Ben Norton, April 21, 2026, " US Economy is Based on a Ponzi Scheme," interview of March 16, 2026, published on April 21.
Is another financial crisis brewing in the US economy ? Economist Michael Hudson explains the dangers." Reports suggest the US economy may be on the verge of another financial crisis, with major problems in the $3 trillion private credit market. Economist Michael Hudson explains the dangers of Wall Street's Ponzi schemes.
There are growing signs that the United States may be on the verge of another major financial crisis, one that could start in the private credit market, which is already seeing significant turmoil, before spreading to other sectors.
Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton interviewed economist Michael Hudson to discuss the serious problems on Wall Street. Hudson warned that the US economy is built on a Ponzi scheme that depends on continuing to pour money into a bloated, bubbly financial system based on unsustainable speculation, not industrial production.
(Introduction)
BEN NORTON: There are more and more signs that we may be on the precipice of another major financial crisis.
The former CEO of the Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs warned in an interview on Bloomberg that he can smell another financial crisis on the horizon. Where exactly could this crisis come from ? Well, some financial analysts are worried about the private credit industry in the US.
This has exploded in recent years, because after the 2008 crash, banks were more heavily regulated. So more and more firms on Wall Street began to lend to private companies, and the private credit industry ballooned.
It is now a $3 trillion industry, yet it is not regulated. And many of these private credit firms have given bad loans to bad companies that are now defaulting.
We published a short video explaining the issue with the private credit industry and the fears of a new financial crisis. However, that video is just a brief introduction to the problem.
I thought it would be important to go into further detail explaining the very real danger here. And I thought the perfect guest to interview to help us understand this would be the economist Michael Hudson.
Michael is the author of many books, including Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy.
So here we're going to play some highlights of our interview, and then we'll go straight to the discussion.
(Highlights)
MICHAEL HUDSON: You then begin to have private capital take over companies and make money by essentially looting them.
Thames Water in England is typical how you loot a company. Hospitals, for instance, were a target of these private equity companies.
Private equity proceeded to bankrupt whole swaths of the American economy. And, new word was added to the English language: enshittification — just cutting back the quality of what companies were doing, slashing expenses, working labor harder, making them work overtime.
...
So the financial system has been turned into a predatory system. And all of this enormous growth in financial wealth since 2009 has accrued to the financial and real-estate sector, dominated by the wealthiest 10% of the population.
40% of the American population doesn't have any savings at all. They're living on the brink.
And now the costs are going up. They're having to fall further and further behind on their credit-card debt, their personal debt, their automobile debt, student loans especially....But as long as the credit-card companies will lend the consumers the money, the credit, to remain current on their obligations, and not have to pay penalty fees, then you're going to be able to keep the Ponzi scheme going.
A Ponzi scheme is you need more and more money paid into it to keep the exponential growth rate growing.
Read the full article at Ben Norton.
Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash