a follow-up might profitably examine what connections there are. Be that as it may, the new edition stands as a welcome update to the older, seminal edition, and given recent dollar developments, is now timelier than ever.

Hudson's historical argument in this book is both brilliant and sometimes a bit rough. Hudson has always had a great talent for interpreting and sketching out for weaker minds like us what the US government's abandonment of the gold-standard really means. When Hudson came forward with his thesis in the mid 1970's, his thesis was outrageous among orthodox economists: to suggest that the US should be worried about the long-term consequences of running balance of payments deficits year after year, decade after decade was crazy leftist nonsense in the 1970s. As long as people continue to need the US markets more than the US needs any other one country's markets (and people still have faith in the good credit of the US government) there is no reason US could not run balance of payment deficits forever, according to the conventional wisdom. What amazes me is that now, after having done exactly what Hudson warned the US government not to do in the 1970s, many otherwise relatively orthodox economists are beginning to worry about this. Hudson may be on the more "sky-is-falling" end of things, but his analysis was right on the nail in 1972 and is still there today: worst case scenario - massive recession and massive devaluation of the dollar (by massive I mean, unprecedented). Former US Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin was quoted in March 16, 2006 WSJ as saying that "The probabilities are extremely high that if we don't address these imbalances, then at some point, and it could be years down the road, we'll pay a very big price." We are in a limbo world where no one really knows how this problem is going to play out, but Hudson should be credited for being one of the first, and longest-running, advocates for addressing this problem. Too bad it has taken so many decades for people to recognize what he has been telling us all along about balance of payments deficits. The rest of the argument Hudson makes in this book is a bit tough to follow, though. Essentially, Hudson attempts to show how the US has, during this century but especially since WWII, systematically sought to manipulate all of the great economic institution-building opportunities following WWII to advance the interests of the US over other countries. Coming off the gold standard and running up a balance of payments deficit was just one of many ways in which this occurred. The US largely succeeded. The GATT (now WTO), World Bank, IMF, all bear American "fingerprints". I agree that the mega-institutions of the contemporary world economic and political machine are largely the unilateral creation of the US, imposed on the other great nations at a time when the other nations were particularly vulnerable to US force of will and not particular inclined to be heterodox visionaries. I also agree that the US in general has probably used as much leverage as it could in negotiating all of the defining institutions in which it had any hand in constructing. And yet, how could it have b

This is an excellent book studying the role US debt and the dollar plays in international economics and how it explains the role the US enjoys as world superpower. It is especially relevent today during times of US economic crisis and a collapsing dollar, which is explained and also predicted by Hudson in his book! A must for understanding the historical development of US super power, and how this power may end due to economic polices which are untenable in the long run.