Macro N Cheese

Steve opens in a subdued mood brought on by the dizzying speed of ‘current events.’ For this episode he’s stepping back and looking at Venezuela. News reports are working hard to create confusion. On social media US citizens claim that kidnapping a sitting president is justified if you don’t like him. Or if he’s socialist. To understand a situation, it must be considered historically, materially,...

Steve welcomes back Erald Kolasi, physicist-economist, author, and friend of the podcast. Erald is here to do a demolition job on “institutional” development fables like Acemoglu & Robinson’s Why Nations Fail . He argues that by treating good institutions as the master key (inclusive vs. extractive) they smuggle in a liberal moral scoreboard while dodging the real motors of history: power, cla...

Shealeigh Voitl and Andy Lee Roth join Steve to talk about Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2025. The book – an annual publication – compiles the year's most important yet underreported or misreported news stories, which they’ve identified through a student-led research process. Andy highlights the point that corporate news focuses on what went wrong today but ignores what goes wrong eve...

Let’s face it, even “good” macro talk can fall into the trap of treating the economy like a tidy spreadsheet while real lives get crushed in the margins. To help us peer beneath the covers, Steve invited Emma Holten, a Copenhagen-based political economist to talk about her book Deficit: How Feminist Economics Can Change Our World . We often discuss deficits around here, but Emma is looking at a di...

For a masterclass in true bipartisanship, look no further than the guest list of Jeffrey Epstein! We all love a good conspiracy story, but it’s often just business as usual for the class in power. Nolan Higdon – lecturer, media critic, and author of The Gaslight Gazette – is back for a deep analytical dive into the Epstein saga. Moving beyond true-crime sensationalism, Nolan and Steve frame the sc...

Historian and journalist Vijay Prashad talks with Steve about why Antonio Gramsci still matters. Listeners to this podcast know that we have a pretty good grasp of the monetary system. But we’re constantly working to expand our understanding of the systemic underpinnings of real power. How else will we be able to seize it? For help, we turn to Gramsci. According to Vijay, Gramsci was doing class f...

In today’s world, anyone serious about anti-imperialism, global development, and monetary sovereignty needs to break through the well-funded US propaganda machine and develop a fact-based, nuanced understanding of China. To this end, Steve asked Yan Liang to come back to the podcast to look at China through the MMT lens, analyzing its economic management, global role, and response to Western villa...

Steve and his guest, Scottish political economist William Thomson, use the fight over Scotland’s independence to dissect how class power hides inside “neutral” economic rules. Will, founder of SCOTONOMICS, talks about his journey from neoclassical training to a heterodox, political-economy perspective grounded in MMT, ecological economics, and class analysis. He recently wrote a paper (with friend...

“We’re at an inflection point – a civilizational crisis. Western imperial dominance is ending, and its dying spasms are only accelerating the collapse.” Aaron Good  Aaron Good, author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, is back to talk with Steve about the crisis of the US-led imperial order and the manufactured “common sense” that keeps people trapped inside a rigged system.&nb...

Randy: “We’re supposed to believe the central bank manages inflation by using interest rates?"   Steve: “It’s ridiculous.”   L. Randall Wray, one of the original MMT economists, recently wrote a paper with Yeva Nersisyan entitled,  No, the Fed is NOT Independent – It is a Creature of Congress .  Steve invited Randy for a conversation abou...

** Want to take a deeper dive into this podcast? Join us on Tuesday evenings for Macro ‘n Chill, where we listen to the most recent episode together. Ask questions, share your insights, or just hang with us. 8pm ET/5pm PT. Find the registration link at realprogressives.org. And while you’re there, sign up for book club. It’s not too late – there are still two more sessions in our&nb...

Heidi Boghosian is an attorney, author, and co-host of Law and Disorder podcast and radio show. She joins Steve to discuss how the US surveillance state is a tool of class discipline and repression. From the Federalist Society pipeline to post-9/11 “safety” theater, both parties helped build a digital police state that criminalizes poverty, protest, and anyone messing with prof...

"The self-made man is a lie that we have taught people to keep them from complaining, to keep them from whining, to keep them from asking for better from their government, to keep them from asking for better from their employer."   The two Steves – Hall and Grumbine – get together to dismantle the myth of the self-made man, exposing it as a centuries-old political weapon designed to dise...

Do you know what kakistocracy means? You’ll find out in this episode with guest Bill Black. Because, yeah, this is an educational podcast. A lot of us learned the term ‘elite control fraud’ from Bill in past episodes and you’ll hear more about it here.   Bill is a great storyteller. His experience as a regulator trying to enforce laws against the great crooks of the world gives him...

**This week’s Macro ‘n Chill gathering should be a lively one. Whenever we dive into the topic of cultural hegemony, it sparks a thoughtful discussion. Join us on Tuesday, October 14, 8pm ET/5pm PT. Click here to register   This is the 349th episode of our podcast. Just sayin’. Steve’s guest is David Fields, talking about his recent article, The Cultural Syndromes of Capitalism...

The Palestinian liberation struggle is a fundamental class and anti-colonial issue. First-time guest to the podcast, Professor Omar Zahzah,   talks with Steve about the active collaboration of Silicon Valley tech giants with the US and Israeli governments to censor and suppress anti-Zionist narratives.  "What these companies are doing is digitally amplifying a physical process of settler...

Economic anthropologist Brett Scott, the author of Cloud Money , talks with Steve about libertarianism’s big lie. Or lies – plural. From a class perspective, libertarianism is largely an ideological tool that protects elite power by promoting a false narrative of individualism and "free" markets. It serves as a smokescreen, concealing the mechanisms of power in a class society. What worse, it’s pr...

** You are invited to attend Macro ‘n Chill, our community building online gathering where we discuss the current episode of the podcast. Tuesday, September 23 at 8pm ET/5pm PT Click here to register .   Our friend, MMT economist Yeva Nersisyan, joins Steve to discuss the struggle to communicate MMT's core principles in a media landscape filled with misinformation, including from those who sh...

Our friend Daniel Conceição is back for his sixth(!) time on Macro N Cheese. He and Steve share their critique of "neutral" or academic MMT that avoids class analysis. Understanding a government's monetary capacity is meaningless without using that knowledge as a weapon for class struggle against an oppressive economic system.  Daniel shares his experiences in Buenos Aires, describing a...

** Tuesday evening, Bob will join our weekly online gathering where we’ll listen to the podcast together and discuss. Bring your questions for him. September 9 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/1HA3nd_5QFSFzBe_cGiHpw   This is Bob Hockett’s 12th visit to Macro N Cheese. Back in 2022, in an episode discussing the collapse of the maj...

In our 14th episode with Australian economist Bill Mitchell, the conversation focuses on the MMT perspective on international trade. Bill explains what is meant by the statement “imports are a benefit, and exports are a cost,” where it fits into the history of economic thought, and some of its implications.  A significant portion of the conversation is dedicated to explaining the cr...

**Be sure to subscribe to our Substack. It costs you nothing to have all our new content delivered to straight to your inbox!  https://realprogressives.substack.com/   Remember Labour's stunning defeat in the 2019 UK general election? When, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, they won the lowest number of seats since 1935?    Steve’s guest, Chris Williamson, brings an i...

Our friend, physicist and economist Erald Kolasi, stops by the Macro N Cheese clubhouse to talk with Steve about the profound effects of AI on the energy grid, water resources, and societal infrastructure. The discussion focuses primarily on large-scale corporate AI, such as generative AI. Erald’s work bridges physics, economics, and ecology, revealing how AI’s rapid expansion is not just a t...

**Our weekly online gathering, Macro ‘n Chill is the perfect place to discuss this week’s episode, especially since it includes terminology you might not be familiar with. Or there may be someone who needs your help understanding it. Community-buidling on Tuesday, August 12 at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register   What do you know about blockchain?  Surely you’ve heard our episodes...

Charles Derber, a sociology professor at Boston College, talks with Steve about his book, 'Bonfire: American Sociocide, Broken Relations and the Quest for Democracy.' Steve suggests the book aligns with his own assessment that US sociocide (social disintegration) demands revolutionary change. Electoral politics are a distraction and a dead end. The conversation covers the need for a deeper underst...