HUDSON: Well, the terms on which the IMF make loans, first of all, are based on austerity. The terms require more austerity and a withdrawal of all the public subsidies. Now you have Ukrainian population absolutely devastated. The only result of the IMF's austerity a program that--the conditions that it's laying down for making loans to Ukraine is you have to repay the debts. But you don't have the ability to repay their debts. So there's only one way to do it, and that's the way that we've told Greece and other countries to do: you have to begin selling off whatever you have left of your public domain, or you have to have your meeting oligarchs take on partnerships with American or European investors, so that they can buy out into the monopolies in the Ukraine. So, essentially, the IMF has a two-stage one-two punch. The punch number one is: here's the money; now you have to repay us after cutting back public spending and causing a depression. The two punch is: oh, you can't pay us? I'm sorry that all of our projections are wrong. And the IMF has been wrong on Ukraine year after year, almost as much as it's been wrong on Ireland and on Greece.

So now the real problem is: what is Ukraine going to have to sell off to pay the foreign debts that it gets for having waged the war that's devastated the economy? Well, the main things that the foreign investors want are Ukrainian farmland. Monsanto has been buying into Ukraine. But Ukraine has a law against alienating its farmland and agricultural land to foreigners. And a matter of fact, its law is very much the same as what the Financial Times reports that Australia is wanting to do today, to block Chinese and American purchase of farmlands. The IMF's position is you have to dismantle public regulations against foreign investment and you have to dismantle consumer production and environmental protection regulations. So, in other words, what is in store for Ukraine is a neoliberal policy that's guaranteed to actually make it even worse. And in that sense, finance is war, finance is the new kind of warfare using finance and forced selloffs in the IMF is a new kind of battlefield. So I'm not sure how all of this is going to really help Ukraine, and it promises to lead to yet another crisis down the road very, very quickly.

PERIES: Michael, let's unpack the debt of this crisis. Now, the war has led Ukraine into a deeper crisis. Talk about the devastation that has caused and what they have to manage in addition to what the IMF is trying to impose on it.

HUDSON: Well, when Kiev went to war against Eastern Ukraine, it fought primarily the coal mining region and the export region. Thirty-eight percent of Ukraine's exports are to Russia. And yet this was the--the export capacity has been bombed out of existence. And, in fact, the electric companies that fuel the electricity to the coal mines been bombed out. So Ukraine can't even supply itself with coal.

Now, that's very--what is so striking about all this is that just a few weeks ago, on January 28, Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said the IMF does not make loans to countries that are engaged in war. That would be funding one side or another. And yet Ukraine is involved in a civil war.

And also the IMF articles of agreement say that it cannot make loans to an insolvent country. So how on earth can the IMF be part of a loan bailout for the Ukraine if, number one, it's at war, the war has to stop totally; number two, it's insolvent? The only solution is that Ukraine will somehow scale back its debts to private investors. And that means a lot of contrary hedge funds investors.

So, again, the Financial Times today has an article showing that an American investor has $7 billion of Ukraine debts and wants to speculate in it. How is Ukraine going to treat the speculators? And then, finally, how is the IMF going to treat the fact that Russia's sovereign fund lent 3 billion euros to the Ukraine on harsh terms through the London agreement terms that can't be written down? Is the IMF going to insist that Russia take the same haircut that it's imposing on the hedge funds? All of this is going to be the kind of conflict that's going to take much more effort than even the solutions that we've seen over the last few days have taken on the military battlefront.

PERIES: And so how could Ukraine imagine getting out of this crisis?

HUDSON: It imagines it'll get out of the crisis by the West giving it $50 billion and saying, here's all the money you need, spend it as you want. That's the extent of its imagination. This is fantasy. It's living in a dream world, except that a few weeks ago, George Soros came out in The New York Review of Books and said, give Ukraine $50 billion and look at it as a down payment on military or with Russia. Well, immediately Kiev said, yes, we will only spend them on defensive arms. We will defend Ukraine all the way up to Siberia as we wipe out the Russians.

Today, yet another Financial Times article said, yes, give Ukraine the 50 billion that George Soros asked for. We've got to enable it to have enough money that it can fight America's war against Russia. And the Europeans are saying, wait a minute, not only at the end of this, but there'll be no more Ukrainians to fight, but the war is going to spread into Poland and into elsewhere, because if the money that's given to Ukraine is really for what the Obama administration and Hillary and Soros are all pressing for to go to war with Russia, then Russia's going to say, okay, if we're being attacked by foreign troops, we're going to have to not only bomb the troops, but the airports are coming in, the railway stations are coming in. We're going to extended towards Europe. And apparently there are reports that Putin told Europe, look, you have two choices before you. The one choice: Europe, Germany, and Russia can be a very prosperous area. With Russia's raw materials and European technology, we can be the most prosperous area in the world. Or you can go to war with us and you can be wiped out. Take your choice.

there'll be no more Ukrainians to fight, but the war is going to spread into Poland and into elsewhere

FLASSBECK: Yeah, that's a wonderful example, because 20 percent is exactly something--what is needed, depending on your productivity. But let me take the example of France. You'll see France is much more important than Greece. Everybody is focusing on Greece, but the real problem is France. France did everything right. France had a productivity increase of 1.5 percent. French wages increase increased by 3.5 percent. So the difference was exactly the 2 percent inflation target. And so France was perfect. But France is in the same difficulties as Greece--in principle not has acute, but in principle they have a huge gap with Germany in terms of competitiveness. Why? Well, because German productivity was also 1.5 percent, but German nominal wages only increased by 1.5 percent and not by 3.5 percent like in France. So they did nothing, they did everything right, but they're in trouble anyway. And this is where the unfairness comes in and where it is absolutely clear that if you do not tackle this root problem of the currency union, it was not tackled in the first ten years. But if you don't tackle it now, then you will never find a solution for the Eurozone. Forget about Greece. If France and Italy have to do the same thing as Greece did, it goes through a Great Depression. Could you imagine what it means politically? It will be a disaster. It will not be a radical left-wing government that comes to power in France, but a right-wing, and in Italy also.

JAY: Now, you talk about the difference in the wage levels. But how did Germany keep wages down? Is not like it's a state-run economy. I mean, why couldn't the German workers fight for higher wages?

FLASSBECK: Well, this is easily explained. It was, first of all, in agreement. In Germany we have a long tradition of having tripartite negotiations or agreements between the government, the employers, and the unions on wages. So that was the first step, that it was an agreement where everybody agreed that now we have to, so to say, keep our wages low to reduce unemployment, and nobody thought about the currency union. It was only by chance that the currency union started exactly at that moment of time.

And then the second step was that indeed the right-wing government passed a lot of legislation that weakened the unions dramatically. And this package of legislations are not one measure, but ten, 20 measures that all weakened the negotiating power of the unions, all in the attempt to reduce unemployment in Germany. But what nobody thought about: that this is the classical begger thy neighbor policy for the rest of the European Union and for the rest of the world. Don't forget the United States. The United States have a permanent, huge deficit with Germany, because Germany is hidden, so to say, is protected by the low value of the euro. So if there would not be euro, then clearly the D mark would appreciate against the dollar. But with the low euro, the euro is, so to say, the average of weaker countries and stronger countries. Germany has a wonderful, wonderful goal to increase its surplus with United States and begger the neighbors, because it's absolutely clear that the country that is increasing its current account surplus all the time--and it did so for the last ten, 15 years--this country has huge absolute advantage from international trade, where all its trading partners have negative effect. It's not trade as something that helps everyone; if there is absolute advantages through rising current account surpluses in one country, the other countries have negative contribution from trade. And then the whole idea of free trade is useless and the whole negotiations about TTIP, this agreement between Europe and Germany, is absolutely useless. And I saw it was now discussed in the United States and Congress, and rightly so, if there is no clear idea about the exchange rates.

JAY: So, I mean, does this mean the Eurozone really doesn't make any sense, that as long as you've got these different nation-states and at heart they really are competitive--how can they exist within the same monetary union?

FLASSBECK: It could have made sense. You see, if everybody would have obeyed to this rule that I mentioned, wages in line with national productivity, plus commonly agreed inflation target, well, it would have been a nice idea. But if one country goes for a totally mercantilist approach, then there is no chance to make sense of it. Then there is no way to bring it back, or it's very difficult to bring it back, because the other countries would need absolute cuts in wages. But absolute cuts in wages lead to deflation. So if Germany is not moving, nothing will happen. And that is why the book Against the Troika, the German title of it is Only Germany Can Save the Euro--nobody else.

JAY: And doesn't seem like they're--at least when it comes to Greece--are so intended. In fact, they have this counsel of what they call wise men, these group of economists who issued a statement--I think it was today--apparently saying, let Greece go, we'll be better off, the better defense of the Eurozone is actually to let Greece go.

FLASSBECK: Yeah. Well, these people are stupid. You know, I do not not even think about them. This is a club of extremely radical conservative economists with no clue about the world and all the important relationships in this world. So don't even--ignore it.

But what is really dramatic is the collective denial of Germany's position in the currency union from the very beginning. In Germany we have--in the mass media and the important media, everybody's trying to defend the German position along the lines--all the others are wrong, only Germany got it right from the very beginning. And this is a disaster. You know, if a society that is now living in a--has a democracy for more than 50 years and understands itself as an open society, as an open society where everybody can discuss freely everything, and then you see that you have such a collective denial of a very simple fact, then really it's getting critical, and then many people are really frustrated about this.