> On Mar 26, 2016, at 3:05 PM, Eugene Coyle <e.coyle at me.com> wrote:
>
> The introduction to a post on Counterpunch — a conversation between Michael Hudson and Chris Hedges has the opening remarks pasted here:
>
>> CHRIS HEDGES: We’re going to be discussing a great Ponzi scheme that not only defines not only the U.S. but the global economy, how we got there and where we’re going. And with me to discuss this issue is the economist Michael Hudson, author of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. A professor of economics who worked for many years on Wall Street, where you don’t succeed if you don’t grasp Marx’s dictum that capitalism is about exploitation. And he is also, I should mention, the godson of Leon Trotsky.
>
> That last sentence was a real surprise to me. Can someone elucidate?
Rough translation from the German original (link below):
“Hudson: I was born and raised in Minneapolis, the center of the American labor movement. Minnesota had a governor named Floyd Olson, who wanted capitalism to go to hell. My father was one of the leaders of the American Trotskyists - for which he went to prison. Roosevelt and Stalin had previously agreed that if the American Trotskyists were kept in line, there would be no strikes in wartime. Many exiled comrades from Russia and Europe stayed in our home, including even some who had known Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. As a child I admired them and made up my mind some day to visit the "university of the revolution” - in other words, to go to jail. To my shame, I have to confess that I haven’t yet succeeded. Leo Trotsky was my godfather. Incidentally, the ice picks with which he was assassinated belonged to my aunt. But that's another story.”