Macro N Cheese

Historian Harvey J. Kaye joins Steve to talk about the complicated legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Kaye acknowledges many points in our criticism of FDR but goes on to discuss what Roosevelt was up against, and why he should be respected. “Because Gramsci, I think it was, said, when you judge the past, don't forget, you too shall be judged. I'm paraphrasing … When socialists start winning ele...

Recent episodes of this podcast have looked at the many ways in which the US attempts to maintain global hegemony through the deep state, the banking system, NATO, and the unholy trinity of the IMF, WTO, and World Bank. This week, Steve talks with Daniel Conceição about the possibility of a supranational currency for Brazil and Argentina. Daniel points out some potential benefits, but it’s hard to...

We revere venture capitalists, don’t we? Without their brave acts of derring-do — AKA investing in uncertain ventures — how would society achieve progress? Just kidding. If you are a regular listener to this podcast, you’ve heard guests speak about the horizontal contradictions within the ruling class. Industrial capital and finance capital can each be affected differently by foreign, domestic, fi...

If Macro N Cheese wasn’t committed to spreading MMT to the activist community, we might have been a history podcast. Nothing excites Steve Grumbine as much as listening to 50 hours of lectures on the French Revolution or the Black Plague. This week’s guest, Aaron Good, checks a lot of our boxes. What he brings to the table is history with a solid class analysis. Aaron is the author of American Exc...

When you realize the national debt is little more than a bunch of interest-bearing savings accounts, you will have effectively neutered the politicians and pundits who wield it like a weapon to keep the people in line and tame the working class. Every year in the US, the debt ceiling alarm is rung right on schedule. Just like Halloween. Interest-bearing Treasury bills are not available to most of...

In September, Real Progressives had a webinar with Michael Hudson. It gave our volunteers the opportunity to ask him about his book, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism . This week’s podcast brings you the audio of that event. Although his book looks at three economic philosophies, the Q & A focused on contrasting the dynamics of finance capital...

Rohan Grey always uses cool cultural references. Six minutes into the episode he brings up Tintin. Later we hear about Wile E. Coyote, Star Trek, Teletubbies and Wagnerian opera. The Tintin tale concerns a treasure hunt that required Tintin to find three maps; only when they were overlaid could he see the location of the treasure. Rohan Grey relates this to the critical juncture of law, political...

When you Google John Kiriakou, the descriptive label that pops up with his name is Whistleblower. John was an analyst and case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency during the anti-communist era and then the anti-terrorist era. (Where did all the communists go? Aren’t they a threat anymore? Were they ever? Those will have to be questions for another day.) He is also an author, activist, and...

**Happy New Year from Real Progressives and Macro N Cheese. If you would like to help us continue to bring you great content, please consider becoming a monthly sponsor at patreon.com/realprogressives. Your contributions help pay for the tech platforms and equipment that keep this podcast alive.** This week’s episode is the recording of a recent RP Live webinar with Brett Scott, author of Cloudmon...

All digital currency is not created equal. Its technology can potentially be used as a force for good or a force of evil. Robert Hockett joins Steve to discuss both. Let’s start with the evil.   The collapse of&nbsp...

**After the episode, visit our “Extras” page where you’ll find links to Bill Mitchell’s blog, books, MMT education course, and more. Every episode of this podcast is also accompanied by a full transcript. realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/** Usually when Steve and his guests talk about culture, they’re referring to that of neoliberalism. As Scott Ferguson says, neoliberalism isn’t just e...

Clint Ballinger is an economic geographer, a path he followed in search of answers to what he calls fundamental questions of political economy. Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in England and western Europe? What is the reason for the radically uneven distribution—radically unequal material well-being—around the world? It exists not only between countries, but within countries. As listeners...

** Check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese on the Real Progressives website. This week’s episode looks at using a recently developed economic model application developed by frequent Macro N Cheese guest, Steve Keen. The software is aptly named “Minsky” and Steve Grumbine’s guest, Tyrone Keynes, is an experienced user of the Minsky software modelling tool. Tyrone is a...

**Thank you to our listeners! Can you believe this is our 200th episode? Crazy, right? Well, it wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of a dedicated team. Our sound editor and engineer, Andy Kennedy, has spent thousands of hours (literally) producing these weekly gems. Then there’s the diligent band of copy editors—Brad Sandler, Jonathan Kadmon, Jay Spencer, and yours truly, Virginia Cot...

Steve talks with Thomas Fazi, journalist/writer/translator/socialist. Many of us know him as co-author, with Bill Mitchell, of Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World . A few weeks ago, we had an episode entitled Trussonomics. It was recorded a few weeks after Liz became Prime Minister, and mere days before she got the boot, making her the shortest-ser...

“Austerity is the best weapon they have to try to convince. And if they can't convince, they can't coerce. So in my book, I say austerity plays with a double strategy: coercion and consensus.” Clara Mattei is the author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity & Paved the Way to Fascism , published this month. Steve Grumbine, who uses the Twitter display name “Austerity is murde...

**Full transcripts of all our episodes are available on the website, where you will also find an “Extras” page with additional resources. realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ Steve’s guest, Davarian Baldwin, calls himself an urbanist. This affects his prescriptions for reparations in the US, which extend beyond ADOS and beyond individual payments. His bio says he is a historian, cultural c...

“We have to understand neoliberalism as a particular phase of capitalism dominated by US imperialism. So let's start with the last point I mentioned: regime change operation. Any country around the world, any government that tries to have state oversight over the economy opposing neoliberalism was overthrown through regime change.” Ben Norton’s journalism, according to his bio, focuses primarily o...

** Check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese at the Real Progressives website . Grumbine: I follow a lot of Brits on Twitter, and not just regular rank and file activists, but a lot of the actual economists. And the folks that are considered left, very strongly remind me of neoliberals. Wilson: Because they are. [laughter] What we have, you see, is this wonderful thing...

** To donate to the flood relief effort in Pakistan, please visit the Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund 2022 How do we unpack a problem like this year’s floods in Pakistan? Where do we place the blame? Steve invited our friend Aqdas Afzal back on the podcast to discuss his recent article, “Collapse of Civilizations.” The article’s title is a cheeky play on Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizati...

Ivan Invernizzi, of Rete MMT Italia and MMT France , returns to Macro N Cheese to bring us up to speed on the Italian political landscape. He and Steve met at the 2nd International MMT conference in NYC in 2018, and he was an early guest on this podcast. The US mainstream media tends to catastrophize the election of right-wing leaders around the world by lumping them all into a single sensational...

The movement for free universal healthcare is under attack. Groups like March for Medicare for All, National Single Payer, and others, have been criticized for not buying into the Democratic Party’s agenda promoting individual state healthcare initiatives. The party wants us to stop pressuring Congress. They tell us to go home. They say there’s more likelihood of success in our statehouses. Well,...

Grumbine: Can we have too much money? Wray: Yes, we surely can. Usually, our problem is that there's too much bank money, and the usual consequence is a financial crisis. Obviously, Steve and his guest are talking about the nation, not their own wallets. In this episode, he welcomes L. Randall Wray to Macro N Cheese for the eighth time to talk about Randy’s new book, "Making Money Work for Us: How...

Cory Doctorow writes when he’s anxious. He has eight books coming out soon. Yep, it’s been a tough couple of years. The number of upcoming books gives us a sense of the wide range of subjects Doctorow concerns himself with. His upcoming Chokepoint Capitalism , co-authored with Rebecca Giblin, is about monopoly, monopsony, and fairness in the creative arts labor market. Cory and Steve return to sev...

Some of the more, um, senior members of the Macro N Cheese team can remember a time when the Democratic Party supported labor and the union movement. Then we came to realize we had it backwards – it's really the Party expecting support from the unions, who made donations, helped with campaigning, and got out the vote. Followers of this podcast are regularly introduced to guests who bring word of a...