Dr. Fadhel Kaboub was recently appointed Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC), an international intergovernmental organisation founded by countries from across the Global South. In honor of Fadhel’s new position, we’re releasing Steve’s very first interview with him from back in the day when we live streamed onto Facebook. Steve thinks his questions are very different today — more disciplined. Some of us can’t get over how you...
Mar 04, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 214
Historian Harvey J. Kaye joins Steve to talk about the complicated legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Kaye acknowledges many points in our criticism of FDR but goes on to discuss what Roosevelt was up against, and why he should be respected. “Because Gramsci, I think it was, said, when you judge the past, don't forget, you too shall be judged. I'm paraphrasing … When socialists start winning elections, then they can start telling me about how inadequate FDR was.” Them’s fighting words! But spe...
Feb 25, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 213
Recent episodes of this podcast have looked at the many ways in which the US attempts to maintain global hegemony through the deep state, the banking system, NATO, and the unholy trinity of the IMF, WTO, and World Bank. This week, Steve talks with Daniel Conceição about the possibility of a supranational currency for Brazil and Argentina. Daniel points out some potential benefits, but it’s hard to avoid comparisons to the Eurozone and the crippling loss of monetary sovereignty. Nevertheless , if...
Feb 18, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 212
We revere venture capitalists, don’t we? Without their brave acts of derring-do — AKA investing in uncertain ventures — how would society achieve progress? Just kidding. If you are a regular listener to this podcast, you’ve heard guests speak about the horizontal contradictions within the ruling class. Industrial capital and finance capital can each be affected differently by foreign, domestic, fiscal, and monetary policies. They may sing from the same hymn book but sometimes their interests div...
Feb 11, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 211
If Macro N Cheese wasn’t committed to spreading MMT to the activist community, we might have been a history podcast. Nothing excites Steve Grumbine as much as listening to 50 hours of lectures on the French Revolution or the Black Plague. This week’s guest, Aaron Good, checks a lot of our boxes. What he brings to the table is history with a solid class analysis. Aaron is the author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State . American exception should not be confused with American exceptio...
Feb 04, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 210
When you realize the national debt is little more than a bunch of interest-bearing savings accounts, you will have effectively neutered the politicians and pundits who wield it like a weapon to keep the people in line and tame the working class. Every year in the US, the debt ceiling alarm is rung right on schedule. Just like Halloween. Interest-bearing Treasury bills are not available to most of us. (Do you have an account with the Federal Reserve? No? Exactly.) Rohan Grey is back to explain ho...
Jan 28, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 209
In September, Real Progressives had a webinar with Michael Hudson. It gave our volunteers the opportunity to ask him about his book, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism . This week’s podcast brings you the audio of that event. Although his book looks at three economic philosophies, the Q & A focused on contrasting the dynamics of finance capitalism and industrial capitalism. Michael makes the case that in its early days industrial capitalism p...
Jan 21, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 208
Rohan Grey always uses cool cultural references. Six minutes into the episode he brings up Tintin. Later we hear about Wile E. Coyote, Star Trek, Teletubbies and Wagnerian opera. The Tintin tale concerns a treasure hunt that required Tintin to find three maps; only when they were overlaid could he see the location of the treasure. Rohan Grey relates this to the critical juncture of law, political economy, and technology. He reviews the relationship of all three throughout the history of money. R...
Jan 14, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 207
When you Google John Kiriakou, the descriptive label that pops up with his name is Whistleblower. John was an analyst and case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency during the anti-communist era and then the anti-terrorist era. (Where did all the communists go? Aren’t they a threat anymore? Were they ever? Those will have to be questions for another day.) He is also an author, activist, and co-host of Political Misfits on Radio Sputnik. He and Michelle Witte regularly have Steve on their s...
Jan 07, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 206
**Happy New Year from Real Progressives and Macro N Cheese. If you would like to help us continue to bring you great content, please consider becoming a monthly sponsor at patreon.com/realprogressives. Your contributions help pay for the tech platforms and equipment that keep this podcast alive.** This week’s episode is the recording of a recent RP Live webinar with Brett Scott, author of Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets. In terms of its politics, the digital money mo...
Dec 31, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 205
All digital currency is not created equal. Its technology can potentially be used as a force for good or a force of evil. Robert Hockett joins Steve to discuss both. Let’s start with the evil. The collapse of FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, is still sending shock waves through the mainstream and financial media. It seems that only MMTers are unsurprised by it or the chain reaction, as other crypto schemes are tumbling apace. Bob describes how the collapse follows the same patte...
Dec 24, 2022•51 min•Ep. 204
**After the episode, visit our “Extras” page where you’ll find links to Bill Mitchell’s blog, books, MMT education course, and more. Every episode of this podcast is also accompanied by a full transcript. realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/** Usually when Steve and his guests talk about culture, they’re referring to that of neoliberalism. As Scott Ferguson says, neoliberalism isn’t just enmeshed in our popular and esthetic culture; it is our culture. “There’s no enmeshing; it IS neolibe...
Dec 17, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 203
Clint Ballinger is an economic geographer, a path he followed in search of answers to what he calls fundamental questions of political economy. Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in England and western Europe? What is the reason for the radically uneven distribution—radically unequal material well-being—around the world? It exists not only between countries, but within countries. As listeners to this podcast know, economics departments aren’t teaching this stuff. Modern economists take mone...
Dec 10, 2022•50 min•Ep. 202
** Check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese on the Real Progressives website. This week’s episode looks at using a recently developed economic model application developed by frequent Macro N Cheese guest, Steve Keen. The software is aptly named “Minsky” and Steve Grumbine’s guest, Tyrone Keynes, is an experienced user of the Minsky software modelling tool. Tyrone is a consultant whose specialties are economics, health, and ecological modelling systems. Steve and Tyro...
Dec 03, 2022•57 min•Ep. 201
**Thank you to our listeners! Can you believe this is our 200th episode? Crazy, right? Well, it wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of a dedicated team. Our sound editor and engineer, Andy Kennedy, has spent thousands of hours (literally) producing these weekly gems. Then there’s the diligent band of copy editors—Brad Sandler, Jonathan Kadmon, Jay Spencer, and yours truly, Virginia Cotts, (plus, in earlier days, Rose Ann Rabiola Miele and Rob Baxter)—who pore over every AI-generated ...
Nov 26, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 200
Steve talks with Thomas Fazi, journalist/writer/translator/socialist. Many of us know him as co-author, with Bill Mitchell, of Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World . A few weeks ago, we had an episode entitled Trussonomics. It was recorded a few weeks after Liz became Prime Minister, and mere days before she got the boot, making her the shortest-serving PM in UK history. Fazi has a different take on the events leading up to Truss’s removal, and sp...
Nov 19, 2022•57 min•Ep. 199
“Austerity is the best weapon they have to try to convince. And if they can't convince, they can't coerce. So in my book, I say austerity plays with a double strategy: coercion and consensus.” Clara Mattei is the author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity & Paved the Way to Fascism , published this month. Steve Grumbine, who uses the Twitter display name “Austerity is murder,” was drawn to her position that austerity is not just bad economic theory prescribing bad economi...
Nov 12, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 198
**Full transcripts of all our episodes are available on the website, where you will also find an “Extras” page with additional resources. realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ Steve’s guest, Davarian Baldwin, calls himself an urbanist. This affects his prescriptions for reparations in the US, which extend beyond ADOS and beyond individual payments. His bio says he is a historian, cultural critic, and social theorist of urban America – and this episode touches on all those strands. The leg...
Nov 05, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 197
“We have to understand neoliberalism as a particular phase of capitalism dominated by US imperialism. So let's start with the last point I mentioned: regime change operation. Any country around the world, any government that tries to have state oversight over the economy opposing neoliberalism was overthrown through regime change.” Ben Norton’s journalism, according to his bio, focuses primarily on US foreign policy and geopolitics, but that description doesn’t do him justice. If any of our list...
Oct 29, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 196
** Check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese at the Real Progressives website . Grumbine: I follow a lot of Brits on Twitter, and not just regular rank and file activists, but a lot of the actual economists. And the folks that are considered left, very strongly remind me of neoliberals. Wilson: Because they are. [laughter] What we have, you see, is this wonderful thing called the Oxford degree in philosophy, politics and economics [PPE]. And what happens is, when they...
Oct 22, 2022•50 min•Ep. 195
** To donate to the flood relief effort in Pakistan, please visit the Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund 2022 How do we unpack a problem like this year’s floods in Pakistan? Where do we place the blame? Steve invited our friend Aqdas Afzal back on the podcast to discuss his recent article, “Collapse of Civilizations.” The article’s title is a cheeky play on Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” which predicted massive conflict between the world’s non-white, non-Christian peoples and the ...
Oct 15, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 194
Ivan Invernizzi, of Rete MMT Italia and MMT France , returns to Macro N Cheese to bring us up to speed on the Italian political landscape. He and Steve met at the 2nd International MMT conference in NYC in 2018, and he was an early guest on this podcast. The US mainstream media tends to catastrophize the election of right-wing leaders around the world by lumping them all into a single sensational fascist identity. Ivan brings nuance to the issue. Italy has real historical experience with actual ...
Oct 08, 2022•56 min•Ep. 193
The movement for free universal healthcare is under attack. Groups like March for Medicare for All, National Single Payer, and others, have been criticized for not buying into the Democratic Party’s agenda promoting individual state healthcare initiatives. The party wants us to stop pressuring Congress. They tell us to go home. They say there’s more likelihood of success in our statehouses. Well, MMT-informed activists can see through the party’s obfuscation. The single-state solution is no solu...
Oct 01, 2022•55 min•Ep. 192
Grumbine: Can we have too much money? Wray: Yes, we surely can. Usually, our problem is that there's too much bank money, and the usual consequence is a financial crisis. Obviously, Steve and his guest are talking about the nation, not their own wallets. In this episode, he welcomes L. Randall Wray to Macro N Cheese for the eighth time to talk about Randy’s new book, "Making Money Work for Us: How MMT Can Save America," which will be released in America in November. Our listeners know they can c...
Sep 24, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 191
Cory Doctorow writes when he’s anxious. He has eight books coming out soon. Yep, it’s been a tough couple of years. The number of upcoming books gives us a sense of the wide range of subjects Doctorow concerns himself with. His upcoming Chokepoint Capitalism , co-authored with Rebecca Giblin, is about monopoly, monopsony, and fairness in the creative arts labor market. Cory and Steve return to several themes throughout this episode, including the crushing effects of concentrated power. The past ...
Sep 17, 2022•57 min•Ep. 190
Some of the more, um, senior members of the Macro N Cheese team can remember a time when the Democratic Party supported labor and the union movement. Then we came to realize we had it backwards – it's really the Party expecting support from the unions, who made donations, helped with campaigning, and got out the vote. Followers of this podcast are regularly introduced to guests who bring word of a newly invigorated labor movement – one that is no longer tied to the Democrats’ apron strings. Stev...
Sep 10, 2022•52 min•Ep. 189
When Jakob Feinig speaks of moral economies, he’s talking about we, the people – the currency users – and how we relate to the institutions that issue money, as well as our monetary knowledge and its ability to inform direct action. Needless to say, Modern Monetary Theory is an essential component of this. This week he and Steve discuss both moral economies and “monetary silencing,” a concept that gives shape to the frustration MMTers experience on a daily basis. Feinig has said he derived the t...
Sep 03, 2022•47 min•Ep. 188
**Every episode of Macro N Cheese is accompanied by a full transcript and an “Extras” page of additional resources. Find them at realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ This week Steve interviews Latasha Holloway, who is running for Congress in Virginia’s Third District. What makes the episode unusual is the fact that there’s very little campaign talk, except in connection with her legal battle against the Commonwealth. Listening to her story, it's easy to see why she’s running for office. ...
Aug 27, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 187
David Van Deusen, president of the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, talks to Steve about their radical ten-point program, adopted in 2019. In the interview, he explains why they were spurred to develop the plan and breaks down what it means in practice as they move away from lobbying and expand their focus on the rank-and-file. This includes training workshops for non-union workers – How to Organize 101. David describes their approach to building a social justice-oriented labor movement. Th...
Aug 20, 2022•49 min•Ep. 186
Near the start of this episode, Jason Hickel raises Noam Chomsky’s position that the urgency of the climate crisis is so dire it will have to be dealt with under capitalism. There isn’t time to transition to socialism. Hickel disagrees. Capitalism is incapable of handling the problem. Hickel, an economic anthropologist, begins the interview pointing out the mistaken notion that we have no climate policy, no action, when in fact this is exactly what climate policy action under capitalism looks li...
Aug 13, 2022•56 min•Ep. 185
