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Yves here. This is another tour de force from Michael Hudson, derived from a paper he presented in early January at the UPRE session during the annual ASSA meeting. This time he turns from his recent focus on the economically destructive but oligarchy-advancing practice of sanctifying debt to another favorite topic, the evolution of capitalism. Hudson looks from the early Industrial Revolution onward and demonstrates that the dominance of financial capital over industrial capital was neither the likely course of events nor desirable. A major feature of this development is the increasing weight of rentier activities and how they drain income from workers and more productive sectors. ....