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CUNY philosophy professor Peter Simpson, author of “Theocracy’s Challenge” and Political Illiberalism, continues last week’s conversation on “debt traps” and discusses the impending fall of the Western neoliberal empire. Is neoliberalism’s achilles heel its financial system, which rewards rent-extracting parasites (like Wall Street) and discourages investment in real infrastructure and goods and services? Is China eclipsing the West because its public banking system rewards real production? As Michael Hudsonwrites:
“So the question is what kind of financial system are you going to have to back up a central banking system and credit creation? Is credit going to be a public infrastructure enterprise as it is in China, where the banks of China are able to decide who is going to get the loans? A public bank is not going to make corporate takeover loans or loans to corporate raiders. It’s going to make loans to actually increase the tangible economy, not to take it over and turn public infrastructure – the education system, healthcare, transportation and communications – into rent extraction.”