The Progressive Commentary Hour – 02.14.23

Dr. Michael Hudson is one of our nation’s finest and most important economists and Wall Street financial analysts. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has called Michael “the world’s best economist.” He is the President of The Institution for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, and a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri. He was the Chief Economic Policy Advisor for the Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and has served as an adviser to the White House, State and Defense departments and served as an economic advisor to other governments including Iceland, Latvia and China.  Michael has written many books and important papers and articles. His most recent must-read book is “The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism” which explains the reasons for financial crises in the US and other Western nations due to a drainage of income, indebtedness and a collapse of industrialization. His website is Michael-Hudson.com

Scott Ritter is a former major in the US Marine Corp, intelligence officer and military strategist during the Cold War with the Soviet Union and in the Middle East. He served as a lead analyst for Marine deployment during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war. During Operation Desert Storm, Scott was the ballistic missile advisor to General Schwarzkopf. Later he assumed the role of the lead United Nations weapons inspector for seven years overseeing Iraq’s disarmament of its weapons of mass destruction program. He was one of the most forceful critics of the Bush administration’s claims that Sadaam Hussain possessed WMDs. Scott is now an author and lecturer who has been very public about the American media’s misinformation campaign about Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and the gross failures of the Biden White House foreign affairs policies and actions.  He is the author of about ten books dealing with Iraq, Iran and nuclear arms control. His latest book is “Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika” — a definitive history of the INF treaty signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan that Scott was intimately involved with.