Macro N Cheese

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 Greenspa...

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 gre...

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 Berri...

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 b...

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 housin...

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 s...

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...

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...

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 des...

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...

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...

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...

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 proje...

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.&n...

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 Ne...

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.    Ther...

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...

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,...

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 u...

Not all of our listeners are anti-capitalist but it’s safe to say that most of us object to the accumulation of massive wealth solely by virtue of inactive, unproductive ownership. Sitting on idle property is a particularly egregious way of accruing riches, often to the detriment of surrounding communities that are forced to tolerate eyesores in their midst for decades on end. Depreciation has bee...

At Real Progressives, we get daily messages from people who are still recovering from Bernie’s trouncing in the primaries. They remain distraught, disillusioned, and discouraged - convinced that he was robbed.    Last week Rohan Grey explained Rashida Tlaib and AOC’s Public Banking Act. This week we asked him to take off his MMT hat and talk to our wounded volunteers. To help them put th...

On October 31st, Rohan Grey posted a 31-part Twitter thread about Rashida Tlaib’s and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s new Public Banking Act, which he helped craft. We immediately reached out and arranged for Steve to interview him, ending up with not one, but two episodes of Macro N Cheese. This week he answers our questions about the Public Banking Act. Next week he and Steve will venture into the sw...

Esha Krishnaswamy, host of the historic.ly podcast, joins Steve to talk about the frustrating political miasma of centrism. Centrism. So vapid and insubstantial, how does one grab ahold? It’s a wispy dandelion head (aptly named the capitulum) - one slight *poof* and it’s gone. But we’re not fooled. As soon as the left gets behind a popular policy or candidate, the center reveals itself to be a mig...

This second part of Steve’s conversation with Warren Mosler was to be about the government response to the pandemic, but first Warren talks about disagreements with some in the MMT community. We here at Macro N Cheese believe in healthy debate and want to bring a range of viewpoints to our listeners.    The federal job guarantee is one area in which Warren disagrees with certain prominen...

Talking to Warren Mosler reminds us just how far MMT has come since the days he traveled from conference to conference, peddling his intellectual wares. Well, they no longer laugh at Mosler Economics, AKA Modern Monetary Theory. It’s a well-known part of MMT history that Stephanie Kelton, fresh out of grad school, set out to disprove his assertions, point by point, and ended up making MMT her life...