Macro N Cheese

As difficult as it is to get a handle on the chaos and confusion of Trump’s shifting policies, we continue to ask wise friends for their perspective. This week Steve is speaking with Australian economist Bill Mitchell, a founder of MMT and a regular guest of this podcast. Bill helps us unpack the capitalist contradictions driving global instability. Steve asks if we should be looking at Trump’s ac...

The past year has seen lots of discussion of the ‘human’ nature of AI. Programs like ChatGPT were writing poetry, engaging in debates, and roasting users with witty retorts. Educators have been facing more serious concerns as they navigate a world in which students no longer need to learn to do their own research, writing, or thinking. But the militarization of AI makes these other activities seem...

“When you are a dominant empire like the US, economically, militarily, geopolitically, and you make bets that are exclusively based on power rather than technology, innovation, research and development, education, a growing prosperous middle class, history tells us that you will eventually fail. And that's the ugly reality.”   Like most media nowadays, we seek to make sense of the confusing,...

This week’s episode comes from Steve’s recent appearance on The Tracy Show, where he was invited to talk about MMT with host Tracy Carson, who had some questions. Tracy: Okay, I'm going to tell you what I think I understand about Modern Monetary Theory or MMT. I'm just going to go with MMT. The federal government can pretty much generate money out of thin air.    Steve: It does...

“Humanity... is at a critical moment in history where the decisions that we make could have massive, massive implications, for our future trajectory, for the future trajectory of human civilization over the next two centuries. Those decisions can either ensure that we have a prosperous millennium or that we have a disastrous one.” Erald Kolasi joins Steve to talk about his book, The Physics of Cap...

Crazy things have been going on with the price of eggs, especially in the US. If you think this is happening because of the avian flu, you’ve been hoodwinked. Again.  Basel Musharbash, an antitrust and trade regulation attorney, joins Steve to pull back the curtain on the monopoly forces within the egg supply chain. The discussion reveals crucial and surprising information about this, um, bre...

Steve’s guest is noted economist L. Randall Wray, one of the early developers of modern money theory. As many times as this podcast has talked about MMT, it’s always topical. In fact, just last week, Elon Musk discovered 14 magic money computers in government agencies!  So, Trump had to hire the richest man in the world who hired who knows how many hundreds of young tech kids to discover what...

** Every Tuesday night, we gather online to listen to the episode and discuss it among friends. Everyone is invited to this community building event. Bring your insights and questions. REGISTER HERE for Tuesday, March 25th, 8 pm ET/5 pm PT  Steve’s guest is Michael McCarthy, author of 'The Master's Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy and a Radical Plan to Rebuild It.' They explore McCarthy's ana...

Near the start of this episode, Yeva Nersisyan talks with Steve about leftist economists who are still wedded to the belief that government spending relies on taxpayer money. She says if an academic on the left uses the ‘taxpayer dollar’ framing, then you cannot be surprised when the right uses it too – to say they’re saving taxpayer money, cutting wastefulness, cutting inefficiency. It’s why bein...

If you ever find yourself asking “What’s left?” you’re in good company. Today’s left is often indistinguishable from neoliberal centrism.  Steve’s guests are Simon Winlow and Steve Hall, authors of the book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin from the Beginning Again. They talk about the historical shifts that have led to ideological collapse, disconnection...

Control of information is a vital weapon of the ruling class in its war on the people. Critical media literacy is more important now than it has ever been. For the past year we’ve been drowning in imbalanced coverage of the war on Gaza. (How many times did mainstream news outlets use the word ‘genocide’?) It’s just one example – and it’s an outrage.    Steve’s guest is Shealeigh Voi...

Thomas Fazi joins Steve once again, this time to explore the current geopolitical landscape under Trump 2.0 and the absurdity of an American empire that creates enemies out of thin air to justify its ongoing military and economic interventions. The conversation touches on the implications of austerity measures on the working class and the irony of billionaires like Elon Musk advocating for cuts to...

John Perkins is a storyteller. His stories tell of his work as an economic hit man, creator of a death economy that is polluting and consuming itself into extinction. He has served as advisor to the World Bank, UN, IMF, Fortune 500 corporations, and government and business leaders across the globe.  “You know, my job was pretty easy, generally speaking, because I was offering t...

Depressed about the state of the world? Meet podcast hosts, Dai Poole and David Kugler, who are able to talk about the depressing stuff, yet manage to have a little fun along the way. In November, they brought Steve onto Call Me Limbo because they’re interested in Modern Monetary Theory (smart guys). A few months have passed since then, and things have changed in the US.    The...

“We need to understand the limits of capitalism. Capitalism has serious limits in the sense that it puts exchange value over use value. And this is by definition irrational according to logic of need, but very rational according to logic of profit...   But we also need to understand that we are the ones who have produced the system. That's where the empowering voice comes out, because it says...

“It's a wound. Palestine is a wound that doesn't go away because it's ignored.”   Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Even when it seems invisible to outsiders, it can always be found in the art and culture of the oppressed.  Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably, of the Markaz Review, talk to Steve about  Sumud: A New Palestinian Reader, an anthology of essays, poetry, f...

Running for office is a fool’s errand if you think you can win and radically change the system from within. But an election campaign can serve other purposes for political organizers. A campaign provides a platform, a megaphone... media attention. The process of campaigning puts you in touch with people in the community. As Steve puts it, an election allows you to “bu...

When there’s an attack on a high profile (read: white) target in the US, media attention is aimed at the perpetrators. If the act was politically motivated, that fact is either used to explain their psychopathy or dismissed altogether. The December shooting death of a UnitedHealthcare CEO has had a different reaction. As soon as the news broke, public sympathy was drawn to the shooter. The Am...

History doesn’t stand still, and every time we talk about BRICS on this podcast, there’s more to unpack. To understand the significance of BRICS, we must begin with (wait for it) monetary sovereignty.    Economist Yan Liang is an expert on China’s economy and MMT. She joins Steve to discuss the evolving role of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the i...

What’s the point of understanding money if we don’t look at the power relations controlling its distribution?  Bill Mitchell, a key figure in the development of modern monetary theory, is back for his twelfth appearance on the podcast, beginning with Episode One, Putting the T in MMT .   As a key figure in the development of MMT, Bill articulates how this theory fundamentally c...

Can you imagine granting personhood to AI entities? Well, some of us couldn’t imagine granting personhood to corporations. And yet... look how that panned out. In this episode, Steve talks with Duke law professor James Boyle about his new book,  The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood.   James explains the development of his interest in the topic; it began with the idea of em...

Paul Gambles is back to help us unpack China's recent issuance of US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia.  Paul begins by setting up the historical context. He takes us back to the end of the second World War and the Bretton Woods agreement, designed to bring a new world order, putting the US dollar as the global funding currency. China’s move signals a challenge to the pe...

Rohan Grey, who taught us to understand money as a creature of law, is back for his tenth appearance on Macro N Cheese.  Steve and Rohan dissect the humor and horror of the political landscape. They make a realistic assessment of the Biden administration and look at figures like Elon Musk and Ramaswamy as part of a new wave of governance setting out to undermine the fabric of f...

In a stunning reversal, the Democrat Party has announced plans to reconnect with its New Deal roots in hopes of regaining the trust of the working class. Haha just kidding! This week, Yeva Nersisyan joins Steve to cut through the cacophony of phony punditry trying to explain the 2024 election results. Spoiler alert: it’s economics. It’s always economics.  Yeva points to the stark re...

"Colonized people have the right to resist." Economist and friend of the podcast Fadhel Kaboub talks with Steve about the effects of global hegemony and the ongoing attempts to shift the balance of power. They look at BRICS, though it’s perhaps too soon to predict its ultimate outcome and influence. Fadhel argues that a true multipolar world cannot emerge without placing the Global South...