To unpack the confusion around the push for state-based vs federal programs, it’s necessary to understand the race to the bottom. So this is where Steve Grumbine begins his interview with Bill Black and Fadhel Kaboub. The inequities among the Eurozone nations have their parallel in the US. At both the global and national levels, the race to the bottom affects labor standards, environmental regulations, tax rates, and basic services. To understand this, we always turn to the MMT explanation of th...
Jun 12, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 124
If you’re a crypto-phobe, or simply bored by fintech and all those “coins,” don’t let it stop you from listening to this episode. Rohan Grey places these topics within the context of our history, political economy, the law, MMT, policy, and today’s progressive movement. The fact that technology changes the world is nothing new. It affects everything. You can look across history and say, look, it mattered when we created the written word and stopped building societies around oral communities wher...
Jun 05, 2021•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 123
Professor Bill Mitchell was our very first guest on Macro N Cheese, and now here he is, 122 weeks later. Episode #1 was Putting the T in MMT . This week Steve asks him to discuss the single policy prescription at the core of MMT - the Federal Job Guarantee. The discussion goes into the parameters and nuance of the FJG and the pitfalls of a Universal Basic Income as a competing possibility. Bill asserts that implementing a UBI to deal with unemployment and poverty would be capitulating to the neo...
May 29, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 122
Steve Keen can be counted on to bring a unique and controversial perspective. This time he turns his critical gaze toward what some feel is sacred in Marx’s legacy. The interview takes a dive into complex theory, which we won’t even attempt to summarize here. Keen says Marx’s philosophical thinking ultimately transcended his own labor theory of value which asserts that all surplus value derives solely from labor. In the Grundrisse, he acknowledges the role of machinery in the production process ...
May 22, 2021•55 min•Ep. 121
Mike Figueredo and Steve Grumbine have a lot in common. Both are on a journey toward radicalization. Both recognize the importance of MMT in this process. Steve was recently Mike’s guest on The Humanist Report in an episode that was part MMT primer and part discussion of their mutual anti-capitalist awakening. This week, Mike comes to us. When we activists and non-economists first learn MMT, we experience a chain reaction as one shibboleth after another is toppled. The insights strike us as both...
May 15, 2021•59 min•Ep. 120
Robert Hockett is back to share his irrepressible optimism as he and Steve review Biden’s first 100 days. They both admit the administration has done more than they expected, but then again, they weren’t expecting much. When Pramila Jayapal awarded the president an A, she must have been grading on a curve. Bob isn’t confident predicting what the coming months will bring, but he expresses both his hopes and fears around a number of issues. How will Biden navigate the shoals of very shallow Democr...
May 08, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 119
This week our guest is the fearless Jen Perelman, host of JENerational Change and recent challenger to establishment sweetheart Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Jen and Steve have a genial conversation about electoral politics, revolutionary action, and the path forward. Jen talks about her campaign against the notorious DWS, and how inherently flawed and exclusionary our current political framework is. We will never vote our way to revolution. Significant change will only be born of a huge labor movem...
May 01, 2021•53 min•Ep. 118
This week, Kirsten Mullen and Sandy Darity join Steve to talk about their book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century . In recent years the debate on reparations has gained some momentum, though not for the first time, as Mullen and Darity point out. “40 acres and a mule” was among the first promises made (and broken) to black Americans since the end of the Civil War. While white families benefited from the homestead act and have continued to receive a...
Apr 24, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 117
This week, Steve catches up with Brian Romanchuk to talk about his latest book, Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery . Brian was last on in episode 16, two years ago. A lot has happened since then. From his blog, Bond Economics: This book discusses the causes of slow growth in the developed world after the early 1990s from a Modern Monetary Theory perspective. Policy proposals from MMT proponents that aim to rejuvenate the labor market without causing a resurgence of inflation will be examine...
Apr 17, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 116
Even a very dysfunctional system is beneficial to somebody. And that's the reason why changing course is difficult. Economist Marco Cattaneo joins us this week to talk about “fiscal currency” and how it could provide a partial solution to the economies that haven’t fared so well from the adoption of the euro, the currency being used by 19 of the 27 countries of the European Union. The shared single currency has proven to be too strong for some and too weak for others, making it difficult to set ...
Apr 10, 2021•58 min•Ep. 115
Steve Grumbine welcomes the uncompromising and incorruptible Richard Bowen to the studio to discuss the intricate web of deception and fraud more commonly known as our private banking system. Having been at Citigroup during the mortgage crisis, he had an insider’s eye view of the stranglehold the large banks have on our country. The financial services industry is one of the largest contributors to political campaigns and there’s a revolving door between the regulatory agencies and the institutio...
Apr 03, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 114
Real Progressives recently created a series on fraud and the great financial crisis. To further understand the economic underpinnings of 2008 and other financial crises, Steve turned to Eric Tymoigne, inviting him on to talk about the book he co-authored with Randall Wray, The Rise and Fall of Money Manager Capitalism: Minsky's Half-Century from World War Two to the Great Recession . Alan Greenspan called the financial crisis a “once in a century tsunami,” a huge shock that occurred to the syste...
Mar 27, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 113
At the start of the pandemic, Thomas Fazi wrote an article entitled “Could COVID-19 Vanquish Neoliberalism?” It was in response to the optimistic analysis, especially coming from the left who saw in the state’s reaction a deep crisis of neoliberalism. In fact, some were predicting the death of neoliberalism and the rise of a new regime, one characterized by greater state intervention and greater state regulation of markets, more active fiscal policies and greater attention to the needs of societ...
Mar 20, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 112
This week Steve talks with Dan Kovalik, a labor and human rights lawyer, who recently wrote a book aptly titled Cancel This Book . The episode is more conversation than interview; Dan and Steve both have a lot to say about cancel culture. Dan tells the story of Molly Rush, an 85-year-old peace activist who once served time in jail for participating in a protest at a nuclear bombsite with the Berrigan brothers. Molly went on to help found the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, one of the oldest ...
Mar 13, 2021•56 min•Ep. 111
This week Steve talks with Arthur Wilmarth, fresh off his appearance in our current series, The New Untouchables: The Pecora Files , which dovetails neatly into the subject of Art’s latest book, Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act. Art takes us through the original Glass-Steagall, adopted at the start of the Roosevelt administration as an early part of the New Deal when it became clear that allowing banks to get into the securities business and sell high-risk securities to...
Mar 06, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 110
In this extra edition of Macro N Cheese, Steve talks with Romteen Farasat, Incident Commander of Austin Needs Water. We all saw the news photos of Texas under a blanket of snow and ice. The freeze occurred the night of February 14th, yet two weeks later, people are still living without water. Public water has returned but private water lines are still off. They serve apartment buildings and housing complexes, so tens of thousands of residents are still going without. When government fails to ste...
Mar 03, 2021•15 min•Ep. 109
This week Steve talks with Linwood Tauheed, someone we’ve heard about from several of our recent guests. Dr. Tauheed is an institutionalist economist; he looks at the economy not as a macroeconomy or a microeconomy, but as an economy that's founded on institutions. Beyond the economy, or perhaps intertwined with it, institutional frameworks enable and constrain all parts of social life. They are sometimes the unconscious or conscious ideas that structure the way ordinary people live their lives....
Feb 27, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 109
The last time Delman Coates was a guest on Macro N Cheese, the Our Money campaign was still fairly new, this podcast was on its 20th episode, and none of us had heard of COVID-19. Now, almost two years and 100 episodes later, it was long overdue for him and Steve to get together again. Delman believes the federal response to the pandemic has been an eye-opener. People saw the government use the public purse to provide economic stimulus. New money was created through deficit spending without the ...
Feb 20, 2021•58 min•Ep. 108
From his days at TYT to his ground-breaking investigative work at Status Coup, Jordan Chariton has been on the front lines of journalism for years. The stories he covers should be plastered all over cable news and the national publications… but they aren’t. While the mainstream is obsessed with impeachment and a newly-elected Republican who follows QAnon, Jordan has been reporting on the tragedies and travesties being visited upon American communities far from Washington, DC. From Flint’s poison...
Feb 13, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 107
We at Macro N Cheese are big fans of Black Agenda Report because of their clear, no-bullshit analysis and their global perspective. This week’s guest does not disappoint. Danny Haiphong is a contributing editor of BAR, co-host of The Left Lens, and co-author of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News―From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. Danny describes austerity as the assault on the rights and well-being of working people. It has been normaliz...
Feb 06, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 106
We’ve had several episodes on Brexit, but this is the first time we’re talking about it with a Scottish nationalist. Kairin Van Sweeden is the executive director of Modern Money Scotland and works with the SNP, the Scottish National Party. Joining the union was forced upon the Scottish people in 1707 against the wishes of the majority. With the seat of government and economic power concentrated in London, the needs of Scotland are not a priority in the UK. Despite the continual growth of the ind...
Jan 30, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 105
Recently our friend Bill Black introduced us to June Carbone. He suggested she could tell us how the job guarantee fits into cutting edge research on the family. June holds the Robina Chair in Law, Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota Law School and writes about the intersection of family, the economy, and politics. In this episode, June takes Steve through the evolution of the American family as it transitioned to meet the economic needs of modern society. She says what excites...
Jan 23, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 104
What can we say about the job guarantee that hasn’t already been said? Quite a bit, actually, as you’ll see in this and upcoming episodes. This week Fadhel Kaboub is talking to a mellower Steve, fresh from the hospital and still on the mend from Covid19. Fadhel begins with the reality that capitalism is a brutal system that constantly leaves people behind. It’s driven by technological change, and as this develops, we require some workers with new skill sets, while others are rendered virtually o...
Jan 16, 2021•59 min•Ep. 103
Steve Grumbine has been in the hospital with Covid-19 complicated by pneumonia. We’re encouraged by his progress and expect to have him back in the saddle soon. Since he was unable to record a new interview this week, we’re reviving a 2017 conversation he had with Patricia Pino from the UK. Our listeners know her as co-host of the MMT Podcast, but this was recorded several months before that project was launched. It’s amusing to revisit the past, comparing ourselves then and now. In 2017 Steve w...
Jan 09, 2021•48 min•Ep. 102
Happy New Year! Welcome to our first episode of 2021. Among ourselves, we on the Macro N Cheese team often debate (argue) whether it’s possible to achieve our economic and political goals under the present system. We’re as susceptible to discouragement and despair as anyone else. This is why we love a guest like Emma Caterine whose optimism is rooted in experience and realism. Emma’s message for 2021 is “organize!” To begin with, we must address the isolation that people are feeling while in the...
Jan 02, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 101
Happy 100th! To our supporters, both old and new,Thank you for making this podcast a success exceeding our expectations. For the story of Macro N Cheese and our 100th episode, please check out the “Extras” section on the episode web page. realprogressives.org/podcast_episode/episode-100-flying-with-sara-nelson * * * * * Sara Nelson is a labor leader with MMT bullets in her bandolier. She’s practical, wise, and filled with compassion for the workers she represents and those she doesn’t. She joins...
Dec 26, 2020•58 min•Ep. 100
Are you listening to Macro N Cheese on our website? If not, you’re missing the transcript and extra content that accompany each episode. This week we welcome Professor Steve Keen for his third visit to the podcast. He talks to us about the need for a debt jubilee, rising from the insanity of orthodox economics and the very real consequences attached to that paradigm. There's this belief which is promulgated by mainstream economics. If you read a text like Mankiw, for example, you'll find a state...
Dec 19, 2020•53 min•Ep. 99
This week, Randy Wray joins us for his fifth Macro N Cheese episode. As always, he brings loads of useful insights and factual information, both historical and of the moment. While cable news and Democratic social media are jubilant with the ouster of Donald Trump, we know it’s a hollow victory. There’s nothing to celebrate. Randy and Steve look at the sobering facts. We stand on the precipice of country-wide evictions and mortgage foreclosures. Many jobs and businesses are lost forever. The opt...
Dec 12, 2020•54 min•Ep. 98
You don’t have to be a Marxist to know the vital importance of labor. Workers hold the key to social change. They keep us fed, clothed, and provided for; they’re the only force with actual leverage over the ruling class. No wonder unions are such a threat. Joe Burns isn’t just a labor lawyer and negotiator, he’s a student of labor history. He joins us to talk about the past, present, and future of the movement. For the challenges faced today, it is instructional to look back. For example, the gi...
Dec 05, 2020•54 min•Ep. 97
When Steve Mnuchin announced a clawback of the CARES Act, the liberal media wasted no time before launching condemnations. Among our friends in the MMT community, wiser heads prevailed. Make no mistake, nobody denies Mnuchin is the Grinch who stole Christmas. But like a magic eye picture, if you change your focus slightly, a different image will form. This week, our friend, Robert Hockett, joins us to tell us why Mnuchin’s announcement can be seen as a gift in our stocking, not a lump of coal. O...
Nov 28, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 96
