Michael Hudson (born March 14, 1939) is an American economist who is Professor of Economics at the University of MissouriâÂÂKansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He is a contributor to The Hudson Report, a weekly economic and financial news podcast produced by Left Out.
Hudson graduated from the University of Chicago (BA, 1959) and New York University (MA, 1965, PhD, 1968) and worked as a balance of payments economist in Chase Manhattan Bank (1964âÂÂ68). He was assistant professor of economics at the New School for Social Research (1969âÂÂ72) and worked for various governmental and non-governmental organizations as an economic consultant (1980sâÂÂ1990s).
Hudson was born on March 14, 1939, in Minneapolis. His father, Nathaniel Carlos Hudson (1908âÂÂ2003), received an MBA from the University of Minnesota in 1929. His father joined the trade union struggle, became an active Trotskyist trade unionist, editor of the Northwest Organizer and The Industrial Organizer, and wrote articles for other trade union publications. When Hudson was three years old, his father was jailed "under the Smith Act for advocating the overthrow of the government through force and violence," according to Hudson. He had been one of the leaders of the Minneapolis general strikes from 1934 to 1936.
Hudson received his primary and secondary education in a private school at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. After his graduation, he entered the University of Chicago with two majors: Germanic philology and history. In 1959, Hudson graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor's degree. After graduation, he worked as an assistant to Jeremy Kaplan at the Free Press in Chicago. He managed to obtain the rights to the English language editions of the works of György Lukács as well as the rights to the archives and works of Leon Trotsky after the death of Trotsky's widow, Natalia Sedova.
Hudson found work at the publishing house neither interesting nor profitable. Hudson, who had studied music from his childhood, moved to New York in 1960 in hopes of becoming a pupil of the conductor Dimitris Mitropoulos, but these plans were not to be realized.
Hudson's childhood best friend was Gavin MacFadyen, later a documentary film maker, founder in London of the Centre for Investigative Journalism and director of WikiLeaks. MacFadyen had introduced Hudson to Terence McCarthy who was an Irish communist and was the translator of Marx's Theories of Surplus Value. McCarthy became his mentor.
In 1961, Hudson enrolled in the Economics Department of New York University. His master's thesis was devoted to the development philosophy of the World Bank with special attention to credit policy in the agricultural sector. In 1964, after Hudson received his master's degree in economics, he joined Chase Manhattan Bank's economics research department as a balance of payments specialist.
Hudson left his job at the bank to complete his doctoral dissertation. His thesis was about US economic and technological thought in the 19th century. He defended it in 1968 and in 1975 published it under the title Economics and Technology in 19th Century American Thought: The Neglected American Economists.
In 1968, Hudson joined the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. In 1972, Hudson moved to the Hudson Institute headed by Herman Kahn. In 1979, he became an advisor to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).
In the mid-1990s, Hudson became a professor of economics at the University of MissouriâÂÂKansas City and a fellow at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. , Hudson was the director of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term economic Trends (ISLET) and the Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of MissouriâÂÂKansas City.
Hudson is the author of several books, among them the following:
Hudson has appeared in several documentaries, including the following: