Steve Keen and Michael Hudson on How Corona Shut Down Turns the US into Oligarchy

Executive Summary

• The Corona shut downs have had the effect of further concentrating wealth.

Introduction

The feature of the Corona shutdowns is covered in the following quotation.

“Keen: To give you an idea, at the beginning of 2020, the level of corporate debt was 74.9 percent of GDP. It was 75.5 in February, 76.6 in March, and 78% in April. So we’ve had this enormous increase in debt of the corporate sector and what’s really going on there I think is people are simply dipping into their lines of credit, their overdrafts, to avoid shutting their doors. So I think when this when we get through this, yes there’s going to be lots of people evicted from their houses – the rent holiday that were given, the mortgage holidays are gonna come back and bite them because it was only a delay, it wasn’t writing off as it should have been during the crisis. We’re also going to have a large level of corporate failures. Hudson: You’re going to have the very large companies benefiting as the small mom and pop stores go out of business. So you’re going to have restaurant chains surviving but not small restaurants. You’re going to have Amazon have an enormous game.

That’s why Amazon stock has been rising so much because you have the small stories going out of business as people are not going shopping. So you’re going to have a huge concentration of wealth and we’re turning into an oligarchy.” – Steve Keen

Source: Michael Hudson

https://michael-hudson.com/2020/12/jubillee-perspectives-with-steve-keen/