Macro N Cheese

Stuart Medina is a founder and current president of Red MMT Spain. He joins Steve this week to talk about conditions in Spain after two years of the pandemic, more than two decades as a member of the eurozone, and nearly half a century since the death of General Franco, dictator from 1939 to 1975, when Spain became a parliamentary monarchy. In the 1960s and 70s Spain had a fairly successful state-...

This week’s episode is the audio portion of a presentation by our friend Professor Fadhel Kaboub when he spoke with the Hanon Project's Yousra Magouri in September about the causes and effects of inflation during the pandemic. It’s a beautiful illustration that you don’t need an education in MMT to make sense of the economy. With Fadhel’s characteristic cogency, complex subjects are made accessibl...

The Blockchain Socialist wants to dispel the notion that blockchain technology can only serve a right-wing libertarian agenda. In this week’s episode, he tells Steve the left loses out when new trends or innovations are introduced into the economy. Blockchain is a neutral tool on which we can build different types of organizations and institutions. He speaks of the risks taken when groups use Goog...

It's one thing to understand the US government will not protect us from certain types of abuse by corporations. We see it in the weakness of labor laws as well as environmental and consumer protection regulations. We know the government has no problem sending poor and working-class men and women into harm's way to protect corporate interests overseas. But how much farther will the state go to prot...

Do you think of colleges and universities as protected islands of intellectual activity, ivory towers where the world’s problems are contemplated and debated? Steve Grumbine’s guest is here to tell us otherwise. Davarian Baldwin, of Trinity College, is an urban historian and social theorist, whose work examines the landscape of global cities through the lens of the African Diasporic experience. Hi...

Michael Albert is one of the creators of participatory economics (parecon) and has developed a vision for a post-capitalist world that includes participatory governance. His new book, No Bosses, A New Economy for a Better World , goes into detail. From Noam Chomsky’s endorsement: *No Bosses* describes and advocates a natural and built Commons, workers’ and consumers’ self-managing councils, a divi...

**Reminder** Each episode of Macro N Cheese is accompanied by a transcript and an “Extras” page with links to related material and resources. To access, go to realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast. In one sentence: the winners and losers of the 21st century are the countries that attract young people. Parag Khanna is a leading global strategy advisor and best-selling author of numerous books...

Dirk Ehnts, an economist from Berlin, joins us to talk about his book, Modern Monetary Theory and European Macroeconomics . In addition to discussing the current situation in the Eurozone, he helps us understand the similarities and differences between the Eurozone and the US, especially regarding the relationship between the individual states and the central bank. So in the US, whatever happens i...

Somber headlines recall the 2008 financial crisis: “Global financial markets have been on high alert,” warns the BBC. “Chinese property giant Evergrande is on the brink of collapse, and analysts warn the potential fallout could have far-reaching implications that spill outside China’s borders,” says CNBC. From the New York Times: “Every once in a while a company grows so big and messy that governm...

This week Steve investigates the cutthroat world of local school board elections. So, get ready to get down and dirty... Just kidding! His guest, Rana Odeh, is the genuine article: thoughtful, straight forward, and unafraid to bring up uncomfortable topics. At a time when the country’s political polarization seeps into every crevice of civic and social life, our school boards have become battlegro...

In 2014, Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters engaged in armed confrontation with law enforcement. Bundy had been embroiled in a 21-year legal dispute with the US Bureau of Land Management. The “Bundy Standoff” was splashed across the news, allowing the public to watch as Cliven Bundy became a hero – a symbol of conservative America under attack by the federal government. This wee...

This week Steve welcomes Scott Fullwiler for the first time in two years. Scott is a research scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and associate professor of economics at UMKC, where he teaches the macroeconomics PhD program. As listeners of this podcast know, UMKC is one of the two academic birthplaces of MMT. The episode begins with a look at social security and FICA taxes....

This week we’re checking in with a couple of candidates from The New Liberals (TNL) of Australia. We’ll be learning about the traditional Australian political parties and getting an overview of how their electoral system works. Steve Keen is an old friend of this podcast. In the past he’s joined us to talk about everything from climate change to Marx to the breakdown of supply chains during the CO...

Our friend John Harvey is back to answer a question that’s usually accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth: “what happens if people lose faith in the dollar?” The question contains all sorts of assumptions and intentions, which the Cowboy Economist proceeds to dismember, dispelling all sorts of myths – from inflation to the Fed. (He even tells us why China will continue holding US dollar...

Modern Monetary Theory Has a New Friend in Congress said the headline of a New York Times op-ed earlier this month. That friend is House Budget Committee chair John Yarmuth, the 8th term congressman from KY. Isn’t it ironic that it’s newsworthy when the chair of the House Budget Committee understands the basic truth about the workings of the US dollar? That it was a bold move for Yarmuth to appear...

MMT, at its most fundamental, shows us the difference between a currency user and the currency issuer. This reality affects policy decisions in ways it would be foolish to ignore. As Fadhel Kaboub and Bill Black explained here recently, even if it were possible to create some inadequate public programs at the state level, they will stall the progressive agenda. Malcolm Reavell of Modern Money Scot...

Steve’s guest, Dr. Jason Hickel, is an economic anthropologist whose research focuses on global inequality, political economy, post-development and ecological economics. After listening to this episode, “degrowth” will become part of your vocabulary. For MMTers, it is a natural fit. Before unpacking the implications of degrowth, we need to understand how the language of growth has served to justif...

Scott Ferguson serves as editor of the Money on the Left (MotL) Editorial Collective and co-host of the Money on the Left podcast. In July, he was guest speaker at Real Progressives’ event, RP Live. This week, Macro N Cheese is presenting his talk, Money and the Limits of Sovereignty , in its entirety, along with most of the Q&A discussion. Trying to summarize the presentation would be doing i...

Status Coup Media's co-founder and CEO Jordan Chariton joins Real Progressives’ founder and CEO Steve Grumbine for a discussion of our crumbling infrastructure, our inept and complicit corporate media monolith, and they share some ideas about our options going forward. This conversation seems like a perfectly segued culmination of Jordan’s recent RP Live presentation on the corporate media cover-u...

This week Steve brings back Robert Hockett to help us understand the big “I” word - infrastructure. Our focus on particular infrastructure depends on the social or public goals we have in mind. If we are a society that values mobility, we will concern ourselves with transportation infrastructure. If this were the 19th or early 20th centuries, we would be prioritizing infrastructure that facilitate...

Marianne Garneau is a labor educator and organizer with the historic IWW, Industrial Workers of the World. She’s the publisher of the website Organizing. Work . According to Marianne, real-life examples of workers taking successful action anywhere, inspires, empowers and emboldens workers everywhere. The crucial tactic our labor movement currently lacks is the ability to exercise the muscle of col...

When Bill Black introduced us to Patrick Lovell and Eric Vaughan, they were just wrapping up production of their documentary series, The Con , about the 2008 great financial crisis. More than a year has passed and we’ve become partners on a podcast and video series, The New Untouchables: The Pecora Files . Both series have a second season; TNU’s is five episodes in, and season 2 of The Con is not...

Esha’s last visit to Macro N Cheese inspired Steve to read Lenin’s What Is to Be Done and John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World , igniting a new interest in political theory and revolutions. This, in turn, lit a fire under others on the Real Progressives’ team. In the past half year, we’ve been learning about the Russian, French and Haitian Revolutions. (If you haven’t yet heard last week’s ep...

In the US we are taught history from the point of view of the colonizers. The heroes are the victors, and the victors are the ruling class - the oppressors and exploiters - reconfigured to appear dashing and noble. When truth falls outside of this heroic narrative, it’s distorted or buried. Our guest this week, Pascal Robert, pulls back the curtain to reveal the story behind the myths of the Haiti...

  On Macro N Cheese, we often focus on economics - how society organizes real resources, and human life in general. We always seek ways to get our message out, to capture people’s imagination and motivate them. This week Steve talks to the director/producer of The World is My Country, a documentary about Garry Davis, who inspired and motivated millions of people as founder of the World Govern...