A head of state whose economic policies promote austerity and fiscal responsibility is: Conservative Progressive N/A (not applicable) Daniel Conceição is with us for his third visit to Macro N Cheese. He and Steve discuss the failures of both right and left governments. Some broad strokes of Brazil’s historical patterns are not so different from those in the US. The last left(ish) president, Dilma Rousseff, abandoned her Leninist roots and hopped aboard the privatization train. It wasn’t enough ...
Sep 30, 2023•46 min•Ep. 244
“The impossibility of economic catch-up does not imply that the citizens of the global South are condemned to suffer from poverty and inequality. It only implies that capitalism has nothing to offer as a prospect of a decent life for the vast majority of humanity...” In this webinar from our popular RP Live series, Ndongo Samba Sylla tells us of the challenges facing Africa through the story of Thomas Sankara and breaks down what Sankara meant when he told the people to "live as African.” Ndongo...
Sep 23, 2023•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 243
Understanding how monetary sovereign governments create and spend money means looking at the Treasury department and the central bank or, in the US, the Federal Reserve. Economist Eric Tymoigne explains two approaches to understanding the relationship: the consolidated and the collaborative, or cooperative, version of the Treasury and the Fed. The consolidated approach merges the Fed and the Treasury into one entity and analyzes the implications of this merger on public finance. It emphasizes th...
Sep 16, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 242
When someone associates Modern Monetary Theory with left or right wing politics, they’re signaling they know nothing of MMT and are simply associating it with some of its proponents. MMTers are political, MMT is not. Regarding degrowth, this week’s guest, Bill Mitchell, explains: “The way I think about it is that MMT is compatible with deep, hard industry pollution and massive growth if you want it to be. And it is also compatible with a highly sustainable strategy to reduce our reliance on mass...
Sep 09, 2023•49 min•Ep. 241
“I think within every labor struggle is a kernel of a broader transformation of society. So, it's interesting because Harry Bridges, who was the longtime leader of the longshore workers on the West Coast from the 1930s to the 1960s, when he talked about strike, he said every strike is a mini-revolution.” On the eve of the strike authorization vote by American Airlines flight attendants, Joe Burns spoke with Steve about the labor movement, unions, and class struggle. Joe, a labor lawyer and negot...
Sep 02, 2023•54 min•Ep. 240
Activists and organizers know that effective communication depends on connecting with people’s real needs. But we’re often baffled when people don’t act in their own interests or don’t identify others’ interests as intersecting with their own. To grapple with some of these questions, Steve turns to Stephanie Preston, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and author of The Altruistic Urge: Why We’re Driven to Help Others . They delve into in-group versus out-group dynamics and the...
Aug 26, 2023•57 min•Ep. 239
RP Book Club spent four weeks on The Case for a Job Guarantee , by Pavlina R. Tcherneva. Each week featured a different guest expert who led the discussion and answered questions. Listeners to this podcast will recognize their names, including Pavlina herself, Fadhel Kaboub, Ben Wilson, and Rohan Grey. We were also honored to have Bill Black and June Carbone join in. For this episode, Macro N Cheese is releasing the audio recording of all four sessions. Since it is unusually long, the time codes...
Aug 19, 2023•6 hr 30 min•Ep. 238
“...Because we recognize that taxes are not a funding operation, there's this myth that people who support MMT don't want to use fiscal policy to promote equity. Of course, taxes are redistribution … Things have gotten way out of hand, so taxation is also intended to promote equity, to affect distribution and allocation. Resource allocation.” Mat Forstater was on this podcast four years ago (episode 21!) recounting the history of MMT. He described his early days at Levy Institute and UMKC, his r...
Aug 12, 2023•58 min•Ep. 237
The title of this week’s episode is taken from an article to be published in September’s Monthly Review. The author, Jason Hickel, talks to Steve about the topic in his third visit to the podcast. Before we look at the double objective of ecosocialism we must analyze the double crisis we’re facing – ecological and social. Both are caused by the same underlying issue: the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism creates an almost perfect circuit that begins and ends with commodification and encl...
Aug 05, 2023•55 min•Ep. 236
It will come as no surprise to our listeners that countries of the Global South are mired in a foreign debt crisis and that default is directly tied to the lack of monetary sovereignty. Our friend Ndongo Samba Sylla, a Senegalese development economist, talks to Steve about the situation, how it came to be, and how it can be overcome. Countries of the Global South usually are tied to debt in a foreign currency for a number of reasons, including balance of payment constraints and the capture of ex...
Jul 29, 2023•50 min•Ep. 235
This week we’re bringing you all three sessions of the Real Progressives Book Club on L. Randall Wray’s Making Money Work for Us. RP Book Club is run by our volunteers with guest experts leading the discussion and taking questions from attendees. This is much longer than our usual episodes of Macro N Cheese, so we’ve included the time codes for each session. [1:43] — Session One Guest economist Eric Tymoigne Chapter 1, What is Money? Chapter 2, Where Does Money Come From? [1:14:35] — Session Two...
Jul 22, 2023•4 hr 43 min•Ep. 234
“People talk about campaign finance being the problem as to why ‘progressive’ politicians can't get elected. But that's more of an effect of this rather than the cause, because let's say, Citizens United, the court ruling which now allows corporations to pretty much give unlimited donations to candidates. That's just the most recent evolution of a system which precludes all possibility for radical change.” Our guest this week is 1Dime, a content creator on YouTube and the podcast, 1Dime Radio, a...
Jul 15, 2023•59 min•Ep. 233
Is the US a failed state? Well, with a paralyzed economy, debt deflation, and a ruling elite waging class warfare on labor, what else should we call it? Economist Michael Hudson often writes and talks about the US role as a global force bending the rest of the world to its will. Or trying to. This week he and Steve bring the focus home, looking at the state of affairs in the US; breaking down the causes and devastating effects of the massive transfer of income and wealth from the working class t...
Jul 08, 2023•52 min•Ep. 232
In this episode, David Correia and Tyler Wall, co-authors of Police: A Field Guide , lead a webinar about policing in the US. The common narrative about the police is intentionally misleading. Without a class analysis and an understanding of history, it will remain a problem with no solution. Policing isn’t a side-show to capitalist political economy. It’s part of the main stage. Far from engaging in enforcing the law and fighting crime, the police are a coercive force, with origins as slave pat...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 231
If you’ve recently chatted with a well-informed liberal – the kind who reads the NY Times or watches PBS NewsHour – you’ve heard encouraging things about the economy. You’ve heard that Biden’s doing a good job. Unemployment has gone down, wages have gone up. Why can’t you be happy about it all? To celebrate all this good news, we brought back our friend, Yeva Nersisyan, associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College, research scholar at the Levy Institute, and frequent collabo...
Jun 24, 2023•54 min•Ep. 230
It’s always interesting to get the insights of someone whose job places them near the beating heart of the imperial behemoth. Especially when they’ve begun to pull back the curtain and take a hard look at reality. Paul Gambles lives in Thailand where he specializes in emerging markets with MBMG Group. Paul and Steve talk about the clarity that MMT provides. The public is kept intentionally misinformed by a mainstream narrative purposely obscuring the power relations of the capital order. Paul de...
Jun 17, 2023•55 min•Ep. 229
When economist Pavlina Tcherneva was last on this podcast, we were a few months into the pandemic. She and Steve talked about nationalizing payroll and the heightened need for a federal job guarantee during a time of crisis. In this episode, the neoliberal approach to unemployment comes under scrutiny. Pavlina explains the inadequacy of official unemployment data. She looks at the problem from several angles, including geography, demographics, and of course, economics. Pavlina and Steve discuss ...
Jun 10, 2023•59 min•Ep. 228
“We've all got that cop in our head that wants us to see a world full of threats and emergencies.” Steve’s guest, David Correia, is co-author (with Tyler Wall) of Police: A Field Guide. Listeners to the podcast probably understand the role of police is to protect capital, not ensure the safety of the citizens. “...from the railroad strikes of 1877 to the anthracite strike of 1902, it was just this unruly world of labor asserting itself, demanding higher wages, refusing to go back to work, and pr...
Jun 03, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 227
Dr. Yan Liang joins Steve to talk about China’s role in the global economy and the concept of “de-dollarization.” It’s refreshing to hear a discussion of these issues without hyperbole, but you know that already; that’s why you come to Macro N Cheese. Countries of the global south have suffered chronic debt and financial crises due to the neoliberal regime of the US and its allies. After the 2008 financial crisis, China has been diversifying its foreign exchange reserves and establishing currenc...
May 27, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 226
Dr. Lin Zhang talks with Steve about her book " The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy ." Her book includes stories of individuals who transformed themselves and their lives to take advantage of this new global economy. She tells of Min, a former prisoner... “I think Min's story in a way captures the sort of imperative of entrepreneurialism in which we are all still living. The contemporary capitalist economy. The need to kind of keep reinventing oneself to...
May 20, 2023•57 min•Ep. 225
It’s been almost two years since we’ve had German economist Dirk Ehnts on the podcast. This episode can be seen as part of Steve’s ongoing look at “dedollarization” and what it means to be the world’s reserve currency. They turn the MMT lens toward the Eurozone, comparing governments’ responses to the pandemic, inflation, and the treatment of labor. “So of course the labor laws are different in Germany compared to Italy, to France and so on. If the French workers go on strikes, they burn stuff. ...
May 13, 2023•56 min•Ep. 224
New Zealander Bijou Smith is a longtime friend of Steve and the podcast. His story, in brief: “I was a physicist. I love physics, theoretical physics, but when I learned a bit about economics—I was always interested in economics from a sort of dynamical systems analysis perspective. It's kind of interesting mathematics. Even the neoclassical stuff is interesting for a little while until you realize it's a joke. But then when I heard about MMT, a lot of the pieces clicked into placed and it's lik...
May 06, 2023•58 min•Ep. 223
If you’re one of the lucky ones who attended our webinar, RP Live with Clara E. Mattei, then you’ve already heard this episode. Or you may have watched the video of that event. This podcast episode is the audio version, but we’re asking you to play it anyway. It never hurts to hear information a few times, and by playing it, you’re also helping us grow Macro N Cheese. Because algorithms. On Tuesday, May 2nd, Professor Mattei will be joining us for the first of two sessions of RP Book Club on The...
Apr 29, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 222
Carl Zha brings us his knowledge of China, the US, and global political economic relations. He also brings his exquisite sense of the absurd. Exactly one year ago, Carl and Steve recorded their marathon discussion of Chinese history, resulting in three episodes about Mao. This time, they have Taiwan in their sights. Just like Joe Biden. Official US policy on Taiwan is just ambiguous enough to allow plenty of shenanigans, despite recognizing “one China” since the 1970s. “We know how the Cold War ...
Apr 22, 2023•57 min•Ep. 221
It’s been two years since Bill Black was last on with Steve. We’ve invited several guests to talk about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, so it only makes sense to ask our whistleblower friend to weigh in. Bill and Steve discuss what it means to be too big to fail. When an institution is too big to fail, the creditors get bailed out, but then, Bill says, “really really bad things have happened.” “...they hold the economy hostage. And nowadays they hold the global economy hostage. And if you h...
Apr 15, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 220
Author Dan Kovalik talks to Steve about his recent book, Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention and Resistance . His perspective includes his own experiences in Nicaragua and the personal connections he made there. From the 1910 occupation and eventual ouster of US Marines, through the dictatorships of several members of the Samosa family, the conditions for revolution were ripe. Dan describes the 1979 revolution as a David and Goliath story. The Sandinistas inherited a country steeped in pover...
Apr 08, 2023•57 min•Ep. 219
C. Derick Varn is a poet, teacher, and “arm-chair theorist” (his words, not ours), but Steve called on him for his deep knowledge of history, specifically the history of revolutions. Varn takes a realistic and nuanced look at some of the popular myths about the brutality of key figures, like Stalin and Mao. He suggests placing them in the context of historical geopolitical economic conditions. I'm also just going to remind people that both the Bolshevik Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, in ...
Apr 01, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 218
When you learned of the run on Silicon Valley Bank, did the image of George Bailey come to mind, facing the mob demanding full withdrawals from Bailey Building & Loan? “You’re thinking of this place all wrong, as if I had the money back in the safe. The money’s not here. Why, your money’s in Joe’s house that’s right next to yours. And the Kennedy house and Mrs. Maitland’s house, and a hundred others. You’re lending them the money to build, and they pay it back to you as best they can. What a...
Mar 25, 2023•56 min•Ep. 217
Steve always says the beauty of MMT is “it takes the most convoluted spaghetti diagram and turns it into a straight line.” When it comes to banking, the financial industry, financial technology, and privacy, has the MMT community developed that straight line yet? Today’s guest, Raúl Carrillo, thinks we can get there: “I don't think we quite have, but I think the straight line flows right through everything else we've done. Just as we don't want banks to be heavily involved in the public provisio...
Mar 18, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 216
Austerity is a potent weapon of class warfare. Political economist David Fields talks with Steve about the ways austerity serves to discipline labor, as it has been doing since the Bolshevik revolution. They touch on the reasons capitalism cannot risk full employment, as explained by both Karl Marx and Michal Kalecki. David wants people to read Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations or The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Even Smith, the father of the “invisible hand,” said government is instituted for t...
Mar 11, 2023•49 min•Ep. 215
