Macro N Cheese

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 Chee...

“...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 (episo...

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 product...

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 fore...

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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 econ...

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 misinfo...

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 sev...

“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...

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...

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 al...

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 Ge...

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 realiz...

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 Tuesda...

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 allo...

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....

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 th...

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...

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...

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 e...

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 M...

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub was recently appointed Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC), an international intergovernmental organisation founded by countries from across the Global South. In honor of Fadhel’s new position, we’re releasing Steve’s very first interview with him from back in the day when we live streamed onto Facebook. Steve...