Clara Mattei and her first book, The Capital Order, were hugely important to Real Progressives as we began to expand our focus from Modern Monetary Theory and investigate the political economy of the capitalist system.

Now she joins Steve to talk about her new book, Escape from Capitalism. They discuss how capitalism maintains itself through market dependence, exploitation, and austerity, and why escaping it requires building alternative institutions rather than relying on elections or reforms within the capitalist state.

Steve and Clara are largely aligned in their critique of the system, but there are some disagreements. They debate aspects of MMT, including how interest rates, state spending, and monetary sovereignty function across different contexts. Their differences open up a deeper discussion about the limits of reform, the state's role, and what meaningful change would require.

There is a reason elections cannot deliver emancipation. The capitalist state is structurally designed to insulate elites from popular control. Clara describes her practical organizing work with FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) in Tulsa, building horizontal assemblies, participatory budgeting campaigns, community land trusts, and mutual aid.

Steve touches on the concept of de-commodifying basic needs (housing, healthcare, food), to break market dependence. But then, capitalism would be unworkable.

Clara E. Mattei is Professor of Economics at The University of Tulsa and the Founding President of FREE: Forum for Real Economic Emancipation. She was previously associate professor at The New School for Social Research Economics Department and has been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton. Her research contributes to the analysis and history of capitalism, exploring the critical relation between economic ideas and technocratic policy making.

Clara is author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press, 2022), and the recently published Escape from Capitalism (Allen Lane, Penguin Press, and Simon & Schuster, January 2026), which will soon be translated into multiple languages, including French, German, and Italian.

Learn more @ freefreeforum.org, where she hosts the weekly FREE podcast.

@claraemattei on X

Their dialogue wrestles with a deceptively simple question: if we already have the monetary capacity to guarantee jobs, housing, and public goods, why does capitalism still dominate? Through a sharp exchange, Steve and Carlos explore whether Modern Monetary Theory can be a pathway to socialism or whether deeper structural barriers rooted in class power and imperial dominance stand in the way.

While there’s broad agreement on the failures of neoliberal capitalism and the need to subordinate economic power to political control, tensions emerge around strategy and theory. Carlos leans toward a vision of “fiat socialism” centered on access to goods and services and the transformative potential of monetary sovereignty, while Steve pushes harder on the limits of education alone, emphasizing class struggle, ideology, and the near-impossibility of reform within existing institutions.

The result is less a blueprint and more an investigation that forces us to confront not just what’s possible, but why it isn’t happening.

Carlos García Hernández is the founder and director of Lola Books, a publishing house that has introduced MMT to Spanish and German readers. He is the author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism Through Modern Monetary Theory.

@Carlos_G_H_ on X

Thomas Fazi joins Steve to dissect the geopolitical and ideological structures that have rendered Europe strategically subordinate to the United States. Thomas argues that NATO’s true purpose, from its inception, was not to defend Europe but to ensure its vassalization by keeping "the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down." He contends that the war in Ukraine was a deliberately provoked conflict designed by US planners to sever Europe’s economic and energy ties with Russia, forcing the EU into deeper dependency on American energy and military infrastructure.

The conversation goes into the weaponization of media narratives and the management of dissent through censorship and “acceptable” politics, connecting the cultural Cold War to today’s crisis of hegemony. Ukraine, Greenland, and Europe’s energy self-sabotage aren’t anomalies, they’re features of an imperial system that requires subordination abroad and confusion at home.

Thomas Fazi is a “journalist/writer/translator/socialist.” who lives in Italy. He is the co-director of Standing Army (2010), an award-winning feature-length documentary on US military bases featuring Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky; and the author of The Battle for Europe: How an Elite Hijacked a Continent – and How We Can Take It Back (2014) and Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (co-authored with Bill Mitchell, 2017). His articles have appeared in numerous online and printed publications.

Find his work on Substack: thomasfazi.com

@battleforeurope on X

One of our favorite guests is back to talk about the central problem facing much of the Global South. It is not simply bad policy or weak leadership, but the persistence of colonial economic structures. He explains that many countries, especially in Africa, remain trapped in roles designed by empire: exporters of cheap raw materials, importers of finished goods, and sites for low-value production. Political independence did not end these structures, and debt, IMF intervention, and external pressure have only deepened the trap.

"Colonialism and its economic structures were not designed for development, they were not designed for democracy, they were not designed for justice, they were not designed to produce a just transition or human rights or any of these things. If anything, colonialism and its economic structures were hierarchical, abusive, violent, extractive."

Fadhel was one of the economists we originally turned to for our education in MMT. In this conversation with Steve he makes the case that MMT is not a theory of everything. Issues of race, class, and colonialism require their own lenses. Whether the issue is climate change, migration, development, or reparations, the entry point has to be the lived material conditions. MMT becomes crucial when the question turns to how to mobilize resources, avoid debt traps, and finance transformation without inflationary collapse.

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is a Tunisian American economist. He is an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University and president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He’s the author of Global South Perspectives on Substack. In 2025, Dr. Kaboub was recognized by the New Africa Magazine in the top 100 most influential Africans under the Thinkers and Opinion Shapers category. He currently serves a two-year term on the United Nations High Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs at UN DESA.

Find his work at globalsouthperspectives.substack.com

@FadhelKaboub on X

They ground the discussion in Wallerstein's world-systems theory, defining an empire not by its internal politics but by its extractive external relations, and trace the concrete historical processes of this extraction. The "migration boomerang" from US destabilization in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador – driven by the needs of capital like the United Fruit Company – demonstrates the dialectic in action.

The empire's domination creates the displaced peoples it then scapegoats to divide the working class. Erald connects this to the long arc of capitalist development, from the Atlantic slave system to the prison-industrial complex, showing how the ruling class has always used race and nationality to prevent united class consciousness.

With the MMT lens, Steve explains that this is directly tied to how a Federal Job Guarantee would shatter this dynamic by eliminating the "reserve army of labor" and the power of capital to discipline workers.

Erald Kolasi is a writer and researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016. You can find out more about Erald and his work on his website, www.eraldkolasi.com.

Subscribe to his Substack: https://substack.com/@technodynamics

Investigative reporter Peter Byrne is back to talk with Steve about his 10-part Military AI Watch series at Project Censored. It’s a chilling and materialist analysis of the military-industrial-AI complex.

Naming names and following the funding trails, Peter reveals how firms tied to Palantir, Google, and other tech giants are positioning AI as indispensable to “national security.” Meanwhile, the systems themselves remain prone to hallucination, data poisoning, and catastrophic error.

War games escalate to nuclear exchange. (Does anyone remember War Games, the movie? Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy play a teenage nerd and a popular girl who save the world from the nuclear destruction they almost launched. Sigh... innocent times.) Civilian infrastructure becomes battlefield terrain. And the comforting promise of a “human in the loop” is a marketing slogan instead of a safeguard. 2001: A Space Odyssey eerily feels both prescient and naive by comparison. Hollywood likes to personalize everything. The villain is wacky or evil; it's never the economic system.

As their conversation continues, Steve and Peter look at class power, media complicity, and the illusion that electoral politics alone can rein in a self-directing war machine.

Peter Byrne is an award-winning investigative science reporter who has long uncovered corruption at the nexus of science and industry. Now, in partnership with Project Censored, Byrne has launched Military AI Watch, a groundbreaking ten-part series published on Project Censored’s website.

https://www.projectcensored.org/military-ai-watch/

Find all of Peter’s work here: https://www.peterbyrne.info/

Dr. Ali Kadri (Sun Yat-sen University), author of the Unmaking of Arab Socialism, joins Steve to talk about imperialism, development, and why the Arab world keeps getting put through the capitalist meat grinder. Ali argues that capitalism isn’t just markets and greed. It’s a destructive social relationship. Once you look at it that way, many of the world’s mysteries stop being mysterious: war, austerity, pollution, and mass deaths aren’t accidents that occasionally happen to capitalism. They are outcomes to be monetized.

The conversation moves to imperialism as capitalism in its concentrated, caffeinated, and brutal form, especially under finance-dominance. Ali describes genocide as both direct (bombs, occupation, ethnic cleansing) and structural (avoidable hunger, disease, debt-driven collapse). He frames the destruction of Arab socialist and anti-colonial projects as strategic for empire: control of oil, geography, and the political threat of regional solidarity.

They talk about MMT’s explanation of currency and how the dollar functions as a lever. Ali sees the dollar as power, representing control over global resources and labor. Debt dependence becomes a kind of colonization by spreadsheet.

“If the dollar stops for a minute or for a month or so, then we have people going hungry. And so this is a form of colonization, a form of death by the dollar.”

They close by pulling democracy down from the clouds. Steve suggests bourgeois elections merely deliver a reshuffling of managers for the same system, and Ali produces a simple metaphor: a multiple-choice exam. The choices have been pre-loaded. And in elections, the result is still class rule.

Dr. Ali Kadri is a Visiting Professor at Sun Yat-sen University. He has previously held senior roles at the National University of Singapore and the London School of Economics. His academic work focuses on the political economy of development, imperialism, and the Arab world. He is the author of several important books, including The Accumulation of Waste: A Political Economy of Systemic Destruction; China’s Path to Development: Against Neoliberalism; and The Unmaking of Arab Socialism.

Steve’s guest is Australian labor historian and organizer Owen Bennett, who founded the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union in 2015, and more recently, Unionists for a Job Guarantee in 2024. He and Steve explore how to tackle the deep divide between Modern Monetary Theory and the Marxist left. Owen argues that the left's current dismissal of full-employment policy is a historic break from a time when communists and unionists successfully fought for – and won – some major concessions under capitalism. We should look to establish that kind of unity.

If the state is a tool of the oligarchs, is fighting for a policy like the Job Guarantee a distraction from revolution, or is it a necessary front in the class war? Steve and Owen discuss austerity, strategy, and whether "socialism or bust" has left the working class with nothing at all.

Owen Bennett is a unionist, university tutor, PhD graduate in labour history, activist, author, and researcher. He has published widely on the history of working class struggles against unemployment in Australia. His book on the struggle for full employment in post-war Australia is forthcoming.

Owen founded the Australian Unemployed Workers Union in 2015 and, more recently, Unionists for a Job Guarantee in 2024.

The war on communism is about protecting imperial super-profits, keeping cheap labor and resources flowing from the Global South to the imperial core. It has never been about lofty values and freedom fries. So why does the empire care about books, grants, and academic careers?

Gabriel’s investigation begins with a potent symbol: the legacy of Che Guevara. We know the CIA hunted and executed him. Less known is their parallel mission to assassinate the legacy of his thoughts. By seizing and editing his Bolivian diaries, US intelligence and its media assets would control the narrative of his struggle. It’s a microcosm of a vast, systemic project. It reveals that empires understand a fundamental truth: the pen can be mightier than the sword. That might sound trite but think about it: to control populations and maintain global dominance, you must control the realm of thought, the very imagination of what is possible.

The true target of this intellectual war has never been abstract Marxist theory. It is actually existing socialism: the tangible, state-building projects that succeeded in breaking the chains of imperialism. From the Soviet Union and China to Cuba, Vietnam, and beyond, these movements achieved the unthinkable: they halted the imperial value flow. They stopped the hemorrhage of natural resources and cheap labor from the Global South to the capitalist core, claiming their right to self-determination and independent development. This was the existential threat: a model proving that escape from the imperialist world-system was achievable. The panic in the halls of power was not over esoteric debates about Hegelian dialectics, but over the loss of super-profits and the empowering example of successful liberation.

Gabriel and Steve discuss why dialectical and historical materialism is more than just a lofty sounding term. It actually matters. It’s like the anti-virus software for propaganda. Instead of being knocked over every time a new headline drops, we have a framework for seeing patterns. Coups, destabilization, narrative management, the whole traveling circus? They all make sense. And they’re all connected. (In fact, you can’t listen to this episode without hearing the dialectical relationship between material control and the control of ideas.)

Using the Marxist lens, Gabriel analyzes the socioeconomic base of the “theory industry” and a certain brand of Western or academic Marxism that turns class struggle into a grad-seminar aesthetic and cultural war hobby, safely disconnected from organizing, anti-imperialism, and actual movements. He argues the capitalist system naturally fosters and funds ideas that secure its survival, making knowledge production a commodity-driven system focused on exchange value (career advancement, book sales) rather than use value for liberation.

Gabriel isn’t just naming names for sport. (And besides, in the US we already have a long and colorful tradition of naming names, so let’s not be clutching our pearls.) He’s pointing at a system that manufactures respectable “leftist” ideas that don’t threaten empire. As the imperial core becomes more openly brulat at home, we need to reconnect with the international, anti-imperialist thread of revolutionary Marxism if we’re serious about changing anything.

Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic, and activist. He is the Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop / Atelier de Théorie Critique, Professor of Philosophy and Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University, and Research Associate at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique – LAP (EHESS Paris). He is the author or editor of twelve books, including most recently Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? (Monthly Review Press, 2025) and Requiem pour la French Theory with Aymeric Monville (Éditions Delga, 2024). He is one of the Editors-in-Chief of the World Marxist Review and a co-director of the AIM—Anti-Imperialist Marxism book series.

Bob and Steve share the fundamental position that capitalism doesn’t just produce inequality by accident, it builds durable ladders for some and trapdoors for others. Wealth, not income, is the key instrument because it is power that reproduces itself across generations.

Bob lays out the major policy mechanism of stealth wealth-building: how the federal government subsidizes asset accumulation through the tax code, especially via “tax expenditures” (deductions, exclusions, preferential treatment) that provide vast benefits to the wealthy.

From an MMT perspective, the conversation underlines a crucial point: the state’s problem is not “finding the money,” it’s choosing who gets the public subsidy. A system that claims scarcity around public goods reliably mobilizes massive policy support for private asset appreciation and wealth compounding. In other words, benefits reward ownership and existing assets, not the people struggling to acquire them.

Bob situates this historically, tracing the origins of the modern income and estate tax era to the early 20th century and argues that any progressive policy history coexisted with, and was intertwined with, overt white supremacist politics.

Robert B. Williams is the Stedman Professor of Economics, Guilford College. Bob has taught economics and political economy for over 40 years. He has written three books, including Funding White Supremacy: Federal Wealth Policies and the Modern Racial Wealth Gap (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Steve’s guest is Dr. Anthony Anastasi, an economist teaching at the Sino-British College, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. They talk about Anthony’s paper: Marxism and MMT: How Modern Monetary Theory Can Enrich the Debate Amongst Marxists.

They dismantle the all-too-common Marxist critiques of MMT, which claim that the state can’t control money’s value, and that MMT lacks a theory of value. (However, the ubiquitous “taxpayer money” framing that feeds austerity myths, is not limited to Marxists.) The discussion reframes the state's monetary capacity as a tool for class struggle rather than a capitalist backstop.

They look at the federal job guarantee with reference to Rosa Luxemburg’s concept of non-reformist reform, ie, a reform that can weaken capitalist logic and build working-class consciousness and power.

Anthony also brings an on-the-ground perspective, sharing observations from China’s political economy, including local-vs-central financing, RMB-denominated debt, capital controls, and emerging debates that resemble MMT arguments even when not labeled as such.

Dr. Anthony William Donald Anastasi is an economist and lecturer specializing in development economics and international political economy. He teaches at the Sino-British College, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and holds a Ph.D. from East China Normal University. His research examines how state–business relations, industrial policy, monetary sovereignty, and income distribution shape economic growth, trade patterns, and political power, with a particular focus on China and East Asia. Alongside publishing in SSCI-ranked journals, he regularly writes for the popular press on the Chinese and U.S. economies and global trade.

@_AWDA_ on X

To understand a situation, it must be considered historically, materially, and as a connected process. With that in mind, Ricardo Vaz of Venezuelanalysis, joins Steve to talk about what the Bolivarian Revolution actually was – on the ground – beyond the familiar US media caricatures. Ricardo walks through key turning points in the Chávez era and the social gains that reshaped everyday life. But there’s a bigger question that haunts every revolutionary project. How do you build new forms of democratic power while the old state machinery, domestic elites, and hostile external forces push back?

(Does this sound familiar? It will if you took part in RP Book Club’s study of State and Revolution)

From there, the conversation follows the oil thread. It’s not a single-cause explanation, but it’s where sovereignty, development, and imperial pressure collide. Steve and Ricardo unpack how the hydrocarbons industry evolved, what “nationalization” really meant in practice, and why the fight over Venezuela’s resources can’t be separated from US strategy in the hemisphere.

They then look into the Maduro years, sanctions, economic siege, and the constant tug-of-war inside Venezuela between survival policies and revolutionary horizons. This includes a clear-eyed look at opposition figures and the narratives that dominate US talking points. The episode closes with a grounded discussion of why Venezuela matters as a 21st-century political experiment, and what meaningful solidarity looks like when the headlines are designed to mislead and misdirect.

Ricardo Vaz grew up in Mozambique with strong political leanings and a clear anti-imperialist outlook, which led him early on to closely follow the Bolivarian Revolution and Chavismo in Venezuela. After living in various countries and continents, he moved to Venezuela in early 2019. Although trained in theoretical physics, he gradually shifted into journalism and political analysis, joining the Venezuela Analysis staff as a writer and editor in 2018. His main interests include sanctions, popular power organizations, and corporate media coverage of Venezuela. He is also a member of grassroots media collectives including Tatuy TV and Utopix.

venezuelanalysis.com

@venanalysis on X

To “steelman” Acemoglu and Robinson’s position, Erald uses their favorite showcase case – North vs. South Korea. He lays out their comparison of the “tyrannical dictatorship” vs the “open” society and presents their explanation for these differences.

Erald then flips the script: the DPRK outperformed for decades, then crashed not because its “institutions got worse,” but because the USSR collapsed. Cheap, subsidized energy disappeared, wrecking agriculture and triggering famine.

The pattern repeats across history. Using examples like China and Venezuela, the episode explores how wars, sanctions, resource access, and global power structures shape economic outcomes far more than abstract institutional rules. Development is a struggle rooted in material conditions and geopolitical realities, not a neutral competition between better or worse policy designs.

Erald Kolasi is a writer and researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016. You can find out more about Erald and his work at his website, www.eraldkolasi.com.

Subscribe to his Substack: https://substack.com/@technodynamics

Andy highlights the point that corporate news focuses on what went wrong today but ignores what goes wrong every day. “It's the difference between dramatic events and systemic problems.”

The #1 underreported story is that of ICE soliciting private contractors to monitor social media for critics and assess their "proclivity to violence," a move toward normalized surveillance that received little corporate media attention.

Steve and his guests also discuss broader themes, linking media patterns to cultural hegemony and manufacturing consent, where state and oligarchic interests align to shape public perception. Examples include coverage of Israel-Palestine, university crackdowns on pro-Palestinian speech, and the hiring of figures like Bari Weiss.

Andy Lee Roth is editor-at-large for Project Censored and its publishing imprint, The Censored Press. He is co-editor of Project’s State of the Free Press yearbook series, and a coauthor of The Media and Me: A Guide to Critical Media Literacy for Young People.

Shealeigh Voitl is Project Censored's associate director. She helped develop the State of the Free Press 2024 teaching guide, the Project’s Beyond Fact-Checking: A Teaching Guide to the Power of News Frames, and The Project Censored Show’s forthcoming segment Frame-Check.

Find their work at https://www.projectcensored.org/

@ProjectCensored on X

Emma and Steve discuss the way mainstream economics has long treated the home, the body, and the mind as a black box, as if workers spring fully formed from the soil and arrive at the labor market already fed, healed, soothed, socialized, and ready to produce.

They talk about measurement and the way the GDP counts a $3,000 ambulance bill as added value instead of predatory extraction. They also look at power and social cohesion. Steve connects Emma’s thesis to MMT’s real-resources focus and the Job Guarantee as a way to fund socially necessary work that markets underprovide, while also admitting the hard question: even if policy is sound, capital and its political machinery never volunteer to be disarmed.

Emma Holten is a feminist activist and gender policy consultant. Since 2018, she has worked with feminist economics. In 2024 she published her first book “DEFICIT - On the value of care” in Danish. It is available in English, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, and Italian - and forthcoming in 6 other languages. It has won the Politiken Literature Prize, The Library Reader’s Prize, The Sara Danius Prize, The Sprout Prize and was shortlisted for the Montana Literature Award.

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 scandal as a stark case study in systemic class power, media complicity, and the mechanisms elite networks use to protect their own.

The discussion hinges on several key points: evidence from released emails shows Epstein’s role as a trans-partisan power broker, connecting figures like Trump and Clinton to finance (Les Wexner) and tech (Bill Gates, Peter Thiel).

The media’s failure to investigate is no accident. (Are we surprised?) It’s a function of class interests acting to manage public perception and manufacture consent. The episode goes on to connect Epstein’s documented interest in spyware and AI to a broader project of militarized surveillance for social control.

Nolan Higdon is a founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, Project Censored National Judge, author, and lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Higdon’s areas of concentration include podcasting, digital culture, news media history, propaganda, and critical media literacy. He is the author of The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education (2020); Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (2022); The Media And Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People (2022); and the forthcoming Surveillance Education: Navigating the conspicuous absence of privacy in schools (Routledge). Higdon is a regular source of expertise for CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Find his work on Substack: nolanhigdon.substack.com

@NolanHigdonCML on X

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 forensics. His core puzzle was brutal and practical: why did big chunks of Italy’s working-class bail on their own unions and parties and drift into fascism? That’s the real origin story of “cultural hegemony,” “common sense,” and the whole Gramscian toolbox: figuring out how consent gets manufactured and how counterrevolution recruits.

Vijay takes us through Gramsci’s political development and his imprisonment under Mussolini, where he wrote his seminal Prison Notebooks.

Then they get into Gramsci’s key concepts: hegemony (borrowed from Lenin and, per Vijay, more than a “culture theory”), the necessity of a Leninist-type party as the modern Prince, and the need to build alliances to create working-class leadership over society.

After taking a hard look at the left in the US, Steve and Vijay discuss the limits of electoral politics and the missing infrastructure for a serious battle of ideas. It’s a wide-ranging conversation about class power, organizing, and what it actually takes to change how people understand the world they’re living in.

Vijay Prashad is the Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. He is a historian, journalist, and author of forty books, including Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassination; Red Star over the Third World; and The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.

thetricontinental.org

@vijayprashad on X

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 villainization. They discuss China’s development ethos and describe China as a state that actively uses its monetary and fiscal sovereignty to guide development towards internal goals (poverty alleviation, technological self-reliance, common prosperity) and external partnership (Win-win cooperation, Belt and Road Initiative).

Illustrating the difference between state steering and the so-called “free market,” the conversation goes into China’s mobilization of real resources through strategic state guidance, like Five-Year Plans and state-owned enterprises in key sectors.

Yan talks about the use of capital controls and a managed exchange rate. She details lessons from 2015 and the application of MMT principles to insulate domestic policy from volatile external forces.

Without romanticizing China, Yan also walks through its real challenges. But from an MMT-aware lens, these are seen as problems of policy design and resource use (issues a sovereign, planning-oriented state can address!) rather than proof of an impending collapse.

Yan Liang is Peter C and Bonnie S Kremer Chair Professor of Economics at Willamette University. She is also a Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Global Development Policy Center (Boston University), and a Research Scholar of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

Yan specializes in the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the Political Economy of China, Economic Development, and International Economics. Yan’s current research focuses on China’s development finance and industrial transformation, and China’s role in the global financial architecture.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yan-liang-1355b91a2/

@YanLian31677392 on X

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-of-the-podcast Dirk Ehnts) showing how the Scottish government’s plan to copy the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact and delay its own currency would lock an “independent” Scotland into permanent austerity and dependence on markets and foreign owners.

Will explains that more foreign direct investment, supply-side reforms, and 3% deficit caps aren’t “responsible” policy – they are mechanisms to protect external and domestic elites at the expense of workers and communities.

Steve and Will stress that MMT is just a lens without an explicit socialist or working-class political economy. The same monetary tools can be used for empire, war, and repression. They argue for an independence project built on monetary sovereignty, full employment, ecological limits, and economic resilience... not on appeasing markets and Brussels.

William Thompson is a Scottish political economist and founder of SCOTONOMICS. He worked for almost a decade in the financial services sector in London. He has an MSc in the Green Economy and MEcon in the Economics of Sustainability. Based in Dunblane, Will writes regular blog posts and articles on economics in various publications including The National newspaper in Scotland and the Scottish Left Review. Support SCOTONOMICS: patreon.com/Scotonomics.

@Williamgallus on X

https://scotonomics.org/

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. 

Centuries of Western imperial dominance are unraveling, and the US responds with flailing, genocidal actions in Gaza and Ukraine. These aren't signs of strength; they're the death rattles of a corpse that doesn't know it's dead yet. 

“Realizing you’re not voting your way out of it might be the most terrifying ‘aha moment’ of them all.” Steve Grumbine 

At home the two major US parties are presented as alternatives, the ballot is a participation trophy in the “managed spectacle” of elections. Obama? Trump? Biden? Different brands, same oligarchy. Corporate media and algorithmic “alternative media” work together to keep people confused, divided, and clinging to the fantasy that if they just vote harder, donate more, and binge the right “left” YouTubers, they can reform a system designed to crush them. The empire’s to-do list (crush dissent, steal resources) remains the same. 

What are we to do? Maybe we can't break the system yet, but we can stop being dupes. See the Matrix. 

Aaron Good holds a doctorate in political science from Temple University. He is the author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. He is the host of American Exception podcast https://americanexception.com/podcast/ 

Follow Aaron’s work at americanexception.substack.com/  

@Aaron_Good_ on X

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 about how the Federal Reserve is, and always has been, a "creature of Congress," and its supposed independence is a smokescreen that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

The Fed has a dual mandate of full employment and price stability, yet it consistently prioritizes the stability of Wall Street over the well-being of Main Street, bailing out banks while leaving workers to face the fallout of manufactured recessions. 

Randy describes how raising interest rates – the Fed’s so-called tool – works to suppress wages by slowing the economy and killing job growth. Federal Reserve transcripts explicitly state that they fear “wage inflation” but see “profit inflation” as desirable.

Randy wants Congress to take control of the central bank. (Some of us don’t see Congress as independent either.) But whatever our belief in the role of the state and who it serves, the episode contains valuable information on central bank operations, how interest rate hikes discipline labor, the truth about “fighting” inflation, and the difference between monetary and fiscal policy. We need to understand the mechanics of power if we’re going to build the future we deserve.

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Emeritus Professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is one of the developers of Modern Money Theory and his newest book on the topic is Understanding Modern Money Theory: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies (Elgar, 2025).

Trump’s “$20B for Argentina” wasn’t aid – it was a heist. Economist Daniel Kostzer joins Steve to explain. Basically it’s just same ole same ole. Milei’s government crashed the value of Argentina’s currency and jacked up interest rates, drawing in big investors looking for fast profits. Then, under pressure from the IMF and the US, Argentina opened up its financial system, letting those hedge funds cash out in US dollars and leave the country, taking the money and leaving ordinary Argentines to deal with inflation, frozen pensions, and gutted public services. The media story about soybeans and China? Simply a cover for another bailout of the rich. 

Daniel describes Argentina’s inflation as a symptom of class struggle. He connects the dots between today’s crisis and a long history of U.S. financial “help” that only props up Wall Street. The conversation exposes how the global elites use debt, currency crises, and friendly politicians to extract wealth while selling it as economic stability. 

The episode is a deep dive into modern imperialism, media manipulation, and class politics. It’s also a reminder, as Gramsci said, to keep the pessimism of the intellect but the optimism of the will. 

Daniel Kostzer is Chief Economist at ITUC-CSI (International Trade Union Confederation-Confederacion Sindical Internacional). Much of his research is in labor economics, poverty reduction, and income distribution. Follow him: @dkostzer on X; https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-kostzer-884318165/  

Silicon Valley’s tech bros are kind of like bouncers. Thiel, Apple, Google et al. snort up our data, rig information flows (algorithms, anyone?) then lobby to block regulation.  The “nothing to hide” line is an ideological bait and switch. The killer is inside the house! 

There’s no easy fix. Heidi urges immediate digital self-defense – the OPSEC basics, privacy tools, scam awareness. Meanwhile the ruling class isn’t losing sleep over your “I voted” sticker. We should be thinking in terms of local organizing and building counter-hegemony. (Heidi references the Young Lords. Look ‘em up!) 

Heidi Boghosian is a New York-based attorney and activist. She's the author of "Spying on Democracy" (2013), "I Have Nothing To Hide" (2021), and "Cyber Citizens: Saving Democracy with Digital Literacy" (June 2025). 

Heidi is co-host of the radio show and podcast, Law and Disorder. Find her work at lawanddisorder.org and heidiboghosian.com

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 disempower the working class. 

Professor Hall traces the roots of this "possessive individualism" back centuries, saying it is not a recent neoliberal invention but a deeply embedded cultural force with origins in changes in English law, specifically the spread of primogeniture (inheritance by the first-born son) in the 12th century. He goes on to explain the consequences of these historical events. 

The conversation reframes the American Dream as a form of mass gambling. Despite overwhelming evidence that most people fail, the system encourages a zero-sum mindset where we focus on the lottery-like winners. 

The Steves agree that facts alone won't break this spell. They discuss the need for a new emotionally compelling narrative that counters the right's fear-mongering. 

Steve Hall is Emeritus Professor of Criminology at the University of Teesside. He is a polymath who has published in the fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history, economic history, political theory and philosophy. He is also co-author of Violent Night (Berg 2006, with Simon Winlow), Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage 2013, with Simon Winlow), Riots and Political Protest (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow, James Treadwell and Daniel Briggs), Revitalizing Criminological Theory (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow), The Rise of the Right (with Simon Winlow and James Treadwell) and The Death of the Left (with Simon Winlow). He is co-editor of New Directions in Criminological Theory (Routledge 2012, with Simon Winlow). In 2017 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the international Extreme Anthropology Research Network at the University of Vienna. 

@ProfHall1955 on X 

Bill is a great storyteller. His experience as a regulator trying to enforce laws against the great crooks of the world gives him a lot of material. If you haven’t already heard our first episode with him, check it out:  “Exposed: A Serial Whistleblowers Story” He’s the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One – one of our favorite book titles. 

At the start of this week’s interview, Bill explains: 

“...The absolute paramount form of control fraud is President of the United States of America. And they set about optimizing it as soon as they got in power. Remember all those executive orders and things that Trump would sign?  

“... Among their very first acts was to say, we will no longer enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Now this is an act that says, no, it's not okay to bribe public officials in other countries. It's actually a crime. And Trump was saying way back in time, long before he even was talking about the presidency, how we shouldn't have a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That it was stupid. Of course you should be able to bribe people. It's good for business.  

“And if you think that's bad, the New York Bar Association took the same position.  Because they were the commercial lawyers for all the firms that were bribing folks all over the world.” 

Bill describes a shift to the final stage of elite control fraud. Corrupt actors no longer bother hiding their crimes. They flaunt them. This serves as "free advertising" to attract more bribes and creates a price war among those seeking favors, while simultaneously intimidating opponents. 

Bill also talks to Steve about further manipulation of financial regulations and the intersections of elite control fraud within the cryptocurrency market. He goes through the real reasons crypto is useful to the ruling class and how these dynamics affect everyday people. 

William K. Black is Distinguished Scholar in Residence for Financial Regulation, University of Minnesota School of Law. He is a white-collar criminologist, a former financial regulator, former banker, and serial whistleblower. He is a co-founder of Bank Whistleblowers United (BWU). 

@WilliamKBlack on X

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. David explains the rise of far-right figures like Donald Trump is not a random accident but a direct outcome of the capitalist system, which creates deep-seated cultural syndrome that poison our minds and relationships, making fascism an attractive option for many when the system itself is in crisis. 

The three key cultural syndromes are: 

• Gain Primacy Syndrome, designed to make us feel like failures: Capitalism constantly tells us to optimize ourselves and chase endless wealth. When we inevitably can't achieve this due to low wages and precarious jobs, it creates a deep sense of alienation and loss. Fascists then exploit this feeling, telling us to blame immigrants, people of color, or our neighbors instead of the system itself. 
• Zero-Sum Rivalry Syndrome, pitting us against each other: The system is built on dog-eat-dog competition. This forces us into constant social comparison, potentially leading to self-hatred and mental health crises. When we feel we're losing this race, it's easy for fascist rhetoric to redirect our anger. 
• Ownership Syndrome, making everything fake: We are taught to find meaning not in community or authenticity, but in the things we buy. This is designed to create a hollow, meaningless life. Fascism offers a false sense of genuine community and a return to a "better past" (hahaha) to fill this void. 

The conversation also touches on theological reflections and historical perspectives to further emphasize the pervasive cultural manipulation intrinsic to capitalism. Overall, the episode examines the ideological tools used to maintain economic subjugation. Liberals and Democrats are meant as a ‘friendly face’ of the same system, offering pittances of welfare while ensuring the exploitative oppressive structure remains intact. 

Link to the article discussed in this episode: https://utahvanguard.medium.com/the-cultural-syndromes-of-capitalism-e2765aa7df34 

David M. Fields is an economist and author whose research is grounded in critical, realistic and genetic structuralist ontology and epistemology, focusing on the complex interactions of foreign exchange and capital flows with economic growth, fiscal and monetary policy and distribution, with particular emphasis on the concept of endogenous money. 

Additionally, he investigates the political economy of regional development, along with examining patterns with respect to housing, social stratification and community planning. He is currently an economist at the Utah Department of Commerce and the author of a Medium post for the Utah Vanguard. 

@ProfDavidFields on X

"What these companies are doing is digitally amplifying a physical process of settler colonial dispossession." 

Omar goes beyond labeling digital censorship as simple political bias. He argues that Silicon Valley's actions are a direct extension of imperialist goals in Palestine: the erasure of a people, their narrative, and their history. Big Tech is not a referee – not even a biased one. It is an active combatant. 

Omar provides a sharp critique of how the language of safety and anti-racism is co-opted and weaponized. Online platforms use terms like "harassment" and "hate speech" to silence criticism. 

In their discussion, Omar and Steve apply Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony to the digital sphere. They analyze how Big Tech platforms shape our "common sense," not just through outright censorship, but through algorithmic curation, shadow-banning, and overwhelming activists with trolls and bots, waging a "digital war of attrition" that drains energy and shifts perceptions. They also suggest the potential TikTok ban is not just a US-China trade issue but a symptom of a crisis of hegemony. 

Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent, and Assistant Professor of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar has covered digital repression in relation to Palestine as a freelance journalist since May 2021, with work appearing in such outlets as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, CounterPunch, and more. Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA. 

His recently published book is Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle 

@dromarzahzah on X    

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 presented as neutral. As if all citizens are on an equal playing field. Market transactions replace the natural interdependence at the core of societies. 

Brett and Steve look at leftwing alternatives, including the potential of mutual credit systems and alternative economies as counter-narratives to mainstream economic structures.  

They also discuss libertarians' obsession with commodity money (like gold), which stems directly from their flawed view of society. They see money as a neutral tool for trade between independent agents. In reality, modern money is a credit system—a network of social promises and debts that reflects power dynamics. 

Brett Scott is an author, journalist, and activist, who explores the intersections between money systems, finance, and digital technology. He’s the author of The Heretics Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. His latest book is Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets. Find more of his work at https://alteredstatesof.money/ or on Substack.

@Suitpossum on X

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 should know better. They call some of them out by name and express disappointment when natural allies on the left reject modern monetary theory.  

“At this point, you cannot just be MMT curious. You have to make up your mind, do you want the ‘scarce money’ framework? Is that the way you're going to view the world? Or do you view it through the MMT framework? Because there is no other option.” 

Yeva and Steve agree that MMT is not a political ideology but a crucial lens for understanding that a monetarily sovereign government is the creator of currency, which means scarcity is serving another purpose – eg, supporting this economic system. 

They talk about government spending during Covid as a missed opportunity to educate. They criticize so-called progressive politicians (hello Bernie!) who, despite likely understanding MMT, refuse to publicly champion its principles. This leads to self-sabotage (perhaps intentionally?) when they claim to argue for progressive policies within a conservative tax-and-spend agenda. Result? Austerity. 

As we regularly try to stress, a correct understanding of MMT is no solution, but rather a tool in building a revolutionary class analysis. 

Dr. Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of Economics and Department Chair at Franklin and Marshall College and a research scholar at Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Professor Nersisyan has published more than 25 journal articles, book chapters, policy notes and policy briefs on the topics of Modern Monetary Theory, fiscal policy, the Green New Deal, and financial instability. She is the editor of the Elgar Companion to Modern Monetary Theory with L. Randall Wray, and her work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian and The Hill. 

Find her work at levyinstitute.org/publications/yeva-nersisyan 

Daniel shares his experiences in Buenos Aires, describing a city with grand public infrastructure (a legacy of Peronism) now filled with poverty due to austerity. He dismantles the myth that President Javier Milei's austerity policies tamed inflation. Instead, he argues the temporary stabilization was due to a massive, supranational bailout from the IMF, not free-market principles. And when we’re talking about the IMF, we’re seeing a tool of economic imperialism. By creating dollar dependency in developing nations, it forces them into debt servitude and structural adjustments that fully serve global capital, never local populations. 

This brings us back to mainstream economists who lie outright in order to protect the class interests of banks and the oligarchy. They point to how economic rationalizations shift (e.g., after the 2008 crisis and during the pandemic) to always justify saving capital while opposing spending on the public purpose. 

Daniel Conceição is an associate professor at the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning and Research (IPPUR) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and one of the authors of the book “Modern Monetary Theory: The Key to an Economy at the Service of People”. He is also former president of the Institute of Functional Finance for Development Brasil (https://iffdbrasil.org/) 

@stopthelunacy 

This is Bob Hockett’s 12th visit to Macro N Cheese. Back in 2022, in an episode discussing the collapse of the major crypto exchange platform FTX, Bob gave us a useful rule of thumb: 

“The irony is that in every one of these cases there is a clue in the name of the product in question that ought to warn you. If it’s called a junk bond, there’s a reason for that word “junk” being used. And if it’s called a subprime mortgage loan... there’s a reason for that “subprime” term. Similarly with cryptocurrency or crypto assets, one of the most ironical names ever conceived for this kind of product. If the word “crypto” comes into it, then that’s a pretty good tip-off that there’s something non-transparent about it, that there’s something opaque and occluded and difficult to understand.” 

Hmmm... today’s topic is the GENIUS Act. What meaning should we take from that name? 

In this episode, Bob and Steve talk about the newly-passed GENIUS Act whose stated purpose is regulation of the stablecoin industry, bringing the shadow banking industry into the light and out of the, um, shadows.   

The discussion looks at the flawed premise of private stablecoins and the real motives behind the push. Far from preventing instability and fraud, promotion of stablecoin aligns with a libertarian ideology (a la Hayek) that seeks to denationalize currency and privatize money. From a Modern Monetary Theory perspective, the implications are alarming. It merits a discussion of the role of the state. 

 The GENIUS Act is a dangerous distraction. A Trojan Horse.  

 Robert C. Hockett is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. His principal teaching, research, and writing interests lie in the fields of organizational, financial, and monetary law and economics 

 His forthcoming and recent books are: World Money (Yale 2026); A Republic of Producers (Yale 2025); Making Capital Democratic (Polity 2025); Spread the Fed (Palgrave 2025); The Citizens' Ledger (Palgrave 2022); Democratizing Finance (Verso 2022); Money from Nothing (Melville House 2020); Financing the Green New Deal (Palgrave 2020).  

@rch371 on X    

A significant portion of the conversation is dedicated to explaining the crucial shift from the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system to the modern system of floating exchange rates after 1971. Bill clarifies that in a floating regime, a currency-issuing government is not financially constrained in its domestic policy by “trade imbalances,” as it was under Bretton Woods.  

The episode also touches on bond vigilantes, the IMF, and the shifting status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. 

William Mitchell is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) at the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia. He is also the Docent Professor of Global Political Economy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Guest International Professor at Kyoto University, Japan.  

Follow Bill’s work, including his upcoming books, at https://billmitchell.org/blog/ 

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 insider’s view to the story. Chris is a former MP and shadow minister for UK’s Labour Party. He’s currently deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain, and hosts a show, Palestine Declassified, that has the notable honor of being banned by YouTube. 

Chris describes some strategic missteps within the Labour Party under Corbyn and others. He criticizes the adoption of neoliberal policies, like the fiscal credibility rule, and Corbyn’s ambiguity on Brexit. The Zionist lobby leapt on their support for Palestine; charges of antisemitism hit their target. 

“Unfortunately, Jeremy gave it legs by continually apologizing. And as I said to him at the time, ‘Every apology you make and every concession you give is just feeding the beast and making it stronger. Ultimately they're going to come for you and destroy this project.’ And they did. I mean, that's what really killed the Corbyn project. It was the antisemitism thing. I mean, what finished it off. What delivered the coup-de-grace, of course, was the commitment to a second referendum on Brexit.” 

Chris also recounts his own experience as a victim of coordinated attacks which led to his being ousted from the Labour Party. 

Throughout the conversation, Steve and Chris continuously pound the MMT message, reminding us that the UK, like the US, is not constrained by lack of money!

Chris Williamson is a former member of Parliament and shadow minister for the Labour Party, currently deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain.

@DerbyChrisW on X 

Follow Palestine Declassified https://www.presstv.ir/Section/150108 

Erald’s work bridges physics, economics, and ecology, revealing how AI’s rapid expansion is not just a technological phenomenon but a biophysical crisis – one that’s easy to overlook. Cloud is such a gentle word. Diaphanous. It sounds harmless. Lovely, even.

“When you're in front of your computer and you're just typing away and you're asking these systems to do all these magical things for you, it can seem like it comes out of nowhere. But no, in reality, all of this stuff takes enormous energy.” 

AI’s dematerialized facade obscures its physical infrastructure. It’s a classic capitalist contradiction where "progress" accelerates ecological breakdown. 

Erald and Steve talk about the race to the bottom, as states and municipalities trade public health for tax revenue. Regulatory enforcement is absent.  

While exploiting labor and plundering nature, the costs are socialized as these companies use public water and energy grids. Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus is based in Tennessee. (Remember the TVA, that impressive example of depression-era federal works? Help yourself, Elon.) It’s not just that they use public water and energy, it’s the vast and growing amounts of these resources, as Erald explains. 

The conversation also touches on the AI arms race, as the US competes with China, using “national security” as an excuse to justify resource wars.  

From energy consumption to water depletion, from labor displacement to geopolitical tensions, this episode exposes the contradictions of AI under a system that prioritizes profit over sustainability. 

Erald Kolasi is a writer and researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016. You can find out more about Erald and his work at his website, www.eraldkolasi.com.  

Subscribe to his Substack: https://substack.com/@technodynamics 

What do you know about blockchain?  Surely you’ve heard our episodes with Brett Scott or the Blockchain Socialist or Rohan Grey. Now we have another one. Steve’s guest is Victor Vernissage, co-founder of the project Humanode, which aims to use blockchain to create a biometric based system. Victor, who agrees with Steve that the US is not a democracy, notes that even "decentralized" crypto systems replicate oligarchic structures, where power is tied to capital. 

They delve into the intricacies of Humanode's capacity and discuss how this can be a tool for building parallel systems outside traditional governmental structures. They also touch on the potential for decentralized governance and the challenges of implementation at both local and global levels.  

Victor talks about concepts like liquid democracy with specialized chambers to avoid tyranny of the majority. He explains Sybil attacks and sockpuppeting. The conversation offers insights into how technology can be leveraged for social and political transformation, emphasizing the role of community involvement and the importance of building new economic and social structures from the ground up. 

***** 

Victor Vernissage is a researcher and cofounder of multiple ventures, with his latest baby being Humanode, an egalitarian decentralised ledger built on the principle of one human = one vote in contrast to capital-based blockchains predominant today. Victor loves macro, complex systems and the intersection of crypto, identity and economics, meanwhile building new social structures as code. Learn more about the project at humanode.io 

@tech_mingler on X  

The conversation covers the need for a deeper understanding of a system that manufactures and perpetuates inequality. They discuss the historical continuity of fascism as the logical endpoint of capitalism. Indeed, Trump’s presidency has exposed the latent fascist character of the US state, stripping away liberal democratic pretenses. Austerity measures and increased ICE (and police) funding serve to suppress resistance and criminalize poverty.

Steve emphasizes the need for organizing alternative institutions, building dual power. Charles hopes his book will help connect personal experiences with broader systemic issues, advocating for a collective response to the socio-economic crisis and reinforcing the necessity of long-term, sustainable organizing outside traditional party politics.

Charles Derber, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, is the author of twenty-eight books, including the Wilding of America, The. Pursuit of Attention, Sociopathic Society, Corporation Nation, People Before Profit, Dying for Capitalism, Greed to Green, Welcome to the Revolution, and Who Owns Democracy - translated into 14 languages. He is a public sociologist and life-long activist, who writes about structural and cultural analysis of capitalism, public goods, the environment, and social movements seeking transformational change. He is a life-long activist for peace and social justice.

Stanford Professor James Fishkin talks with Steve about deliberative democracy, a method that brings together diverse, representative groups to weigh policy trade-offs in a fact-based, civil environment. He maintains that when people get the chance to discuss issues in depth, they often move away from extremes, suggesting that polarization isn’t as unbreakable as pundits claim. James presents some examples, like how deliberative polling in Texas led to a massive shift toward wind energy. 

Steve acknowledges his skepticism and asks whether James believes this could translate into real power, like shaping a federal job guarantee or breaking the corporate stranglehold on policy. James argues that while deliberative democracy isn’t a magic fix, it’s a tool to cut through misinformation and empower ordinary people, offering a glimpse of what democracy could be. (When we wrest control from the hands of the ruling class.) 

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and Director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab.

He is the author of Democracy When the People Are Thinking (Oxford 2018), When the People Speak (Oxford 2009), Deliberation Day (Yale 2004 with Bruce Ackerman) and Democracy and Deliberation (Yale 1991).

He is best known for developing Deliberative Polling® – a practice of public consultation that employs random samples of the citizenry to explore how opinions would change if they were more informed. His work on deliberative democracy has stimulated more than 100 Deliberative Polls in 28 countries around the world. It has been used to help governments and policy makers make important decisions in Texas, China, Mongolia, Japan, Macau, South Korea, Bulgaria, Brazil, Uganda and other countries around the world.

The conversation expands to systemic issues, including the corporate greed of Big Pharma, political exploitation of the crisis, and the punitive rather than rehabilitative approach to addiction. Steve and Charles highlight how austerity policies and privatization exacerbate the epidemic, disproportionately harming working class and marginalized communities. They criticize current political responses, such as RFK Jr.’s proposed cuts to addiction treatment programs in favor of ineffective "healing farms," as emblematic of a broader failure to address root causes. Both emphasize the need for compassionate, science-driven solutions over criminalization, underscoring how public health and social equity are inextricably linked. 

For more than twenty-eight years, Charles LeBaron worked as a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While there, he was the author of more than fifty scientific studies published in peer-reviewed journals, including first- or senior- author papers in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. 

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This week we're releasing an interview Steve did as a guest of Jim Byrne, host of MMT101 podcast.

Steve and Jim have much in common, so it’s interesting to hear how their approaches differ. In part, this is related to the conditions of their nationalities. Jim, in Scotland, isn’t faced with the myth of political democracy. They have a devolved government, under the thumb of Westminster, with no control over the economic levers. The demands are straightforward: more money... and independence.

Jim says he prefers to see MMT “purely as a technical – almost a technical description – with a bit of theory thrown in there, because of course T stands for theory.”

Steve describes his 15-year journey with MMT. Originally, he focused on the “wonky stuff,” the mechanics of the monetary system. He came to understand that people aren’t interested until they can see how it relates to their own lives. Today he maintains that MMT should be connected to real-world issues such as class struggle, poverty, student debt, and geopolitical conflicts like the horrific situation in Gaza.

The episode is a great conversation between two MMT activists. Despite their differences, they find they have much in common.

Jim Byrne is currently developing an MMT foundation course aimed at beginners and intermediate learners, as well as people who already know about economics but are curious about Modern Monetary Theory.

Follow his work and the MMT101 podcast at mmt101.substack.com

@MMT101DotORG

Scott Ferguson and Ben Wilson of the Money on the Left collective discuss their ‘Blue Bonds’ proposal with Steve. They explain how states can issue bonds to mitigate the federal austerity measures being enacted under the Trump administration. The conversation explores how this approach could democratize fiscal policy at the sub-federal level and empower local governments.

Their proposal frames state-issued bonds as a democratic tool to counteract federal inefficiencies, foster local investment and engage communities in financial decision-making.

They also address the ideological and practical barriers concerning the public's grasp of economic sovereignty, stressing the importance of understanding endogenous money creation and challenging the collective fear of public debt.  

Benjamin C. Wilson is an Associate Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Cortland and a research scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. 

Scott Ferguson is an Associate Professor of Film & Media Studies in the Department of Humanities & Cultural Studies at the University of South Florida and a research scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is co-host of Money on the Left podcast featured by Monthly Review. 

The conversation goes into the role of the state in currency issuance, the coercive nature of taxation, and how MMT can critique and unveil the inherent power dynamics within capitalism. Austerity, that devastating weapon of class warfare, is not a glitch; it’s a feature.  

Virginia asks that listeners stop using the expression taxpayer money. “Even if you’re not ready to wrap your mind around MMT, just start calling it public money. You might not believe where it comes from but just stop. It's public money.” Given the classist, racist implications of relying on taxpayers to fund the government, a change in language is a good first step. Steve adds: “Whatever you tax, you immortalize. Whatever you tax, if you believe it's funding, you need forever.” The state is the source of currency; let’s stop elevating billionaires.  

They look at the relationship between currency manipulation, inflation, and global economic dominance. They also touch on Gramsci and the impact of cultural hegemony. Ultimately, they agree on the necessity of a class-based analysis as a prerequisite for revolutionary change. 

Proles Pod is a podcast about history, politics, and culture... without the liberalism 

 Find their work at prolespod.libsyn.com/ 

Support them at patreon.com/prolespod 

Follow them @ProlesPod on X

Steve’s guest is Judy Karofsky, author of 'DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice,' who provides a critical examination of the elder care industry. Judy discusses her own struggles with assisted living facilities and hospice care, highlighting the systemic issues driven by the profit motive and lack of federal oversight. 

Assisted living is meant to be for seniors who don’t yet need a nursing home. The facilities are supposed to provide the dignity of independence with up to three hours of care per week. Unfortunately, that means from zero to three. Often, it’s zero – with no nurse on staff.

In many cases the move from independent living isn’t a health decision. It’s business. The assisted living business is about real estate investment, not the needs of our nation’s seniors. 

"Big investors, big REITs, Real Estate Investment Trusts, and yes, private equity have seen the potential and they're investing and the decision-making moves farther and farther away from the individual facility and farther and farther away from the resident.”

Steve makes a case that will be familiar to our followers: that healthcare – and its federal oversight – are policy decisions, connected to ideology. It’s the belief that there is no public money. 

”There is only private property and there's only private equity and there's only private capital. And that when you impose regulations, you're imposing undue constraints on capital to do what capital would like to do. We have to start thinking about the world differently.”

The episode illustrates the urgent need for reform in elder care. These challenges will one day touch everyone’s lives or those of their loved ones.

Judy Karofsky was a city council member and one of Wisconsin’s first women mayors (Middleton). During her term of office, she established a now-thriving senior center and emergency medical services. She served on the executive staff of a governor and held multiple roles in housing and economic development for a state agency, a nonprofit housing development organization, and her own research firm. Before organizing and providing care for her mother, Judy filled interim positions for a statewide women's network – focusing on elder economic security – and for a coalition of state aging groups. Serving on nonprofit and municipal boards, she participates in policy discussions and comments publicly on demographic trends and urban growth.

The second half of Steve’s conversation with Derick Varn goes into the history of the socialist movement from the 1960s to the present.  

Derick traces some of the current factionalism back to the ideological battles between Trotsky and Stalin covered in Part One of this series. This includes the debates on ‘socialism in one country’ versus international socialism. He covers further divisions within Trotskyism, the Red Scare’s successful suppression of the CPUSA, and the formation of the Black Panthers. He describes the rise of Maoism, its influence on student movements in the West, and further ideological splits. 

Steve and Derick emphasize that historical developments are always connected to the material conditions of their time. Even the Bernie Sanders movement. They talk of the struggles intrinsic to past and present socialist organizations and reflect on the modern implications of these ideologies and the challenges of organizing under current capitalist conditions. 

“In the ‘Eighteenth Brumaire,’ Marx talks about how all great revolutions play-act a revolutionary moment of the past. So, for him... he talked about the English Civil War and the Bible, and the French Revolution, and the Roman Empire.  

“We are stuck LARPing the past because we don't know what the future is.” 

C. Derick Varn is a poet, teacher, and political theorist. He is the host of Varn Vlog. He was a reader at Zer0 books from 2015 to 2021. He spent most of the 2010s outside the U.S. in the Republic of Korea, Mexico, and Egypt. He is the author of the poetry collections, Apocalyptics and Liberation and All the Bright Etcetera.  

https://varnblog.substack.com 

Find all his links at https://allmylinks.com/dionysuseatsyou 

This episode is the first of a two-part discussion delving into historical splits within socialism. C. Derick Varn, the host of Varn Vlog, has an extensive background in philosophy, anthropology, and history. He takes us from the First and Second Internationals to the ideological divergences of Trotskyism and Stalinism. He also discusses the factions within Leninism, the impact of World War I on socialist strategies, and the emergence of Trotskyist and Marxist-Leninist thought. The episode navigates through key historical figures, including Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. Of course it wouldn’t be Macro N Cheese without a look at Modern Monetary Theory and its place in a discussion of socialist theory. 

C. Derick Varn is a poet, teacher, and political theorist. He is the host of Varn Vlog. He was a reader at Zer0 books from 2015 to 2021. He spent most of the 2010s outside the U.S. in the Republic of Korea, Mexico, and Egypt. He is the author of the poetry collections, Apocalyptics and Liberation and All the Bright Etcetera. 

https://varnblog.substack.com

Find all his links at https://allmylinks.com/dionysuseatsyou 

 .

Christopher Shaw is the author of Money, Power, and the People. He talks to Steve about America’s long struggle to democratize banking, drawing connections between past and present economic conditions and inequalities. The discussion spans the creation of the Federal Reserve, populist movements, and key moments of financial reform from the Gilded Age to the New Deal. 

Delving into the history of banking and economic injustice, he emphasizes grassroots movements led by farmers, workers, and unions against banking oligarchies. Key periods include the post-Civil War Gilded Age, the Panic of 1907, and the Great Depression. The conversation transitions to recent times, highlighting the deregulation era, the rise of neoliberalism, and movements like Occupy Wall Street. As always Steve challenges the audience to learn from history, stressing that real change requires collective action. 

Christopher W. Shaw is a historian, author, and policy analyst. He has written extensively on the postal system, and the history of banking, money, labor, agriculture, and social movements. Most recently, he has authored First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat (City Lights Books, 2021) as well as Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic (University of Chicago Press, 2019).  

@chris_w_shaw on Twitter

Hamza and Steve make a case against a capitalist system that not only externalizes costs related to health and the environment but also perpetuates inequities, particularly affecting marginalized communities. They delve into interconnected struggles from climate justice to the fight against imperialism, and stress the importance of collective action and the need for a revolutionary vision that prioritizes social and economic justice. Ultimately, the episode serves as a call to action for listeners to engage in grassroots movements and challenge the status quo, advocating for an ecosocialist future where health and environmental care are public goods rather than commodities.

Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA). He previously worked for War on Want, Global Justice Now and Platform London on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and trade justice. 

Our friend Carl Zha brings his vast knowledge of China and delves into the shifting global dynamics with the US. He and Steve examine the absurdity of the US government's approach to trade, particularly the impact of tariffs and sanctions on its own economy, while China strategically positions itself as a rising power.  

Steve likens the US to a schoolyard bully caught off-guard, while Carl offers insights into China's long-term planning and adaptability in the face of external pressures. The discussion touches on various aspects, from economic strategies to cultural perceptions. They engage in a broad critique of the US leadership’s focus on military dominance while it fails to invest in domestic infrastructure.  

Carl Zha hosts Silk and Steel, a weekly podcast discussing history, culture, and current events of China and the Silk Road. Support him at patreon.com/silknsteel. His YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@CarlZha. 

Steve asks if we should be looking at Trump’s actions as a continuation of the neoliberal trajectory as described in Bill’s book, Reclaiming the State. Bill replies that he doesn't even see it as a natural extension of neoliberalism:

“Neoliberalism is about co-opting the state to pursue advantage for selected groups in the society, the top end of town, as I call them. So there's an element of that, but there's sort of a deep irrationality going on here. Neoliberalism is a systematic, contrived pattern of behavior and strategy, whereas it's hard to assess whether there is anything systematic and strategic going on here.”

Bill elaborates on the irrational policy decisions like tariffs and their failure to revive American manufacturing, as well as the repercussions of reduced public investment in education and infrastructure. He talks about international reactions and global repercussions.  

He and Steve also critique the role of social media and the dangerous effects of the dominant ideological bias. Bill suggests that the disillusionment with traditional political parties is driving many towards reactionary extremism. They discuss the severe decline in education and the move to control universities through ideological audits.

Bill Mitchell is a Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. His most recent books are Modern Monetary Theory: BIll and Warren’s Excellent Adventure, co-authored with Warren Mosler (2024), and the Modern Monetary Theory textbook, Macroeconomics, co-authored with L. Randall Wray and Martin Watts (2019).

Follow Bill’s work at https://billmitchell.org/blog/

Investigative journalist Peter Byrne joins Steve to talk about the treacherous relationship between technology, capitalism, and militarization. They discuss how companies like Palantir, funded by figures such as Peter Thiel, have leveraged vast amounts of capital—often government-funded—to develop this militarized AI. In other words, venture capitalists and tech startups are shaping modern warfare.

Peter draws historical parallels, explaining that the automation of warfare is not a new phenomenon but has evolved significantly since the days of analog computers in World War II. It only increases its destructive capabilities by unthinkable magnitudes. 

We would do well to remember that machine learning models are incapable of achieving true intelligence. They reflect the ideology and interests of those who are responsible for them.

Peter Byrne is an award-winning investigative science reporter who has long uncovered corruption at the nexus of science and industry. Now, in partnership with Project Censored, Byrne has launched Military AI Watch, a groundbreaking ten-part series that will run monthly on Project Censored’s website.

https://www.projectcensored.org/military-ai-watch/

Like most media nowadays, we seek to make sense of the confusing, contradictory, and often absurd Trump policies. So of course we turn to our best friend and most frequent guest, economist Fadhel Kaboub.

Fadhel suggests that Trump has two missions: reinforcing the US imperialist-dominant position that is currently under threat, and reinforcing his legacy, the MAGA movement, and the supremacy of the Republican Party for years to come. Ironically there are even two Elon Musks in the White House: 

“There's Elon Musk, Twitter, and there's Elon Musk, Tesla, and the other tech stuff. The interest that the Trump administration is going to serve is not Tesla. It's going to be the Facebooks, the cloud technologists ... the techno-feudalists who run the world today.   

“The importance of the techno-feudalists is that they don't actually manufacture things, they don't produce things. They control the cloud, they control the mind, they control your feelings, your choices... not just consumer choices, but political social worldviews are controlled and manipulated by social media and by the big data centers that collect and analyze and feed you choices and filter the news and filter information for you.” 

In their discussion, Fadhel points out the absurdity of thinking tariffs will “bring back jobs” to the US. He also explains that companies like Apple aren’t manufacturing in China for cheap labor, but because China has the high-skilled workers. Instead of investing in education in the US, Trump boasts of making cuts.

Fadhel explains that Trump’s negotiation strategy relies on creating chaos and confusion. In comparison, China’s path is starkly different, including creation of the digital yuan as an international payment system to bypass SWIFT and the dollar.

Fadhel and Steve remind us that both US political parties are guilty of perpetuating the false narrative of fiscal constraints. As always, listeners are challenged to question the prevailing mainstream rhetoric and look for the deeper motivations behind it.

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (presently on leave) and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He’s the author of Global South Perspectives on Substack.

Find his work at globalsouthperspectives.substack.com 

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter 

Tracy: Okay, I'm going to tell you what I think I understand about Modern Monetary Theory or MMT. I'm just going to go with MMT. The federal government can pretty much generate money out of thin air. 

 Steve: It does. It's the only way it works. Yes.  

Tracy: Okay. Okay, so I got that part right. [pause] Basically, that's pretty much where I'm at in terms of my understanding. 

Actually, it wasn’t the only thing Tracy understood. She knew that states rely on taxes, unlike the federal government. She knew that federal budget deficits are not a crisis. And she knew that those simple facts have huge implications for the government’s ability to provide national health care, for example, while state-based health care is virtually impossible and propels a race to the bottom. In a nation that has spent $8 trillion on war, post 9/11, there is no excuse for poverty. There’s an explanation, but no excuse.  

The conversation covers the destruction of essential services through deliberate under-funding, with austerity as a policy choice. They look at the illusion of the “national debt” at home as well as IMF manipulation of the global South. 

Many of us have experienced moments when we clearly recognize the truth yet lack the knowledge or language to explain it. In seeking the tools to fully articulate it, Tracy is actively moving herself beyond those moments. We should all be so motivated. Learning MMT is a process. Others will hear about it from her and begin their own journey. When it comes to knowledge, there are no resource constraints. #EachOneTeachOne 

Tracy Carson is the host of The Tracy Show and an organizer of the March for Medicare for All in her home state of Indiana.  

Erald Kolasi joins Steve to talk about his book, The Physics of Capitalism. Erald’s interdisciplinary approach merges economics, technology, energy, and ecological dynamics. He explains that science can provide facts and data about the world, but to address the challenges we need to go beyond physics. Solutions will depend on the political, economic, and social spheres.

The discussion includes the flaws of neoclassical economic models, the limitations of technological innovation in solving ecological crises, and the necessity of systemic changes for a sustainable future. Erald describes a vision for a new political and economic order that emphasizes ecological stability, socialization, modularity, and localized production.

Erald Kolasi is a writer and researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016. You can find out more about Erald and his work at his website, www.eraldkolasi.com.

Basel Musharbash, an antitrust and trade regulation attorney, joins Steve to pull back the curtain on the monopoly forces within the egg supply chain. The discussion reveals crucial and surprising information about this, um, bread and butter issue.  

The episode explores the role of avian flu and how it has been weaponized by a few corporations to tighten their stranglehold on the market. With just three companies controlling crucial choke points in the egg supply chain, Basel explains how these oligopolies are not merely reacting to external pressures but are actively manipulating supply.   

Steve and Basel also look at the historical context of antitrust laws and how their erosion has led to the current monopolist landscape. 

Once again, consumers are getting screwed by an industry whose structure is designed to do just that. 

Basel Musharbash is an antitrust and trade regulation lawyer with a focus on building stronger rural economies. He represents family farmers, small businesses, and local governments (as well as groups working on their behalf) in regulatory advocacy and impact litigation aimed at righting the wrongs of concentrated corporate power in rural America — and building a free and fair economy for all. 

His work has been covered in or on Reuters, AP, Time Magazine, CNBC, The Today Show, Politico, The American Prospect, DTN-PF, Daily Yonder, and other media outlets. 

@musharbash_b on Twitter 

So, Trump had to hire the richest man in the world who hired who knows how many hundreds of young tech kids to discover what we've been saying for 30 years, which is that Congress appropriates money, and then the computers keystroke it into people's accounts. 

There's no mystery about this at all, but they think they've discovered not only something that people didn't know, but something that's, oh, it's so scary. It's nefarious that the government uses computers to increase the size of people's accounts. Well, that's spending. That's the way it's done. 

Clearly, this is a good time to revisit the valuable insights of MMT and look at the implications for building a society that serves its people. 

This episode dives deep into the fundamentals, debunking misconceptions about government spending, the role of taxes, and the myth that the US government can run out of money, like a household.  

Randy and Steve talk about changes in the economy due to financialization, and the difference between budget constraints and inflation constraints. Randy explains why we need to look at the history of debt in order to understand money. He talks about banking, including transactions between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury.  

The conversation breaks down complex concepts into relatable terms, sometimes with a touch of humor.

Illustrating the creation of currency, Randy describes an imaginary scenario in which the fictional characters Robinson Crusoe and Friday devise a currency to facilitate barter. 

Randy: So, they come up with the idea of, ‘hey, we can use seashells as a medium of exchange.’ And this is where money came from. It was Robinson Crusoe and Friday. Okay, think about this a little bit. It's pretty bizarre. We've got Crusoe and Friday marooned on a desert island. I can think of two much more likely scenarios. Okay, one, Crusoe came from Europe. What do Europeans do when they come across native people? 

Steve: Kill them. 

Anyone with an interest in how the economy truly operates will learn something from this episode.

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Emeritus Professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is one of the developers of Modern Money Theory and his newest book on the topic is Understanding Modern Money Theory: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies (Elgar), forthcoming in spring 2025.  

Recent books on MMT include Making Money Work for Us (Polity, November 2022), a companion illustrated guide, Money For Beginners (Polity, May 2023, with Levy Institute graduate Heske Van Doornen), and the third edition of Modern Money Theory: A Primer on Macroeconomics for Sovereign Monetary Systems (Springer, 2024). He is also the author of Why Minsky Matters (Princeton, 2015) as well as the author, co-author, and editor of many other books. 

Find more of his work at levyinstitute.org 



Steve’s guest is Michael McCarthy, author of 'The Master's Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy and a Radical Plan to Rebuild It.' They explore McCarthy's analysis of financialization as a deliberate class project to dismantle working-class power and exacerbate inequality.

They look at the historical shift from a robust Social Security system to a privatized, financialized pension system as well as the rise of neoliberal policies post-1970s, facilitated by monetary policy changes (anybody remember the gold standard?)  The conversation goes into the failure of both traditional and direct democracies to serve the working class.

The episode also weaves through MMT perspectives and the impact of government policies. They touch on the potential of public banking and democratizing finance to empower the working class as well as the challenges of implementing these ideas.

Michael A. McCarthy is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His book Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal was awarded the Paul Sweezy Book Award as well as an honorable mention for the Labor and Labor Movements Book Award. His most recent book is The Master's Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It). Mike has written for the Boston Review, The Guardian, Jacobin, Noema, and the Washington Post.

@its_mccarthy on X 

“It leads to the Elon Musks of the world using this taxpayer money trope to basically take a sledgehammer or a chainsaw to the public sector.” 

Yeva and Steve revisit some basics of MMT, including the understanding that a government is not like a household.  

Our own spending doesn't really affect our own income. We'll still get our wages, we will still have that, and then we will continue consuming, but consuming less and therefore end up with more savings. 

But it doesn't work for the economy as a whole. Because for the economy as a whole, if spending goes down, that means there is now less income, and less income means someone somewhere is earning less and therefore they have to cut their consumption and they also have to cut their saving. And it becomes this cycle where, okay, someone cut their consumption, now someone else is earning less or the grocery store is earning less, right? And now they have to fire their workers. Now their workers don't have income and they are spending less, and so on and so forth. 

Yeva and Steve go into other insights of MMT, including sectoral balances and the reality of the so-called national debt.  

They unravel the absurd dynamics of current economic policy and look at the implications of proposed spending cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Fallout from the government's ruthless abandonment of social programs will be disastrous.  

Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. She received her B.A. in economics from Yerevan State University in Armenia, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is a macroeconomist working in the Modern Money Theory, Post-Keynesian, and Institutionalist traditions. Her research interests include banking and financial instability, and fiscal and monetary theory and policy. She has published a number of papers on the topics of shadow banking, fiscal policy, government deficits and debt, and the Green New Deal. Nersisyan is currently coediting the Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory with L. Randall Wray. 

Find her work at levyinstitute.org/publications/yeva-nersisyan 

Steve’s guests are Simon Winlow and Steve Hall, authors of the book, The Death of the Left: Why We Must Begin from the Beginning Again. They talk about the historical shifts that have led to ideological collapse, disconnection from the working class and the embrace of individualism over collective action.

The conversation emphasizes the urgent need for a revival of working-class politics that transcend identity divisions and focus on collective struggles against economic neoliberalism and austerity.

Simon Winlow is Professor of Social Sciences at Northumbria University, UK. A fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, his work is particularly well known in the fields of criminology, sociology and contemporary political analysis. He is the author or co-author of the following books: Badfellas (Berg, 2001); Bouncers (Oxford University Press, 2003); Violent Night (Berg, 2006); Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture (Willan, 2008); Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage, 2012); Riots and Political Protest (Routledge, 2015); Revitalizing Criminological Theory (Routledge, 2015); Rise of the Right (Policy, 2017); Death of the Left (Policy, 2022), and The Politics of Nostalgia (Emerald, 2025). 

@winlow_s 

Steve Hall is Emeritus Professor of Criminology at the University of Teesside. He is a polymath who has published in the fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history, economic history, political theory and philosophy. He is also co-author of Violent Night (Berg 2006, with Simon Winlow), Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage 2013, with Simon Winlow), Riots and Political Protest (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow, James Treadwell and Daniel Briggs), Revitalizing Criminological Theory (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow), The Rise of the Right (with Simon Winlow and James Treadwell) and The Death of the Left (with Simon Winlow). He is co-editor of New Directions in Criminological Theory (Routledge 2012, with Simon Winlow). In 2017 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the international Extreme Anthropology Research Network at the University of Vienna. 

@ProfHall1955 

Steve’s guest is Shealeigh Voitl, Project Censored’s digital and print editor. They discuss the media’s role in shaping public perception and delve into the systemic disinformation propagated by corporate and academic institutions. While sensational inconsequential stories dominate the headlines, the voices and experiences of the working class and the marginalized are silenced. 

Steve and Shealeigh look at the power dynamics inherent in media ownership, reinforcing inequality and promoting working class subjugation. Passive news consumption is the equivalent of unilateral disarmament.  

Shealeigh Voitl is the digital and print editor at Project Censored. She first began her research with the Project at North Central College alongside Steve Macek, co-authoring the Déjá Vu News chapter in the State of the Free Press 2022 and 2023 yearbooks, and the Top 25 chapter in SFP 2023. In addition to her editorial contributions to the yearbook series and work with the Campus Affiliates Program, Shealeigh helped develop the State of the Free Press 2024 teaching guide and the Project’s “Critical Media Literacy in Action” social media series. Her writing has also been featured in Truthout, The Progressive, and Ms. Magazine. 

The conversation touches on the implications of austerity measures on the working class and the irony of billionaires like Elon Musk advocating for cuts to government spending while enjoying the benefits of public funding via massive subsidies.

With a touch of sarcasm, Thomas & Steve critique how the political elite manipulate narratives to maintain control and distract from the real issues facing ordinary citizens. They remind us of the need to critically examine the intricate relationship between power, propaganda, and the everyday lives of people.

Thomas Fazi is a “journalist/writer/translator/socialist.” who lives in Italy. He is the co-director of Standing Army (2010), an award-winning feature-length documentary on US military bases featuring Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky; and the author of The Battle for Europe: How an Elite Hijacked a Continent – and How We Can Take It Back (2014) and Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (co-authored with Bill Mitchell, 2017). His articles have appeared in numerous online and printed publications. Find links to his articles on his Substack.

@battleforeurope on Twitter 

“You know, my job was pretty easy, generally speaking, because I was offering the president of a country or his finance minister, whoever, a big loan. And the fact that this loan would help him and his family, his friends – they owned the businesses in most cases – they were the ones who benefited from big infrastructure” 

 “They knew that if they didn't accept this deal, the people we call the jackals would come in and they would either overthrow or assassinate the President, whoever was responsible. And, you know, the United States has admitted to this over and over. Allende in Chile, Mossadegh in Iran, Lumumba in the Congo. My two clients. We haven't admitted to that one yet, but we have admitted to Diem in Vietnam and more recently [Manuel] Zelaya in Honduras. We've admitted to these things.” 

For seven out of his ten years as an economic hit man, John believed what he was taught in business school: to help a poor country pull itself out of poverty, you invest heavily in infrastructure. Statistically this can be shown to increase the country’s economy – its GDP and GDP per capita. Per capita implies that everybody in the country is participating, but that's just not true. “GDP primarily measures how well the wealthy are doing and the big corporations.” 

John’s insights are not merely theoretical; they are rooted in personal experience. In other episodes of this podcast, we’ve talked about cycles of debt that sink global South nations into dire poverty. In this conversation, John recounts the manipulative tactics for securing lucrative contracts for US corporations across the globe, thus creating these debt traps. 

To repair the damage, John urges a radical shift towards a ‘life economy’—one that focuses on sustainability, equity, and regeneration. 

John Perkins served as Chief Economist at a major consulting firm and was advisor to the World Bank, UN, IMF, Fortune 500 corporations, and government and business leaders in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States. Before that, he apprenticed with shamans when he lived in the Amazon rainforest from 1968 to 1971 and has since studied with shamans from many different cultures. His eleven books on economics, shamanism, and transformation include the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man trilogy; Shapeshifting; The World Is as You Dream It; and Touching the Jaguar. They have been on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 70 weeks, sold millions of copies, and are published in at least 38 languages. 

https://johnperkins.org/ 

The episode dives right into the thorny questions of divisiveness and weaponized identity politics. Anything that further divides us is dangerous, but anti-wokeness threatens the very people who are most vulnerable. The opposite of woke is sleep. 

Dai suggests “we've become so hyper focused on individuality that our individuality – our ‘rugged individualism’ – has just become rugged narcissism. We've gotten to the point (where) patriotism just means loving the idea of America more than loving the people that make up America.” 

Throughout the episode the three talk about working class solidarity and the need for collective struggle. In conversation and in their podcast, David and Dai include psychological insights as well as a therapeutic dose of humor.  

Check out David & Dai’s Call Me Limbo Substack https://callmelimbopod.substack.com/ 

David Kugler and Dai Poole are hosts of the award-winning Call Me Limbo, a weekly podcast that brings the concept of the Fireside Chat into the 21st Century.

But we also need to understand that we are the ones who have produced the system. That's where the empowering voice comes out, because it says, okay, if we have created it, we can also change it.  

And guess what? The system is really fragile. That's why we need austerity constantly to protect it.” 

Economist Clara Mattei talks to Steve about the launch of the Center for Heterodox Economics (CHE) on the eve of its inaugural conference, February 6th through 8th, in Tulsa, OK. 

In the episode, Clara expresses her frustration with the inadequacies of mainstream economic education that neglects the real-life challenges faced by students and communities and explains that the CHE is being designed to break down traditional academic barriers and elitism. 

She mentions names of some participants in the upcoming conference, including Jamie Galbraith, Anwar Shaikh, Branko Milanovic, and Robert Brenner. 

From the Mission page on its website, the CHE is built on the following pillars:  

 1. Critical Political Economy: Understanding the dynamics of power, class, and social relations that shape economic outcomes.   

2. Critical History of Economic Thought and Economic History: Exploring diverse schools of thought and the historical evolution of economic systems to inform our understanding of contemporary challenges.   

3. Praxis: Economics, at its core, should be about more than analysis—it should be about action. At CHE, we are dedicated to producing knowledge that not only explains the world but transforms it. 

For information, go to https://sites.utulsa.edu/chetu/ 

Clara E. Mattei is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Heterodox Economics (CHE). She previously taught at the The New School for Social Research Economics Department and has been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton. Her research contributes to the history of capitalism, exploring the critical relation between economic ideas and technocratic policy making. Her first book, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press 2022) is translated in over 10 languages. Her current book project critically reassesses the Golden Age of Capitalism (1945-1975) and its Keynesianism through the lens of austerity capitalism.

Where there is oppression, there is resistance. Even when it seems invisible to outsiders, it can always be found in the art and culture of the oppressed. 

Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably, of the Markaz Review, talk to Steve about Sumud: A New Palestinian Reader, an anthology of essays, poetry, fiction, memoirs, and art. 

Sumud is translated to mean ‘steadfastness’ or ‘standing fast.’ Recounting the work of author and human rights lawyer Raja Sheheda, Malu adds: 

“Sumud is practiced by every man, woman and child in Palestine, struggling on his or her own to learn to cope with and resist the pressures of living as a member of a conquered people. Sumud is watching your home turned into a prison ... It is developing from an all-encompassing form of life into a form of resistance that unites the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.” 

Malu and Jordan highlight the ongoing violence and erasure faced by Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, where artistic expression becomes a vital form of resistance against dehumanization. The Israelis are intentional in their attempt to erase the art, culture, and memories of Palestine. Like the destruction of hospitals, schools, and arable land, it is intrinsic to the genocide. 

The conversation also touches on the implications of US support for Israel. Gaza has become an international display of arms and weaponized AI, serving the military industrial complex and global perpetrators of the endless war. 

Malu Halasa, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is a Jordanian Filipina American writer and editor. Her latest edited anthology is Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art From the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi Books, 2023) has been shortlisted for the 2024 Bread & Roses Prize for Radical Publishing.. Previous co-edited anthologies include: Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline (Saqi Books, 2014) among others. She has written for The Guardian, Financial Times and Times Literary Supplement. Her debut novel, Mother of All Pigs (Unnamed Press, 2017), was described as: “a microcosmic portrait of … a patriarchal order in slow-motion decline” by the New York Times. Halasa has been writing about Palestine for the past thirty years. 

Jordan Elgrably is a Franco-American and Moroccan writer and translator, whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and the Paris Review. Editor-in-chief and founder of The Markaz Review, he is the cofounder and former director of the Levantine Cultural Center/The Markaz in Los Angeles (2001–2020), and producer of the stand-up comedy show “The Sultans of Satire” (2005–2017) and hundreds of other public programs. Most recently he is the editor of Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights 2024). He is based in Montpellier, France and California.

Jen Perelman’s need to run against Debbie Wasserman Schultz was clear:  

“I knew that we weren't going to win, but we made significant strides in what my bigger mission is. At the end of the day, I just was not going to sit there and let her represent Jewish people and not stand up for Palestine.” 

Steve has been on Jen’s show, JENerational Change, a number of times, where he has successfully convinced her of the validity and value of MMT. In this interview we get her take-aways from her most recent campaign. She and Steve talk about the popularity of programs that would provide jobs and healthcare. Election results represent the needs of capital, not the public.  

The conversation also touches on the moral implications of violence and how societal structures perpetuate violence against marginalized groups. 

Jen Perelman is host of the podcast and YouTube show, JENerational Change. She is a native Floridian and has run against Debbie Wasserman Schultz twice. So far, she has not won in the traditional sense. On Jen’s Linkedin profile, she explains: 

“From my earliest days of practicing law, I've fought for those who can’t fight for themselves. I've helped the poor & indigent receive proper counsel and helped young women receive a judicial bypass for an onerous process for their reproductive rights.”  

@JenforFL25 on X 

Jordan Chariton, of Status Coup News, joins Steve to look at the significance of this story as representation of people’s outrage against a system designed to ignore people’s needs and reward the economic elite. As Jordan suggests, Luigi Mangione, the alleged perpetrator, wasn’t just attacking the health insurance industry, he was attacking predatory capitalism. 

Steve and Jordan discuss events of the past few decades, the futility of traditional political avenues, and the inevitability of a public breaking point and working-class uprising. Jordan’s coverage of the Flint and East Palestine crises have brought him into the lives of Americans who have been lied to and left to suffer the consequences of corporate malfeasance. 

If murder at gunpoint is immoral, can you keep making excuses for murder by policy?

Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup. He is the author of the 2024 book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.” statuscoup.com 

@JordanChariton on X 

@StatusCoup 

Economist Yan Liang is an expert on China’s economy and MMT. She joins Steve to discuss the evolving role of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the increasing number of countries becoming involved in challenging US dollar hegemony and the current global financial system. 

Weaponizing of the US dollar has reached an all-time high. Yan explains the specific ways in which US-dominated international institutions and dollar dependency impede development in the Global South.   

The episode looks at the significance of de-dollarization and its possible longterm effects. Yan also touches on the importance of technology transfer and intellectual property rights in building sustainable economies. 

Yan Liang is Peter C and Bonnie S Kremer Chair Professor of Economics at Willamette University. She is also a Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Global Development Policy Center (Boston University), and a Research Scholar of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. 

Yan specializes in the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the Political Economy of China, Economic Development, and International Economics. Yan's current research focuses on China's development finance and industrial transformation, and China's role in the global financial architecture. 

@YanLian31677392 on X 

Bill Mitchell, a key figure in the development of modern monetary theory, is back for his twelfth appearance on the podcast, beginning with Episode One, Putting the T in MMT.  

As a key figure in the development of MMT, Bill articulates how this theory fundamentally challenges conventional economic wisdom by asserting that governments, as currency issuers, are not financially constrained in the same manner as households or businesses.  

This critical insight dispels the prevailing narrative that insists the government cannot afford to invest in social programs. This forces us to look not only at political choices, but the class power behind those choices. 

The conversation delves into the dynamics of class conflict, inflation, and the role of private banks in shaping the financial landscape. Economic austerity, rising costs, and stagnant wages force the working class to take on more and more private debt.  

Bill Mitchell is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) at the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia. He is also the Docent Professor of Global Political Economy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Guest International Professor at Kyoto University, Japan.  

Bill is a professional musician and plays guitar with the Melbourne Reggae-Dub band – Pressure Drop.    

Follow his work on https://billmitchell.org/blog/   

In this episode, Steve talks with Duke law professor James Boyle about his new book, The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood. 

James explains the development of his interest in the topic; it began with the idea of empathy. 

(Then) moved to the idea of AI as the analogy to corporate personhood.  And then the final thing – and maybe the most interesting one to me – is how encounters with AI would change our conceptions of ourselves. Human beings have always tried to set ourselves as different from non-human animals, different from the natural universe.     

Sentences no longer imply sentience. And since language is one of the reasons we set human beings up as bigger and better and superior to other things, what will that do to our sense of ourselves? And what would happen if instead of being a chatbot, it was actually an entity that more plausibly possessed consciousness. 

Steve and James discuss the ways in which science fiction affects our thinking about these things, using Blade Runner and Star Trek to look at the ethical dilemmas we might face. As AI becomes increasingly more integrated into our society, we will need to consider the full range of implications. 

 James Boyle is the William Neil Reynolds Professor of Law at  Duke Law School, founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and former chair of Creative Commons. He is the author of The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, and Shamans, Software, and Spleens. He is co-author of two comic books, and the winner of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award for his work on digital civil liberties.

Paul begins by setting up the historical context. He takes us back to the end of the second World War and the Bretton Woods agreement, designed to bring a new world order, putting the US dollar as the global funding currency. China’s move signals a challenge to the petrodollar system – providing nations with new avenues for financing as an alternative to dollar dependency. 

Paul looks at the Global South in light of China’s behavior, including the Belt and Road initiative. Its infrastructure projects in Asia or in Africa enable local countries to reduce their potential dollar exposure and instead have either equity or other exposures to China. According to Paul, this is already having effects in terms of U.S. policy and the U.S. economy. 

Putting the bond issuance in perspective, Paul says: 

I think China has indicated that it plans to issue about $300 billion of sovereign bonds during 2024. So, you know, you can see $2 billion (of US dollar-denominated) out of almost $300. It's, you know, it's a relatively small proportion. 

He suggests it’s a warning shot across the bow. 

That's a very clear signal about how the potential power that China holds going forward if the U.S. government gets too stupid about things like tariffs or other anti-Chinese policies or even geo-politically. I mean, it might not be appreciated by listeners outside Asia, but American involvement in Taiwanese politics is a real sore point to the Chinese Government. And so I think this is a warning shot on a lot of different points. 

 Paul Gambles is the Co-Founder of MBMG GROUP and a Director and Chief Investment Officer of MBMG Investment Advisory, a SEC regulated investment advisor. Find Paul’s articles on https://mbmg.substack.com/ 

 @PaulGambles2 on Twitter

Steve and Rohan dissect the humor and horror of the political landscape. They make a realistic assessment of the Biden administration and look at figures like Elon Musk and Ramaswamy as part of a new wave of governance setting out to undermine the fabric of federal institutions.  

The conversation touches on the absurdity of contemporary American politics, where a ‘meme president’ can emerge amidst a cacophony of discontent and confusion. All this against a background of imperialist atrocities and genocide.  

As always, Rohan warns against viewing political and economic developments through a simplistic lens and suggests a nuanced understanding of these realities within their historical context 

Rohan looks at the alternating and sometimes contradictory positions taken by conservatives and progressives on several issues. Judicial activism was once identified with the left – Thurgood Marshall, for example. Today judicial activism is synonymous with Samuel Alito. What has it meant to conservatives in the past to have an independent Fed? What does it mean today? In what ways do Trump’s interests align with Main Street instead of Wall Street? 

Part of the episode is devoted to cryptocurrency. Rohan explains why he refers to 2024 as the ‘crypto election’ and then talks about some of the fears and predictions about the Trump administration. 

Instead of comparing bitcoin to the US dollar, Rohan suggests we compare it to oil: 

We're not talking about holding Bitcoin. We're not talking about internalizing Bitcoin into the payments architecture of the United States government. We are talking about taking an interest in stabilizing the price of something that is otherwise functioning as a commodity. 

No Rohan Grey episode is complete without a couple of references to popular culture. Speaking of the broader issue of crytocurrency, he says it’s as if the digital dollar looked in the mirror and fell in love with itself. He compares it to a certain episode of Seinfeld. 

Rohan Grey is an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law, where he teaches contracts, business associations, financial institutions, and a seminar on law, money and technology.  

Find his work and an expanded bio at rohangrey.net 

@rohangrey on Twitter 

Yeva points to the stark realities of inflation, highlighting the persistent rise in food and housing costs. She points out that while inflation is often cited as a primary concern, the real issue lies in how US economic policies have consistently failed to address the needs of the people, especially those at the lower end of the income scale. Voters are not dazzled by Wall Street’s success. 

The conversation goes into the failures of past administrations and takes a look at mistakes made during and after the height of the Covid pandemic. Promising policies were on the table, yet the monies were often spent in ways least helpful to the majority. 

As an MMT economist, Yeva has worked on comprehensive economic proposals that demonstrate the affordability of providing a green new deal, healthcare, and a job guarantee.

The episode continually reinforces the necessity of a class perspective when looking at the failure of neoliberalism. 

Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. She received her B.A. in economics from Yerevan State University in Armenia, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is a macroeconomist working in the Modern Money Theory, Post-Keynesian, and Institutionalist traditions. Her research interests include banking and financial instability, and fiscal and monetary theory and policy. She has published a number of papers on the topics of shadow banking, fiscal policy, government deficits and debt, and the Green New Deal. Nersisyan is currently coediting the Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory with L. Randall Wray. 

Find her work at levyinstitute.org/publications/yeva-nersisyan 

Economist and friend of the podcast Fadhel Kaboub talks with Steve about the effects of global hegemony and the ongoing attempts to shift the balance of power. They look at BRICS, though it’s perhaps too soon to predict its ultimate outcome and influence.

Fadhel argues that a true multipolar world cannot emerge without placing the Global South at the center of economic decision-making, challenging the existing economic domination by the US and other nations. The history of colonial exploitation continues to affect the resource-rich region.

Fadhel also addresses the ways in which Israel is carrying out the US agenda in Gaza. He points out that the world’s reaction is being influenced by the ready availability of direct information via social media. 

"The world didn't start on October 7th. There was a world before that. And there is a colonial project that was being built in Gaza and Palestine. 

"Every colonial case we've seen in Africa and the rest of the Global South created resistance movements and resistance. Some people resist in the streets, some people resist with little pebbles and stones, some people resist with weapons. Some people resist with their voice, some people resist with their pen. But it's resistance. And it's a legitimate right to resist.  

"It's beginning to click for a lot of people that colonized people have the right to resist." 

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (presently on leave) and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He's the author of Global South Perspectives on Substack.

Find his work at kaboub.com and globalsouthperspectives.substack.com

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

Jason Hickel, who won our hearts a while back by accepting MMT, talks with Steve about the burning issue of our time. (No, not the US election, though they touch on the electoral system.) As much as Gaza is dominating social media, we must continue to stress its place in the capital order. Jason points us to Israel’s true role: sowing chaos and instability in the region.  

The conversation covers the historical and ongoing imperialistic strategies of the U.S. and its reactions to the mid-century liberation movements of the Global South, placing US support for Israel's actions as part of a broader capitalist agenda to maintain control over the world's resources and labor markets. Jason looks at China’s domestic successes and how they have led to the US virtually declaring war. He also touches on recent news about BRICS. 

Jason compares the history of the state of Israel to that of apartheid S. Africa. They used many of the same tactics and rationalizations. When it comes to the future for Israelis and Palestinians, S. Africa again provides a model: 

“What is the actual solution for this region? And I think we have to be clear. The alternative is democracy. The alternative to apartheid is democracy.  Democracy and equal rights for all people in the land of Palestine, from the river to the sea... 

“We have to start thinking about what this means... This is exactly what South Africa did after they abolished apartheid... They disestablished the apartheid state. They disestablished the apartheid institutions. They ensured equal rights and democracy for all within the territory.” 

Dr. Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.  He is Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, and Chair Professor of Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo.  Health. 

Jason's research focuses on global political economy, inequality, and ecological economics, which are the subjects of his two most recent books: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin, 2017), and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin, 2020), which was listed by the Financial Times and New Scientist as a book of the year. 

@jasonhickel on Twitter 

“You just can't get the type of mass movement we need by relying on staff.   Even the best staff.” 

Eric lays out some features of worker-to-worker organizing: 

Workers are training other workers in the skills they need for a successful union drive. 

Workers are self-organizing before they affiliate with a union. As a result, the relationship between worker and union is more of a partnership; not a relationship of deference. 

Workers have decision-making power for the drive. They decide on strategy, tactics, even, perhaps, a political stance.

“One of the crucial turning points... that forced Starbucks to come to the bargaining table earlier this year, was the union came out for very strong stance around Palestine and solidarity with Gaza. 

“And it created this knockoff effect that ended up leading to a mass boycott that hurt Starbucks to the tune of 11 billion dollars.  And there's just no way that if workers hadn't been in the driving seat of this campaign, that they would have done such a risky thing very early on.” 

Political activists will take away a lot from this conversation.

Eric Blanc is director of the Worker-to-Worker Collaborative and co-founder of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. He is professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He is also author of the substack Labor Politics, and author of the forthcoming monograph, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (UC Press, 2025) 

Project Censored has been a valuable resource for Macro N Cheese. This week, sociologist Andy Lee Roth talks with Steve about information gatekeeping by big tech through their use of AI algorithms to stifle diverse voices.  The discussion highlights historical and current instances of media censorship and looks at the monopolization of news distribution by corporate giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter.  

In an economic system that is fully privatized, trustworthy journalism is another casualty. News, which should be treated as a public good, is anything but.  

Andy Lee Roth is associate director of Project Censored, a nonprofit that promotes independent journalism and critical media literacy education. He is the coauthor of The Media and Me (2022), the Project’s guide to critical media literacy for young people, and “Beyond Fact-Checking” (2024), a teaching guide about news frames and their power to shape our understanding of the world. Roth holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in sociology and anthropology from Haverford College. His research and writing have been published in a variety of outlets, including Index on Censorship, In These Times, YES! Magazine, The Progressive, Truthout, Media Culture & Society, and the International Journal of Press/Politics. During 2024-2025 his current work on Algorithmic Literacy for Journalists is supported by a fellowship from the Reynolds Journalism Institute. 

projectcensored.org 

@ProjectCensored on Twitter 

Recently, Steve appeared with host Sean St. Heart on Coup Save America, a weekly podcast committed to breaking through political rhetoric and focusing our attention on the core problems affecting our nation. The episode’s title was Exploring Modern Monetary Theory with Steve Grumbine, but of course it’s almost impossible to limit an MMT conversation to macroeconomics alone.

From the Coup Save America show notes: 

“’Are Progressives like 8-bit robots walking into walls when it comes to understanding economics?’ 

“Today we welcome special guest Steve Grumbine, founder and CEO of the nonprofits Real Progressives and Real Progress in Action. Steve is here to tell us how Modern Monetary Theory could benefit the working class American – and why it doesn’t. If you think a podcast on economics will be dry and dull, you’ve never heard Steve’s animated and passionate viewpoints on the subject. 

“Steve and Sean start the episode by reflecting upon the most recent presidential debate, then Steve launches right into the truth about our nation’s economy. While explaining the term “austerity” as it relates to macroeconomic models, Steve dispels the myth that if a government spends money on its people, it will cause inflation. We learn about the history of the Federal Reserve and how it works, what the federal deficit actually means, and what taxes really are and why they exist. Steve teaches us the difference between a ‘currency user’ and a ‘currency issuer,’ along with explaining how inflation works and why he hates using the term Modern Monetary Theory. 

“What would an idealistic economic system look like? It comes down to understanding class, power, and the average working man’s lack of agency. As progressives, we sabotage our own agenda by not understanding how economics work. Steve describes our movement’s ignorance as a ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound to the junk,’ and he tries to clear up some of the more common misunderstandings. He talks about the history of capitalism and how the system is now eating itself alive. When you pay interest rates, where does that money go? Is the middle class even a real thing? Steve attests that Modern Monetary Theory could contribute to fixing our society’s problems, but MMT can’t do it alone. How do we make our progressive goals actionable and not just theoretical? Why do progressives go to sleep whenever Democrats are in power rather than demanding real change? 

“Steve does a brilliant ‘Trumper’ impression as he explains how we need to create working class awareness. We (as progressives) need to accept that Medicare can’t work on a state-by-state level, and Steve calls out our dreams of a Universal Basic Income as being ‘batshit, bullshit crazy’ (although there is still hope in the idea of Universal Basic Services). So, how do we solve our economic problems? Listen to learn about ‘outside the nine dots,’ ‘creating dual power,’ and how ‘education and awakening are two different things.’ 

“Other topics include: Giving Biden credit for the CHIPS Act, price gauging during the pandemic, ‘Dude, Where’s My Car,’ and the economic theories of Clara E. Mattei and Jason Hickel.”  

Coup Save America is a weekly talk show hosted by Sean St. Heart that plants the mental seeds of social change by inciting a politically progressive coup of knowledgeable citizens to challenge the status quo.  

coupsaveamerica.com 

@coupsaveamerica on Twitter

Steve’s guest, political economist David Fields, explains: 

“YIMBY is yes to housing in my backyard, but housing for developers to extract profit from land value.  So build as much as possible within a given area and, in the end, extract as much as possible through rent extraction and land value appreciation. It's not, in my view, yes to actual affordable housing in my backyard to house working class folks. No, it's yes to luxury skyscrapers, luxury this, luxury that. Build as cheaply as possible for vested interests to maximize gain.” 

YIMBY’s want us to believe that sheer quantity will bring prices down, because that’s how the market works.  Those who object are accused of NIMBYism. In addition,  

“They're economically illiterate, they're economically stupid, they don't know, they don't pay attention, and they're not letting the magic do its magic. Which, anybody who knows a modicum of economics and knows that supply and demand is institutionally configurated - not natural  - should be flabbergasted and say, how did this get to be so popular, so celebrated?  Well, there are vested interests involved.” 

The episode explores the misleading narratives of YIMBYism and compares the market-driven approach to housing to trickle-down economics, emphasizing the constructed scarcity and profit motives behind urban planning. David points out the misuse of economic models like the Marshallian Cross, highlighting flaws in the market logic often used to justify YIMBY policies.  

David and Steve talk about the broader neoliberal agenda of privatization and deregulation, and its stranglehold on government policies. Awareness and organization are needed to combat systemic class inequality in housing and beyond. 

David Fields is from a critical realist and genetic structuralist ontology and epistemology. His work centers on the intricacies concerning the interactions of foreign exchanges and capital flows, with economic growth, fiscal and monetary policy and distribution, whereby critical attention is paid to the notion of endogenous money. He also delves into the political economy of regional development to study patterns with respect to the nature of housing, social stratification, and community planning. 

@ProfDavidFields on Twitter

Steve’s guest, political sociologist Peter Phillips, is the author of Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity. The titans, he says, have doubled their AUM (assets under management) in the past 5 years.

“There's only 117 of them and they manage $50 trillion of capital. That $50 trillion is the core –– almost half of the free-floating capital in the world. And that is what the US calls a vital interest. So, when the US says we have vital interests in the world, that's what they mean.

“And that's why we have military bases everywhere in the world, because these investors are everywhere. And any rivalries are undermined by our intelligence agencies, by the government, by military whenever possible. So, it just happens that governments work on behalf of capital.”

So, if you’re wondering why the US has military interests in Ukraine or Gaza. Look to the titans, whose firms are investing in the defense industry. They profit off of war

While the titans are massively increasing the wealth of the top .05 percent of the world’s population, over 20,000 people die each day from starvation and easily curable diseases.

While the ruling class and their media mouthpieces insist that capitalism is going to save the world and money will trickle down...

“It's not. It's exactly the opposite. People are dying daily. There are 700 million people who live in extreme poverty in the world. And extreme poverty means you're living on $2.15 a day. That's the UN set level for extreme poverty.

Steve and Peter discuss ways in which the titans are able to bend policy to their own purposes. They mention the role of groups like the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

The episode also compares the approaches of the US and China, illustrating China's success in alleviating extreme poverty through state-driven economic strategies and how the US tries to spin China as a threat.

Steve and Peter talk about the need for revolutionary social movements to challenge the entrenched capitalist structures and demand wealth redistribution, using the insights of MMT to spur new thinking about alternative economic possibilities.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University since 1994, former Director of Project Censored 1996 to 2010 and President of Media Freedom Foundation 2003 to 2017.

The concept of the deep state has been employed by different political ideologies, most recently the right under Trump. But its existence is real, and its service to the ruling class can be traced back to the founding of the US.

Among other ideas, Charles and Yale stress the distinction between shallow democracy and the real thing. From their book’s abstract:

“Large corporations, Wall Street, and other sectors of the capitalist class outsource day-to-day governance to the mainstream political parties, which can compete vigorously and create a credible veneer of civil liberties and electoral democracy, disguising and legitimating the deep state. But it is a “shallow democracy,” since the deep state sets boundaries on policies and choices to serve itself. It also denies a universal franchise and obstructs the voting rights of people of color, the poor, and other communities threatening to the deep state. Moreover, the deep state constrains civic governance in the workplace and community, denying virtually all working people democratic control over their economic and social life.”

The episode’s conversation examines a historical and contemporary concept of caste in the US, which some of our listeners may find surprising. The discussion also covers contradictions within the capitalist class, the impact of the military-industrial complex, and the potential implications of the upcoming election.

Charles Derber, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, is a public sociologist and life-long activist who writes about structural and cultural analysis of capitalism, public goods, the environment, and social movements seeking transformational change, He is the author of twenty-eight books.

Yale Magrass is a Chancellor Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. He is the author/co-author of nine books, most co-authored with Charles Derber, and 80 articles. His work focuses upon how militaristic capitalism distorts everyday life as it promotes inequality, bullying, environmental devastation, and war.

Steve’s guest, Erin Remblance is an Australian researcher and activist who was spurred into action six years ago when the IPCC released their special report on global warming of 1.5°C. Since then, Erin has been creating courses, events, and materials that address the crises and work toward solutions.

Erin and Steve discuss degrowth, a planned reduction in energy and material throughput to maintain ecological balance. (Throughput, for those unfamiliar with the term, is defined as “the amount of material or items passing through a system or process.”)

The episode goes into the systemic issues of capitalism, which increasingly commodifies all areas of our lives in its relentless pursuit of growth.

“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Robert F. Kennedy, 1968, included in Erin’s slide presentation, An Introduction to Degrowth

Follow Erin Remblance and find her work on LinkedIn, Substack, and Twitter:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-remblance/

https://erinremblance.substack.com/

https://twitter.com/remblance_erin

https://the-healthy-habits-accelerator.circle.so/c/start-here/the-rules

Daniel Conceição is back to discuss the social damage of rentier capitalism and the potential to address it through the insights of Modern Monetary Theory. 

Rentier capitalism derives profit from ownership and manipulation of assets rather than through productive activity. While industrial capitalism also creates inequality, rentier capitalism, or rent seeking, exacerbates the division.  

State-controlled money creation could nullify some of the speculative advantage of rentiers by directly funding critical public services, such as housing and healthcare. It may not be the ultimate answer, but it’s worth looking at. 

Daniel and Steve discuss the importance of overcoming mainstream economic fallacies that serve the interests of the financial elite. 

Daniel Negreiros Conceição did his undergraduate studies in Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and his postgraduate studies at UMKC (under Professors Wray, Kelton, et al). He is a professor of macroeconomics and public finance at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He helped create the Institute for Functional Finance and Development (iffdbrasil.org),  and he helps run the Brazilian Modern Money Network (https://mmtbrasil.com/) aimed at producing more easily accessible material for teaching MMT to the wider public.  

@stopthelunacy on Twitter 

Steve’s guest is Nolan Higdon, an author and expert in media literacy. They discuss surveillance in education, which Higdon covers in his book, co-authored with Allison Butler, Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools.

Surveillance capitalism, which emerged in the late 20th century, profits from datamining, largely without public awareness. Nolan emphasizes the increased intrusion into schools, particularly following changes to FERPA laws in 2012 allowing private tech companies to collect and use student data. The discussion highlights the false sense of security offered by the surveillance tools as well as the biases ingrained in AI used in education.

The topic takes on special significance when considered along with the broader implications for society, including the erosion of democracy and the intensification of neoliberal ideology that prioritizes profit over public welfare.

Nolan Higdon is a founding member of the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas, Project Censored National Judge, author, and lecturer at Merrill College and the Education Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Higdon’s areas of concentration include podcasting, digital culture, news media history, propaganda, and critical media literacy.  He is the author of The Anatomy of Fake News: A Critical News Literacy Education (2020); Let’s Agree to Disagree: A Critical Thinking Guide to Communication, Conflict Management, and Critical Media Literacy (2022); The Media And Me: A Guide To Critical Media Literacy For Young People (2022); and the forthcoming Surveillance Education: Navigating the conspicuous absence of privacy in schools (Routledge). Higdon is a regular source of expertise for CBS, NBC, The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Find his work on Substack: nolanhigdon.substack.com 

@NolanHigdonCML on Twitter 

@ProjectCensored 

The discussion goes into the American Revolution as they consider the possibility of democracy in a modern capitalist system. They examine bourgeois control over politics and economics. They look at the limitations of capitalism in meeting society’s vital problems and talk about the devastating effects of privatization. They compare a UBI to a program of universal basic services and agree there’s no contest.  

Tony runs the YouTube channel "1Dime" and the podcast 1Dime Radio. On his main channel, 1Dime does video essays and mini-documentaries that involve the political economy, history, geopolitics, leftist theory, and various socio-political topics. 1Dime is known most for his videos involving MMT and Marxian thought, such as "The Problem With Taxing The Rich" and "Why Billionaires Prefer Democrats."  Check out his YouTube channel, 1Dime and his podcast, 1Dime Radio, on Apple, Spotify, and most podcast platforms.  

@1DimeOfficial on Twitter 

Investigative journalist Jordan Chariton has been reporting on the Flint water crisis for nearly a decade. His newly published book, We the Poisoned, examines how systemic governmental failures, abetted by municipal, state, and federal authorities, and complicit media, combined to allow the Flint catastrophe.

Jordan talks to Steve about the devastating effects of neoliberal privatization schemes, driven by financial incentives and aided by powerful interests including Wall Street, which resulted in the use of untreated water from the polluted Flint River in a city already suffering from decades of economic decline. Privatization transformed public utilities into profit-driven entities, neglecting critical safety and quality controls. President Obama's inadequate federal response and successive Michigan administrations' culpability resulted in a combination of political negligence and deliberate actions all to avoid setting a costly precedent of government intervention.

Lest we relax into the belief that such crises are incidental and rare, be warned. Privatization is on an upward trajectory. The people’s health and safety interfere with profits and in the US, profit reigns supreme.

This episode offers a detailed portrayal of environmental racism, the perils of unchecked corporate power, and how both government and media support these atrocities.

Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup. He is the author of the newly published book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.”

@JordanChariton on Twitter

@StatusCoup

With his imagination piqued by the film, Steve asked Brett Scott, author and monetary theorist, to help us think about the dynamics of commerce, currency, and systemic forces in times of societal collapse and global capitalism.

Brett and Steve look at historical cases like Zimbabwe's hyperinflation and Ireland's banking strike. They discuss barter systems, mutual credit, dollarization, and informal credits.

The conversation delves into broader themes of pre- and post-capitalist markets, moral logics within economies, and the systemic nature of global capitalism. Highlighting the inadequacy of simplistic elite-blaming narratives, they advocate for understanding economic interdependence and discuss Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as a counter to austerity.

Brett Scott is an author, journalist, and activist, who explores the intersections between money systems, finance, and digital technology. He’s the author of The Heretics Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. His latest book is Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets. Find more of his work at https://alteredstatesof.money/

brettscott.substack.com

@Suitpossum on Twitter

Jonathan Kadmon is on the leadership team of Real Progressives and writes for the website. He also helps put out this podcast. Today, however, he is talking to Steve about his vast knowledge of Zionism, Palestine, and US support for Israel.

Jonathan was raised in a Republican household and became a passionate supporter of Israel during his college years, when he was given training and taken on trips by powerful players in the Israel lobby. After growing up a Jew in the South, he now became part of a powerful community and embraced it with pride.

He talks of his experiences and describes his increasing discomfort as discrepancies between fact and propaganda became too great to ignore.

Steve, a vocal critic of the administration’s role in the current genocide in Gaza, is regularly attacked for his views. Jonathan, having studied in Israel and been trained by AIPAC, says:

“That stuff bounces off me like I was wearing body armor... I'm like, oh yeah, you're going to tell me I'm a self-hating Jew? Are you kidding me? My resume and my credentials here probably outstrip anything you have. And the fact of the matter is, I do this because I am a Jew and I'm proud of being a Jew. And I'm proud of my history and my heritage. I learned the lessons of my history and my heritage.”

The discussion goes into historical and political manipulation by Zionist organizations to blur the lines between Jewish identity and support for Israel, the erasure of Palestinian history, and the media and political complicity in perpetuating the Zionist narrative.

The episode includes profound insights into Holocaust education, which is intentionally designed to emphasize the trauma and neglect the political economy.

Jonathan Kadmon is on the leadership team at Real Progressives, where he is a writer and a co-host of the weekly discussion group, Macro ‘n Chill.

@JonathanKadmon on X

“‘Fiat socialism’ is my name for an open and prosperous society ruled by the principles of the Modern Monetary Theory and functional finance.”

In talking about his book, Carlos laid out the goals of fiat socialism:

• Full employment
• Full and prudent use of material resources
• The guarantee of the five essentials to every citizen: food, housing, clothing, health services, and education
• Social security at all major exposed points in the social structure (eg, old age, sickness, accident, temporary unemployment, and childbearing)
• Labor standards, to be assured by labor unions

This episode includes his presentation followed by Q&A with the event’s attendees.

Carlos García Hernández is the founder and director of Lola Books, a publishing house that has introduced MMT to Spanish and German readers. He is the author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism through Modern Monetary Theory.

@Carlos_G_H_ on Twitter

“Being able to access information, being able to join in, participate in the free flow of information, to have an opinion, to formulate a stance –that is actually considered a human right, under Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.”

It only follows that censorship is a violation of human rights.

Project Censored defines censorship more broadly than a government’s control over the media. It is the suppression of information, whether purposefully or not, by any method – (including) bias, omission, underreporting, or even self-censorship by the reporter or publisher.

Steve and Mischa discuss the urgency of getting the public to understand the genocide in Gaza, and crucial for Americans to see their government’s role in it.

They look at the challenges faced by independent press, as well as special problems of news deserts. They also talk about the need for media literacy while much of the public relies on social media, where algorithms play a suppressive role.

Mischa Geracoulis is a media literacy expert, writer, and educator, serving as Project Censored’s curriculum development coordinator. Mischa is on the editorial boards of the Censored Press and the Markaz Review.

@MGeracoulis, @ProjectCensored on Twitter

who specializes in modern monetary theory (MMT). They discuss Dirk's new book,

"A Simple Guide to the Monetary System," which aims to simplify the

often complex concepts of MMT.

They discuss the significance of the Copernican turn to MMT,

which refers to the shift in perspective that occurred during the COVID-19

pandemic. Dirk explains that the massive increase in government spending and

the lack of inflationary effects challenged conventional economic theories that

had previously dismissed MMT.

Dirk explains the theory behind inflation targeting and how

it has failed to deliver on its promises of price stability and full

employment. He also highlights the role of trade policy and income inequality

in shaping economic outcomes, pointing out that these factors are often

overlooked in favor of focusing solely on interest rates and inflation.

The conversation shifts to the rise of the BRICS

countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the geopolitical

battles that have influenced international trade. They discuss the idea of

losing faith in the US dollar as the primary world reserve currency and the

potential impact on global trade.

Dirk emphasizes that the public needs to understand how

money and resources interact in order to find solutions to problems like

climate change. He believes that as more people become aware of MMT and its

potential policies, there will be a demand for change.

Dirk Ehnts is a German heterodox economist.

He is one of the leading proponents of Modern Monetary Theory in Europe. Ehnts

is a member of the standing field committee History of Economic Thought of the

German economists association. Every summer since 2016 Ehnts has held a course

on MMT at the Summer School of Maastricht University. In February 2019, he

organized the 1st European MMT Conference. He is also a lecturer at the MMT

summer school at the University of Poznan in Poland.

Jordan Chariton, CEO of Status Coup, has many years of experience working for both mainstream and independent news organizations. He and Steve discuss the media’s role in perpetuating the distorted narrative. If they’re not ignoring the facts, they’re misrepresenting them.  

Jordan talks about his continuing coverage of the Flint water crisis and the East Palestine train derailment. He describes the case of Graphic Packaging International in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where a paper mill has been releasing deadly gases into a poor black community for decades. Despite complaints and environmental violations, the plant has not been shut down.

He finds himself waging war on two fronts; after digging up the truth he struggles to get other media to help spread the information. He and Steve highlight the gatekeeping role of social media algorithms and clickbait in determining what news gets attention.

Jordan also mentions his upcoming book, "We the Poisoned," which exposes the Flint water crisis cover-up and the poisoning of 100,000 Americans.

Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup.

@JordanChariton on Twitter

@StatusCoup 

If anyone still thinks adopting the Euro was a good idea, this episode should set you straight. 

Writer and journalist Thomas Fazi joins Steve to talk about the critical issues surrounding the European project, beginning with elite reaction to the recent election of Marine Le Pen in France, which Thomas calls a script that, as an Italian, he has seen play out many times: 

“And that is one where as soon as a “populist” or “anti-establishment” government comes into power, or has a good chance of coming to power, as Le Pen does now ... then the kind of democracy-proofing mechanisms of the European Union, and of the Euro, kick into action.” 

Markets begin selling off the bonds of the country in question, in this case France, because they’re said to be spooked by the election results. The mainstream media frames this as the market’s natural reaction to “irresponsible” politicians gaining power.  

“But in fact, this is a very simplistic narrative, because, as MMT teaches us, it's the central bank that ultimately controls the interest rates on the government bonds...markets can only spook governments and countries, and can only put [financial] pressure on countries, so long as a central bank allows markets to do it.”  

The European Central Bank has every interest in using financial markets to discipline governments, ensuring they don’t stray off the neoliberal path.  

The discussion goes into the US role in European geopolitics, the importance of economic and industrial sovereignty, and the negative impacts of relying on imports and being subordinate to the US. They go into the purpose of the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, the petrodollar system, and the destruction of Ukraine. 

They also question the MMT community’s disturbing reluctance to speak out on geopolitics, especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza.    

Thomas Fazi is a critically-acclaimed writer and journalist. His books include The Battle for Europe: How an Elite Hijacked a Continent — and How We Can Take It Back (Pluto Press, 2014), Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (co-authored with Bill Mitchell; Pluto Press, 2017) and The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor — A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green; 2023). He is the co-director of Standing Army (2010), an award-winning feature-length documentary on US military bases featuring Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky; His articles have appeared in numerous online and printed publications. He is a columnist for the British magazine UnHerd and a contributing editor for the American magazine Compact.  

@battleforeurope on Twitter 

At Macro N Cheese we’ve been having an ongoing conversation about the need for radical change in the labor movement and the rise of class struggle unionism.  

Traven Leyshon is president of the Green Mountain Central Labour Council and part of the leadership team of the Vermont State Labour Council. Traven, who has over five decades of labor organizing experience, talks to Steve about the pushback from national labor institutions against Vermont's newly elected progressive leadership and what it represents for the movement. 

The episode delves into the historical context of labor shrinkage and addresses the practical challenges of organizing in a neoliberal economy dominated by corporate money. He emphasizes the need for a participatory democracy within unions, contrasting this approach with the dominant model of business unionism, where members often feel disconnected and disengaged. 

Traven and Steve highlight the need for workers to have a deeper knowledge of how the system operates in order to fight back against the capitalist order. They also touch on issues such as the need for a job guarantee and the impact of austerity measures on working-class people.  

In the face of climate crisis and continual economic crises, building a powerful, inclusive labor movement is more urgent than ever. 

Current president of the Green Mountain Central Labor Council, part of the leadership team of the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL CIO member of OPEIU 153, Teamster truck driver for Teamsters for a Democratic Union, and proud rank and file UAW Audi worker.  

@TravenL on Twitter 

They discuss the recent legislative wins by Milei's government, which have sparked mass protests and civil unrest in the country. The reform bill passed by the Argentine Senate includes sweeping austerity measures, privatization, and labor rights cuts. 

The conversation delves into the factors contributing to the high inflation rate in Argentina, including the country's debt with the IMF, the impact of the pandemic, and external conditions such as the Ukraine-Russian war and drought. Daniel explains that Milei's approach to the economy is characterized by a belief in dollarization. 

They also discuss the role of the IMF in Argentina and its pro-market, pro-capitalist ideology. They talk about the historical pattern of accumulation in the country, with a constant pendulum swing between the export-oriented neoliberal model and the industrial autonomous development model. Without a clear resolution of this conflict, Argentina will continue to struggle. However, they also highlight the resilience and fighting spirit of the Argentine society, with a strong union density and a comprehensive system of social protection. 

Daniel Kostzer is the Chief Economist of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-CSI) based in Brussels. He was the senior regional wage specialist for Asia and the Pacific at the INWORK Branch (Inclusive Labour Markets, Labour Relations and Working Conditions), International Labour Organization. Daniel does research in Labour Economics, especially wages and income distribution, poverty alleviation, and the linkages with the broad economic issues. 

@dkostzer on Twitter 

They criticize the US government's support for Israel and the lack of accountability for the ongoing genocide. They blame the corporate media for not adequately informing the public about these issues, allowing for a privileged perspective that ignores the suffering.  

They touch on the role of social media in raising awareness of the atrocities, discuss the need for the American public to unify around principles of peace & to call out the US for war crimes and also talk about the attempts to silence criticism of genocide by labeling it as anti-Semitic or terrorist sympathizing.

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer and peace activist. He is the author of the recently released book, The Case for Palestine: Why it Matters and Why You Should Care. Some his other books include The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, and The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State have Conspired to Vilify Russia

@danielmkovalik on Twitter

They look at the intersection of movement building and labor's role, emphasizing that real economic advocacy should lead to tangible change. Steve contrasts this to the naivety of relying solely on voting within a captured oligarchic system.  

They discuss historical and current labor struggles, touching on the need for transforming unions from business unionism to class struggle-oriented unions. Tschäff shares insights on the positive outcomes of recent labor actions which have revitalized union activity. 

They also talk about the importance of a job guarantee and consider how unions might engage with broader social movements, emphasizing solidarity and the power of labor to enact change by shutting down production. 

Tschäff Reisberg is not only an early proponent of MMT, but is secretary of the Charlotte Metrolina Labor Council, and an Association of Professional Flight Attendants member. He has been with the American Airlines Flight Attendants union in difficult and contentious times, including through Covid. This perspective has given Tschäff unique insights into the burgeoning labor movement we are experiencing today. 

Steve Grumbine’s guest is Steve Hall, a Professor Emeritus of Criminology who has published in the fields of criminology, sociology, anthropology, history, economic history, political theory and philosophy. 

The discussion covers a range of political and economic issues, including class consciousness and unity among the working class in the US and Europe. They discuss the historical fear and suspicion of the working class by the political and economic elites. They talk about the impact of identity politics and the need for unity among the working class. They also touch on the influence of neoliberalism and the weaponization of identity struggles.  

They highlight the disconnect between what is presented in the news and the needs of the working class. They look at the concept of natural laws in economic models and how they often ignore the role of human decisions. 

The conversation ends with a discussion on the limitations of the current political system and the need for agency and alternative avenues of power for the working class.  

Steve Hall is a Professor Emeritus of Criminology. He worked at the Universities of Teesside, Northumbria and Durham. He is the author of Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture, and Theorizing Crime and Deviance, and co-author of numerous others.  

@ProfHall1955 on Twitter 

Bryce is a writer and organizer currently working towards his PhD in Informatics. His work focuses on media and geopolitical analysis. He emphasizes the importance of dismantling the myths and narratives surrounding American support for Israel and the oppression of Palestinians. He believes that studying Palestine brings understanding of the broader forces and processes that define American Empire. He goes into the impact of social media and alternative platforms in challenging the traditional narratives and gatekeepers that shape the public’s understanding. Or misunderstanding. 

They talk about the brutality of the Israeli state, including land grabs, settlements, and military violence against Palestinians. Bryce expresses frustration with the manipulation and gaslighting that occurs when the Holocaust is used to justify these atrocities. 

They also touch on the topic of university complicity in supporting Israel, criticizing universities for partnering with companies that enable genocide. 

Bryce discusses the use of counterterrorism measures against peaceful protesters and the surveillance of activists. He warns of the growing infrastructure for surveillance and repression, which could have serious consequences for organizing and activism. 

Bryce Greene is a writer, student and organizer based in Indiana. His work focuses on media and geopolitical analysis. He has appeared in Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, as well as many other venues. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Informatics. 

@TheGreeneBJ on Twitter 

Grassroots political organizer Jay Ponti talks with Steve about his book, "Be the Revolution: How Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped American Politics." Jay maintains that there’s a vibrant network of people doing great work that isn’t covered by corporate media.  

“Politicians are not heroes who can save us. We have to save ourselves. That's what the Occupy Wall Street movement taught me. We can't rely on someone else to make the changes we want to see. We have to get organized, we have to get active, and we have to fight for our own rights.” 

Jay shares his experiences in Occupy Wall Street and the motivations behind it. He describes how the movement emerged as a response to the 2008 financial crisis and the fraudulent practices of financial institutions. He also touches on the Bank Exit campaign, which aimed to divest from banks funding the Dakota Access Pipeline. He speaks of the challenges and successes of the campaign and its connection to the broader movement for social and economic justice. 

Steve and Jay discuss the need for grassroots movements and an inside-outside strategy to bring about real change. 

Jay Ponti is a grassroots political organizer, trainer, and consultant who has participated in some of the most important social movements of the last decade, including Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, and Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns. He is the author of "Be the Revolution: How Occupy Wall Street and the Bernie Sanders Movement Reshaped American Politics," 

Find his work at jayponti.com 

@jayponti on Twitter 

“This is a very low point in the history of democracy. Perhaps the lowest point ever, if you put it in a historical context. The United States was never really a democracy. Democracy isn't so much an either/or proposition, I would say it's a continuum ...

“Even in the generic sense of political rights and universal suffrage and basic 'one person, one vote' rules, the US comes up short. The electoral college is a ridiculous system. There are barriers to getting on the ballot.”

The conversation includes a discussion on the role of empire and the pursuit of global dominance in shaping US politics and policies. Aaron argues that the US prioritizes its imperial ambitions over domestic issues, resulting in a loss of political power for most of the population.

Aaron Good holds a doctorate in political science from Temple University. He is the author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. Find his podcast at patreon.com/americanexception

Follow Aaron’s work at americanexception.substack.com/

@Aaron_Good_ on Twitter

They look at the importance of working-class unity, the need for unions to be more democratic and inclusive, and the need for a new approach to labor organizing. They touch on the problems of racial oppression, police unions, global labor movements, healthcare, and the futility in relying on the political parties. David's book provides insights and lessons from their experiences in Vermont, offering a potential roadmap for a more effective and inclusive labor movement in the US and abroad.

They discuss the global race to the bottom and international solidarity of the working class.

“We can't have the US government foreign policy defining our foreign policy as a labor movement. We need to look for those groups that are truly engaged with struggles against the capitalists, against the elite, against the billionaires. And we need to make one on one direct relationships with them and support them where we can ... We should be reaching our hands out as a labor movement, as a US labor movement, saying 'what can we do to support you?' Because if they win there, they're going to set the example that could spread to other regions of the Middle East, Europe, and aspects of the United States. And shouldn't we be supporting democracies, especially those that actively invite labor activists, labor unions, to be part of the molding of the society that they labor within?”

Check out the other interview with David:

https://realprogressives.org/podcast_episode/episode-186-the-power-of-organizing-with-david-van-deusen/

David Van Deusen is a longtime organizer and militant union leader. He served two terms as President of the Vermont AFL-CIO (2019-2021 & 2021-2023) and is part of the working class left United! Slate. He is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America and a past member of Anti-Racist Action. His new book from PM Press is called Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017-2023.

Jeff explains that across the US there are plans in place to eliminate bail. (One would think that’s good news. One would be wrong.) In reality, these plans result in greater violations of civil liberties. Bail is being replaced by pre-trial incarceration and risk assessment tools using computer algorithms (AKA profiling?)

In his dissent in United States v. Salerno, Justice Thurgood Marshall warned that we are quickly moving to a criminal justice system where "a person innocent of any crime may be jailed indefinitely." Marshall called the bail system a shortcut to conviction.

Steve and Jeff discuss the most obvious ways to address crime – by providing jobs, housing, and education or training. Some caught up in the criminal justice system need recovery treatment. In the US, those healthcare services have become punitive. Jeff refers to them as the dragnet of the state.

Steve speaks of addressing the material conditions that contribute to criminal behavior. He brings up the concept of a federal job guarantee and talks about resource allocation and macroeconomic justice.

Jeffrey J. Clayton serves as the Executive Director of the American Bail Coalition (ABC). He holds a B.B.A. from Baylor University, an M.S. in Public Policy from the University of Rochester, N.Y., and a J.D. from the Sturm College of Law, University of Denver.

@ambailcoalition on Twitter

This week’s episode is the audio track of a recent webinar with historian Esha Krishnaswamy. Esha is now living in Russia to research and write a people’s history of the Soviet Union.

The discussion begins with the story of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution. The formation of the USSR as a proletarian state shook the capitalist nations of the West to their core. As a result, the Soviet Union was regularly under threat economically, militarily, as well as propaganda warfare.

Esha talks about the history of the Soviet Union and its ultimate dissolution against the will of the majority. She delves into the impact of its fall on various countries and the global economy. She looks at the shock doctrine years of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and the effects of such extreme austerity and privatization on the average citizens. She then goes into the Putin era and the move towards social democracy.

Finally, she touches upon NATO, the IMF, and the war in Ukraine.

Esha Krishnaswamy is a writer and media critic, whose focus is on history, foreign policy, and Modern Monetary Theory. She hosts Historic.ly and Late Nights with Lenin.

Find her work at historicly/substack.com

@eshaLegal on Twitter

Steve’s guest is journalist Kevin Gosztola, author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange. Kevin has been advocating for freedom of the press since the George W. Bush administration and the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Steve and Kevin discuss the lack of available unbiased information, particularly regarding events like the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the presidential election. They look at the collusion between mainstream media outlets and the government, the demonization of individuals who counter the mainstream narrative, and the targeting of journalists and newsrooms.

They highlight the efforts of the US empire to prevent information from reaching the public and discuss the significance of the documents published by WikiLeaks. They also discuss Assange's current situation and the deterioration of his health.

Kevin Gosztola is a journalist, press freedom advocate, and the author of Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange from Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. He publishes The Dissenter Newsletter at TheDissenter.org and has spent the past 10-15 years reporting on Assange, WikiLeaks, the war on whistleblowers, press freedom, and government secrecy.

@kgosztola on Twitter

L. Randall Wray talks with Steve about the concept of value in the context of MMT. Randy discusses the labor theory of value and the liquidity premise theory, saying both approaches are critical to understanding how money works in a capitalist economy.

Randy looks at the historical development of economic thought and the neoclassical revolution of the 1870s, which aimed to prove that a free-market economy could reach equilibrium without considering money. He explains why this just isn’t so. He compares and contrasts the intentions and conclusions of Keynes and Marx. He emphasizes the need to look beyond surface phenomena and understand the structure of the capitalist economy to determine the value of money.

The conversation also goes into the importance of the federal job guarantee in setting wages and stabilizing the value of labor.

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at Bard College and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute.

www.levyinstitute.org

Bill Mitchell’s blog post, Keynes Was Wrong Because He Failed to Consider Class Conflict, was the inspiration for this episode. Bill talks with Steve about many of the truths about capitalism economists and historians get wrong, beginning with the idea that capitalism freed workers from the bonds of feudalism.

Bill covers the social democratic politics of the postwar era and how the ruling elites then ensured that government would only serve as their agent. He and Steve take a critical look at the dangerous power of institutions like the World Bank and IMF. Bill explains why he supports degrowth instead of “green growth.”

Bill believes progressives shouldn’t be working to reform the system; they must work to change it. Coming from the Marxian tradition, he says MMT is only part of the story.

“Yes, it provides a first class lens into monetary operations but it doesn't have a theory of power. And you have to add that ideological layer for it to be, in my view, a purposeful framework for advancing systemic change. Just to have an MMT understanding provides you with no additional tools to work out systemic change.”

Bill Mitchell is a Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. He is also a professional musician and plays guitar with the Melbourne Reggae-Dub band – Pressure Drop. Follow his work on https://billmitchell.org/blog/

@billy_blog on Twitter

In his first solo episode, our host and jefe, Steve Grumbine, recounts the story of his political transformation from conservative republican to passionate MMT advocate, to self-identified socialist.

He begins the episode talking about his recent experience dealing with the medical system as his mother’s health declined. Both parents’ deaths illustrate the fact that a for-profit system cannot provide the kind of healthcare we need and deserve.

Awareness of class discrepancy runs through his story as he develops an awareness of the need to combine MMT with an understanding of capitalism.

It's impossible to separate Steve’s political development from his work on this podcast. Many of the guests affect him profoundly. In the episode he ties these insights together to create a radical and comprehensive worldview.

Steve Grumbine is the founder and CEO of Real Progressives and Real Progress in Action. He is a project manager by profession.

@sdgrumbine on Twitter

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” Milton Friedman

This quote by the grandaddy of neoliberal economics is from 1963. Some in the mainstream have been dining out on it ever since.

According to our guest, author and blogger Brian Romanchuk, neoclassical economics relies on mathematical models and fail to capture the complexity of real-world inflation. He highlights the importance of understanding the supply and demand dynamics in setting prices and explains that inflation can be influenced by factors such as supply chain shocks and changes in the labor market.

Brian also points out that it’s not enough to blame inflation on corporate greed; after all, corporations are always driven to maximize profits. He mentions the Cantillon effect, which suggests that the first recipients of newly created money benefit from inflation as prices go up, while the poor and working class bear the brunt of higher prices down the road.

Brian and Steve discuss inflation constraints on fiscal policy. Brian argues that while extreme fiscal policies could lead to inflation, most of the time, fiscal policy is relatively moderate and does not have a significant impact on inflation. They criticize the government for not trying to set prices and argue that the government often follows the private sector's lead, making things worse.

Brian Romanchuk is the author of several books, including Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery. He is the writer and publisher of bondeconomics.com. His writings can be found in his substack, The BondEconomics Newsletter.

@RomanchukBrian on Twitter

Steve and his guest, economist Yeva Nersisyan, take a deep dive into the current US economy, looking at the repercussions of the high costs of education, healthcare, and housing.

They discuss different perspectives on the causes of inflation and talk about Isabella Weber’s work on “sellers’ inflation” and its relationship to monopoly power. They argue that the drive for corporate profits, leading to abusive price-setting, has been the primary force behind inflation.

They also talk about the effect of fiscal policy on income inequality, revealing politicians’ contempt for the working class.

Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, and a research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” — Victor Hugo

Daniel Conceição talks with Steve about Argentina’s economic immiseration under newly elected president Javier Milei.

Milei’s aggressive cuts to public spending don’t address the root cause of inflation in Argentina. Because of the country’s dependency on the US dollar, it is mired in a foreign debt trap. Daniel and Steve highlight austerity policies bolstered by the macroeconomic illiteracy propagated by media and politicians (shout out to RFK, Jr).

They discuss the current political landscape and touch upon topics such as genocide, neoliberalism, economic conditions, and the role of public spending in promoting prosperity.

Daniel Conceição is an associate professor at the Unicamp Institute of Economics, a professor at the Institute of Research and Urban and Regional Planning (IPPUR) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and one of the authors of the book “Modern Monetary Theory: The Key to an Economy at the Service of People”. He is formerly president of the executive board of Institute of Functional Finance for Development Brasil.

@stopthelunacy on Twitter

“But fortunately for us, human nature is precisely the capacity to be creative; to imagine a different way of living together and to bring that into being through our conscious and deliberate actions by working together, by fighting for a different world against the class power that is interested in perpetuating things as they are. And so we can, through acting on the world to transform the world, we also transform ourselves. That's a basic principle of Marxist theory and Marxist politics. By acting on the world to change the world, we simultaneously transform ourselves through the act of struggle, to the act of building collective solidarity, we become different and we also make the world different.”

Steve invited Stephen Maher for this interview to talk about some of the basic lessons of Marxism. While you may not agree with everything you hear in this episode, certain fundamentals of capitalism are beyond refute.

The discussion explores the relationship between capital and the working class, and the concept of class struggle as the key to understanding US history of the past century, especially the postwar period and the development of neoliberalism. To truly make sense of it all we must look at some fundamental truths about capital. It is very fluid and dynamic. Capital is capable of continuously evolving and restructuring. In doing so, our social conditions change as well.

They also discuss the challenges and obstacles in achieving socialism, the history of anti-communist sentiment in the US, the importance of class struggle unionism, and the need for grassroots organizing and building solidarity within the working class.

Stephen Maher is an Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Cortland, and co-editor of The Socialist Register. He is the co-author of The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to BlackRock with Scott Aquanno, and the author of Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State: General Electric and a Century of American Power.

@SteveMaher18 on Twitter

This week Steve talks with our friend, economist Fadhel Kaboub. Followers of this podcast will recognize some of the themes we regularly focus on, including the debt trap facing countries of the global South, and the need for climate action and transformative economic development. Current plans under consideration are extractive and paternalistic, continuing the patterns of colonial exploitation.

At the root of the external debt problem are three major structural issues: food deficits, energy deficits, and manufacturing deficits. Fadhel breaks down each of these problems, tracing the origins and suggesting how solutions will benefit not just Africa and the global South, but the international working class.

“So, the type of thinking that we need to have today is one of two options. Do we work towards reforming this global economic architecture that was designed for these purposes? Or do we build a parallel, alternative economic architecture from the ground up? I'm of the opinion that the countries that dominate the current economic architecture will fight to death to keep their supremacy.”

Steve and Fadhel also discuss MMT, degrowth, and the job guarantee. They look at the role China could play in Africa.

Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (on leave), and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He is also a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development and serves as senior advisor with Power Shift Africa.

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

Project Censored was founded by a communications and sociology professor in the 1970s. He asked himself how it was that Richard Nixon was elected by a landslide despite ample coverage of his misdeeds and corruption in the independent alternative media. And why did it take so long for the establishment press to catch up?

Steve’s guest Mickey Huff discusses the work of Project Censored today and the current state of the press. They talk about how the corporate media's coverage is based on American exceptionalism and propaganda efforts, as well as the receding role of independent local outlets. They emphasize the importance of critical media literacy and how the media landscape has become more complicated with the rise of social media. They touch on the influence of big tech and billionaires on the media, and look at it as another example of corporate exploitation of workers.

Mickey Huff is an educator, radio broadcast producer/host, podcaster, author/editor, the current director of Project Censored, and the president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. Since 2009, he has coedited the annual volume of the Censored book series and has contributed numerous chapters to these works since 2008. His most recent books include United States of Distraction: Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (and what we can do about it), co-authored with Nolan Higdon, and Project Censored’s State of the Free Press In 2024, co-edited with Andy Lee Roth. Mickey is currently a professor of social science, history, and journalism at Diablo Valley College where he co-chairs the History Area and is chair of the Journalism Department.

https://www.projectcensored.org

On Twitter:

@mythinfo

@ProjectCensored

In 2022, Real Progressives helped our coalition partners, March for Medicare for All, organize a three-day educational summit on the healthcare crisis in the US. This week’s episode is from the panel we put together on paying for national improved Medicare for All, featuring Geoff Ginter, Yeva Nersisyan, and Rohan Grey.

The panelists discuss:

• The meaning of currency user vs currency creator
• The money story and order of operations
• Financial restraints vs resource constraints
• The importance of deficit spending
• Private vs public investment and inflationary constraints
• Potential impact of policies on the economy
• The truth about the so-called national debt

Specific to Medicare for All, they address the problem of transitioning workers out of administrative jobs in the insurance industry. They explain why Medicare for All is likely to be deflationary rather than inflationary. And they look to history to suggest ways of attracting healthcare workers to underserved locations.

Geoffrey Ginter is a New Jersey based certified medical assistant, activist, and MMT evangelist. 

Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College and a research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College.

Rohan Grey is an Assistant Professor of Law at Willamette University and the founder and president of the Modern Money Network. MintTheCoin.org

@rohangrey on Twitter

This podcast’s followers know we cover a range of topics from political theory to international events, but at some point, we always circle back to Modern Monetary Theory.

This interview with Warren Mosler was originally recorded for “Let’s Get Ready to Grumble,” Steve’s show on Status Coup.

As with any Mosler episode, this one is appropriate for both MMT newcomers and old-timers. They discuss interest rates, inflation, and the money supply. Warren goes over the key principles of MMT, emphasizing that government spending precedes taxation as well as the role of taxation itself.

The conversation also touches on rising fuel prices and the role of Saudi Arabia as monopoly supplier setting the price of oil.

Warren Mosler is an American economist and theorist, and one of the leading voices in the field of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Presently, Warren resides on St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands. An entrepreneur and financial professional, Warren has spent the past 40 years gaining an insider’s knowledge of monetary operations. 

@wbmosler on Twitter

Joshua suggests creating collective wallets and experimenting with democratic input in economic institutions as a starting point. He also speaks of the potential of blockchain technology in creating a new economic system that challenges the existing power structures.

The space of what is economically possible is much wider than many realize. (As MMTers, we agree.) Joshua believes the tools provided by digital systems can be used to create post-capitalist systems that compete with the existing globalized digital economy. He challenges the notion that the tools used in libertarian economic systems cannot be leveraged for post-capitalist ones.

Check out his blog, The Blockchain Socialist.

Joshua Dávila is an author, expert on blockchain technology, and the creator of The Blockchain Socialist blog and podcast. His book, Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It, was published in 2023. https://theblockchainsocialist.com/

@TBSocialist on Twitter

Tyler is one of the younger generation of MMT scholars. He works with our good friend Pavlina Tcherneva at the Economic Democracy Initiative (EDI). We recommend everyone check out their website, jobguarantee.org

The conversation touches on the idea of money as a public resource and the need to challenge the mentality of scarcity that dominates society. The job guarantee will address poverty and provide opportunities for individuals to have agency and dignity in their work.

Tyler Emerson is an economist working as a research assistant for the OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative at Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. His research on the link between unemployment and disability culminated in his thesis The Job Guarantee as it Relates to People with Disabilities. Tyler's area of interest continues to be the history and future of people with disabilities in the American labor force and how macroeconomic and sociological trends affect their economic position.

@EDI_tweets

Les is the author of Wall Street’s War on Workers. He and Steve talk about the very real impact on people’s lives, from the coal miners of Mingo County, West Virginia, to Steve’s personal struggles after Verizon’s 2009 lay-offs. They discuss organizing, the value of a job guarantee, and intersectionality within a class analysis.

Les Leopold is executive director of the Labor Institute, which he co-founded in 1976. He has written several books on the finance sector’s looting of America. His upcoming book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, is being published by Chelsea Green Publishing. Follow his substack: https://substack.com/@lesleopold1

@les_leopold on Twitter

“First of all ... this conflict did not begin on October 7th, though we're led to believe it did. This conflict – well, it depends on when you want to say it started – but certainly a good starting place is 1948 in the Nakba, when 700,000 to 900,000 Palestinians were violently displaced by Israelis who came in to take over their land and their homes. And the takeover of land and homes has continued since that time.

Gaza itself has been penned in with a giant fence since about 2007 in what some refer to as the largest open-air prison in the world. Others call it the biggest concentration camp in the world — where Israel has regulated the water they get, the food they get. And they've kept all those things, intentionally, to a minimum.”

They both argue that the violence of the oppressor (Israel) cannot be equated with the violence of the oppressed. Any resistance against oppression is justified.

While condemning the Zionist government of Israel, they stress the culpability of the US government. They discuss the lack of difference between Democratic and Republican presidents in terms of their foreign policies, particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a conversation about current American and international politics, Dan and Steve agree on a number of things, including the need for disruptive targeted protests in addition to sustained movements, a long-term commitment to resistance, and international solidarity.

Where they disagree, however, is on the matter of so-called taxpayer money. As always, Steve makes sure to correct the record. Several times.

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer and peace activist. He is the author of several books, including The Plot to Scapegoat Russia, Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention and Resistance, and the upcoming The Case for Palestine: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care.

@danielmkovalik on Twitter

In this webinar from our RP Live webinar series, Dr. Hamza Hamouchene addresses the fraudulent and exploitative reality behind “green energy.” His presentation comes from the recently published book, Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region. The presentation is followed by questions from attendees.

Hamza’s analysis of regional and global climate and energy politics is illustrated by real-life examples from Indonesia, Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and other nations.

He explains how the commodification of nature and the environment is masked under the guise of proactive 'green' efforts — while the consequences include increased privatization and plundering of resources in the Global South.

Hamza stresses the importance of climate reparations, climate justice, and decolonization, but without an analysis of capitalism and a commitment to systemic change, solutions will always be inadequate and doomed to failure.

Dr. Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA) and the North African Food Sovereignty Network (Siyada). He is currently the Arab region Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI). His work is focused on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and energy justice in the Arab region.

@BenToumert on Twitter

Steve and Cory discuss his new fiction book, The Lost Cause, which explores truth and reconciliation in a polarized future and then delve into his nonfiction work, particularly The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, which focuses on the power and abuses of major corporations, especially in the tech industry. They talk about the concept of "platform decay" (enshittification) and how platforms have become the dominant life form on the internet.

Cory explains another term, "acidification," which describes the pathology of this decay and the inevitable outcome when platforms are not regulated. He uses Facebook as a case study to illustrate how platforms lock in users, withdraw surplus from them, and then squeeze them for profit. He discusses the lack of competition, regulation, labor power, and user agency in the tech industry, leading to the current state of affairs.

They also touch on the importance of adversarial interoperability and the need to destroy big tech rather than trying to fix or tame it. The conversation highlights the urgent need for change and the importance of hope in creating a better future.

Cory believes that in times of crisis, ideas can move from the periphery to the center and become the basis for change.

Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, science fiction author and blog editor. He is an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licenses for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics. Craphound.com

@doctorow on Twitter

The global North must not shirk its historic responsibility and disproportionate impact of climate change on the Global South. Fadhel and Steve discuss the need for truth and reconciliation as a starting point for reparations. They highlight the significance of addressing the structural issues that perpetuate harm. Fadhel emphasizes the need for transparency and decentralized systems in order to prevent corruption and ensure that reparations reach those who need them most.

Fadhel Kaboub is an Associate Professor of economics at Denison University and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Check out his recent work at https://justtransitionafrica.org/

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

Stephen directly ties inequality to mortality rates, disease, and early childhood development. It’s interesting to hear a physician who doesn’t blame our individual choices and habits; he lays our health problems squarely at the feet of the political and economic system.

The profit-driven nature of healthcare in the US prioritizes financial gain over the health of individuals. Stephen describes the role of the lobbying industry and private corporations contribute to the perpetuation of this system.

The conversation concludes with a discussion on the concept of social murder and structural violence.

Stephen Bezruchka (pronounced bez rootch ka ) is faculty in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. He worked as an emergency physician for 30 years and also set up a teaching hospital in a remote district in Nepal where he supervised the training of Nepali doctors. His current work is in making better known what produces health in a population and why the United States has worse health outcomes than some 50 other nations despite spending almost half of the world's healthcare bill.

His book: Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19's Health Lessons for the World is published by Routledge.

@SBezruchka on Twitter

Charles addresses the skepticism and cynicism often associated with the idea of changing capitalism but he believes change is possible through diverse strategies and alliances. He draws lessons from historical movements, such as the abolitionist movement, the Bolshevik revolution, and the reinvigorated labor movement. He touches on social media, which can be used to control and manipulate, but can also be a powerful tool for organizing and mobilizing activism.

Charles Derber is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and has written 26 books - on politics, democracy, fascism, corporations, capitalism, climate change, war, the culture wars, culture and conversation, and social change. His most recent books include Dying for Capitalism, Welcome to the Revolution, Moving Beyond Fear, Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States; Capitalism: Should You Buy It?

We at Macro N Cheese urge our listeners to circulate the statement. https://urpe.org/2023/11/08/economists-for-palestine/

Economists for Palestine

We stand in unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people. Since October 7th, 2023, over two million people have faced a brutal onslaught by the Israeli military and state. They have been forced to flee with nowhere to go as homes, shelters, evacuation routes, border crossings, hospitals, places of worship and entire neighborhoods have been bombed.

We mourn civilian deaths in both Israel and Palestine. Israel’s retaliation for the October 7th incursion continues, however, and over 9,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing assault so far. More than 8,000 people have been killed in three weeks in Palestine. The estimated number of children among the casualties is over 3,000 and UNICEF estimates that about 420 children have been killed or wounded daily. Even reporters have been threatened with violence or killed.

Since the Nakba 75 years ago, the Palestinian people have endured profound suffering, forced displacement, and a brutal 16-year-long inhumane siege and blockade in Gaza. Human rights organizations have characterized Gaza as ‘the largest open-air prison’.

We also condemn the role of the U.S. state in supporting the ongoing siege in Palestine, its support for the horrors inflicted on Gaza, and its refusal to support a humanitarian ceasefire. It is imperative that we do not turn our backs on the devastating impact of this violence on people’s lives. The fight for Palestinian liberation and a fair, enduring peace in the region is intricately linked with the liberation and resistance efforts spearheaded by indigenous, colonized, and oppressed communities historically and worldwide.

We stand in support of efforts by the Palestinian people to sustain themselves economically through control over their land and their labor. We stand in solidarity with the anti-Zionist Jewish communities that have been raising their voices against the carpet bombing of Gaza, for the liberation of the Palestinian people, and who are working for a just, equitable, and durable peace.

We urgently call for:

1. An immediate ceasefire

2. Immediate restoration of food, fuel, water, and electricity to the Gaza Strip

3. Cessation of all settlement activity and disarmament of all settlers

4. Immediate delivery of humanitarian aid on the scale required

5. Respect towards the Geneva Conventions by all parties concerned

6. An end to apartheid and strident moves toward a democratic future for all people regardless of race, religion, gender identity and nationality

In addition, we strongly uphold the principle of academic freedom, especially in light of the current global climate where individuals in educational institutions worldwide face termination, doxing, and harassment for speaking up against the atrocities of the Israeli state and in support of the civilian population in Gaza. Neglecting this commitment would be a betrayal of our scholarly and moral obligations.

November 8th, 2023

David Fields is a political economist from Utah; his work centers on the intricacies concerning the interactions of foreign exchange & capital flows with economic growth, fiscal & monetary policy, and distribution, whereby critical attention is paid to the notion of endogenous money. He also delves into the political economy of regional development to study patterns with respect to the nature of housing, social stratification, and community planning.

@ProfDavidFields on Twitter

Steve and Hamza agree on the importance of reckoning with the realities of the current capitalist imperialist system, which has proven to be a failure in addressing the most crucial needs of people and planet. Hamza argues that alternative visions for a better world already exist – he himself is an eco-socialist – but the challenge lies in implementing them and building the necessary alliances and coalitions of working people, both at the national and global levels.

The conversation also delves into the specificities of the Arab region, which has elements of authoritarian and military dictatorships due to its subordinate insertion into the global capitalist economy and its role as a key nodal point in global fossil fuel regimes. Hamza highlights the need for a just energy transition that takes into account the control and ownership of fossil fuel resources and the potential for green renewable energies.

Hamza calls for diversifying tactics and strategies, organizing and building power to challenge imperialism and the decarbonization by dispossession.

Dr. Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator, and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA) and the North African Food Sovereignty Network (Siyada). He is currently the Arab region Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI). His work is focused on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and energy justice in the Arab region.

@BenToumert on Twitter

Hamza is co-editor of Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region. He talks with Steve about the urgent need for climate justice and decolonization, while suggesting what a just transition would entail.

They emphasize the critical need for support of the Palestinians, whose cause must be included in discussions of colonialism, climate justice, global trade, and energy systems.

Part Two of this interview will be released next week.

Dr. Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA) and the North African Food Sovereignty Network (Siyada). He is currently the Arab region Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI). His work is focused on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and energy justice in the Arab region.

@BenToumert on Twitter

Michael prefers a Q&A format. Attendee questions revolved around US political economy, domestic and global. He discusses topics such as healthcare, de-dollarization, and the impact of economic policies on the working class. He emphasizes the need for a change in economic philosophy and highlights the government's ability to create money for social programs.

A common Hudson theme is the difference between the production and consumption economy, or what he calls the real economy, and the financial sector of assets and liabilities, of loans and debts, which is superimposed on the real economy.

“Money is spent in the real economy, but bank credit is spent really just to increase the debt overhead in the economy — the overhead of mortgage debt, of corporate debt, and speculative debt.”

A Michael Hudson episode always sparks lively, sometimes contentious, comments. His insights on finance, politics, and class power dynamics give fans and detractors alike something to chew on.

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Support him at patreon.com/michaelhudson

Find his work at michael-hudson.com

These two assumptions explain why we’re hurtling towards ecological catastrophe and why austerity has become a way of life.

Steve’s guests this week are Colleen Schneider and Christopher Olk. They are co-authors, with Jason Hickel, of the paper, How to Pay for Saving the World: Modern Monetary Theory for a Degrowth Transition.

Any listeners who have paid attention to Real Progressives’ journey over the past couple of years will be excited to add Colleen and Christopher’s insights to their intellectual arsenal. They are those rare scholars who manage to be both realistic and optimistic. (They are not suggesting that the right slate of politicians will tweak capitalism to make it heal the the planet and the population.)

They discuss how both MMT and the degrowth movement challenge the myth of scarcity. They look at the disparities between the Global North and South. They emphasize the interconnectedness of ecological and social issues, and the need to address both the predation on the Global South and the climate crisis.

They talk about non-reformist reform and the ways in which addressing national economic policies can be played out at the local level to radicalize people. By understanding the power dynamics within the financial system, MMT can empower and mobilize, allowing us to attack multiple problems as if they were one. Which they kind of are.

*****

Colleen Schneider is a PhD student and research assistant in the Institute for Ecological Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and is a lecturer at Torrens University. She has a BA in Physics from UC Berkeley and MSc in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy from WU.  Her research focuses on the political economy of monetary and fiscal policy in a social-ecological transformation. Her recent work brings an MMT-informed lens to degrowth scholarship. She teaches courses in social ecological economics, and the intersection of money, society, and environment, and has also worked and published in the field of environmental justice.

@ColleenFights on Twitter

Christopher Olk is a PhD candidate in political economy at Free University Berlin. His current research focuses on the links between international monetary power, offshore finance, and fossil fuels. Christopher is also active in the climate justice movement.

@christopher_olk on Twitter

• Full employment
• Full and prudent use of material resources
• The guarantee of the five essentials to every citizen: food, housing, clothing, health services, and education
• Social security at all major exposed points in the social structure (eg, old age, sickness, accident, temporary unemployment, and childbearing)
• Labor standards, to be assured by labor unions

Carlos maintains that any society achieving these five goals at the same time and permanently should be called socialist, no matter the size of the private sector.

Steve and Carlos discuss the philosophical foundations of both fiat socialism and Marxism. They also look at the role of the IMF and the possibilities for monetary sovereignty in developing nations.

Carlos García Hernández is the founder and director of Lola Books, a publishing house that has introduced MMT to Spanish and German readers. He is the author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism through Modern Monetary Theory.

@Carlos_G_H_ on Twitter Or X

They emphasize the need for systemic change and a new vision for Africa and the global South that prioritizes food sovereignty, energy sovereignty, and industrial policy. They talk about the power dynamics between labor and capital, the role of governments in perpetuating inequality, and the importance of mobilizing and organizing for change.

They highlight the narrow constructs that society is allowed to consider, which prevent true transformation and progress. They emphasize the importance of recognizing our interconnectedness and the need for what Fadhel calls “a movement of movements.”

Fadhel Kaboub is an Associate Professor of economics at Denison University, the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Check out his recent work at https://justtransitionafrica.org/

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

1. Conservative
2. Progressive
3. N/A (not applicable)

Daniel Conceição is with us for his third visit to Macro N Cheese. He and Steve discuss the failures of both right and left governments. Some broad strokes of Brazil’s historical patterns are not so different from those in the US. The last left(ish) president, Dilma Rousseff, abandoned her Leninist roots and hopped aboard the privatization train. It wasn’t enough to protect her from impeachment, however.

It’s easy to see parallels between Bolsonaro and Trump as well as the lesser evilism we’re facing in both our countries today. Despite President Lula's progressive rhetoric, his economic policies prioritize deficit reduction. His administration is committed to delivering fiscal results to financial markets over public investment in education, healthcare, and other social services.

Daniel touches on the “dollarizing” of Argentina's economy and explains that it can only exacerbate instability and conditions of scarcity.

Daniel and Steve talk about the insights gained from Modern Monetary Theory and agree that building power beyond elections requires a paradigm shift in our thinking.

Daniel Negreiros Conceição did his undergraduate studies in Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and his postgraduate studies at UMKC (under Professors Wray, Kelton, et al). He is a professor of macroeconomics and public finance at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He helped create the Institute for Functional Finance and Development (iffdbrasil.org), where he currently serves as president, and he helps run the Brazilian Modern Money Network (https://mmtbrasil.com/) aimed at producing more easily accessible material for teaching MMT to the wider public.

@stopthelunacy on Twitter

In this webinar from our popular RP Live series, Ndongo Samba Sylla tells us of the challenges facing Africa through the story of Thomas Sankara and breaks down what Sankara meant when he told the people to "live as African.” Ndongo suggests that the way forward combines the insights provided by MMT with Sankara’s plans for African liberation and development. He calls it MMT-ing Sankara or Sankara-ing MMT. Since some see MMT as apolitical, Ndongo is making a crucial point. He also goes into detail as to why cancelling international debt, though necessary, is not enough.

After his presentation, Ndongo takes questions from attendees on the role of BRICS and potential benefits for Africa in a multi-polar world. He touches on the CFA franc and explains why economic exploitation is the most vicious form of imperialism.

Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist. He has previously worked as a technical advisor at the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal and was Programme Manager at the West Africa office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He has recently been appointed the Africa Director for Research and Policy at IDEAs (International Development Economics Associates)

He is the co-author of Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story and author of The Fair Trade Scandal. Both books can be ordered through the RP Bookshop on our website: realprogressives.org

@nssylla on Twitter

Economist Eric Tymoigne explains two approaches to understanding the relationship: the consolidated and the collaborative, or cooperative, version of the Treasury and the Fed.

The consolidated approach merges the Fed and the Treasury into one entity and analyzes the implications of this merger on public finance. It emphasizes that taxes and government securities don’t fund the government, but rather, the government spends by crediting accounts. (This comes as no surprise to MMTers.)

The consolidated approach also highlights the importance of injecting reserves into the economy before taxes can be collected or government securities can be sold. The coordinated approach recognizes the separate roles of the Treasury and the Fed but emphasizes the extensive coordination between the two entities.

Eric walks us through these operations and touches on the relationship with private banking and the role of reserves on the international stage.

Listening to this episode, you can’t help but conclude that the ways in which the US manages monetary operations are not consistent with budgetary needs. It’s hard to see how it has anything to do with provisioning our society.

Eric Tymoigne is an Associate Professor of Economics at Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon, and Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

@tymoignee on Twitter

“The way I think about it is that MMT is compatible with deep, hard industry pollution and massive growth if you want it to be. And it is also compatible with a highly sustainable strategy to reduce our reliance on mass consumption and to divert our economic activity, which we normally think is gross domestic product, to divert that into sustainable products. In other words, radically change the composition of our output.”

In other words, MMT neither supports nor opposes the degrowth agenda. In this episode, Bill describes degrowth as a value system and strategic approach to the future of humanity on the planet.

MMT, on the other hand, is a lens or framework for understanding the capacities of currency issuance and the consequences of using that capacity. He and Steve highlight that MMT is compatible with both growth-oriented and sustainable strategies, and that degrowth policies would require significant investment from the state. They also discuss the challenges and obstacles to implementing a degrowth agenda, including the resistance of powerful vested interests and the potential for military conflict.

The conversation also delves into the historical and political factors that have shaped the current domestic and global politics, including the counterattack by corporations and the wealthy against social democratic majorities in the early 1970s. They discuss the role of ignorance and media manipulation in perpetuating the current system and the importance of education and knowledge in empowering individuals and fostering solidarity movements.

Bill Mitchell is a Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. He is also a professional musician and plays guitar with the Melbourne Reggae-Dub band – Pressure Drop. Follow his work on https://billmitchell.org/blog/

@billy_blog on Twitter

On the eve of the strike authorization vote by American Airlines flight attendants, Joe Burns spoke with Steve about the labor movement, unions, and class struggle. Joe, a labor lawyer and negotiator, has been a guest on Macro N Cheese twice before. His focus, then and now, is on the importance of class struggle unionism and the need for union leadership that is willing to engage in the broader fight, confronting power at its core.

“When you think about it, every labor struggle has inherent in it the struggle over control and power. And who's running society … For that reason, it tends to inherently have this radicalism buried within it. And I think our task as class struggle unionists is to help uncover and further that.”

Steve and Joe discuss the role of the corporate media in minimizing and obfuscating issues involving labor and class. They look at the ways in which both monetary and political policy are used to tame workers and reinforce the power of corporations.

Joe Burns is a veteran union negotiator and labor lawyer with over 25 years' experience negotiating labor agreements. He is currently the Director of Collective Bargaining for the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA. He graduated from the New York University School of Law. Prior to law school he worked in a public sector hospital and was president of his AFSCME Local. He is the author of Strike Back, Reviving the Strike, and Class Struggle Unionism.

@MarchOnTheBoss on Twitter

To grapple with some of these questions, Steve turns to Stephanie Preston, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and author of The Altruistic Urge: Why We’re Driven to Help Others. They delve into in-group versus out-group dynamics and the challenges of creating altruistic urges within different socioeconomic groups.

The conversation explores structural solutions to address societal issues, such as universal basic needs and improved access to healthcare. Stephanie argues that eradicating precarity and providing basic survival needs would shift the mindset towards seeing individuals as deserving of support and compassion.

Of course, there’s still the question of achieving these solutions. That’s where our activism comes in. For some of us, this episode may raise new questions. How do we level up to meet large scale problems? Does building empathy have a place in political organizing? Does altruism?

Stephanie D. Preston is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. She earned Master’s and PhD degrees in behavioral neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. She has been a faculty member at U-M since 2005. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine how the brain evolved to guide decisions through emotions, in a variety of domains, including to feel empathy, offer altruistic help, support the environment, and to consume and keep material goods. Her book, The Altruistic Urge: Why We Are Driven to Help Others (2022), is published by Columbia University Press.

@prestostwit on Twitter

For this episode, Macro N Cheese is releasing the audio recording of all four sessions. Since it is unusually long, the time codes for each segment are included below.

[00:03:09 - 01:55:41] Session One

Guest: Fadhel Kaboub

• Introduction
• Chapter 1, “A Public Option for Good Jobs”
• Chapter 2, “A Steep Price for a Broken Status Quo”

[01:55:41 - 03:17:41] Session Two

Guest: Pavlina Tcherneva

• Chapter 3, “The Job Guarantee, a New Social Contract and Macroeconomic Model”
• Chapter 4, “But How Will You Pay for It?”

[03:18:44 - 04:41:57] Session Three

Guest: Ben Wilson

• Chapter 5, “What, Where, and How: Jobs, Design, and Implementation”

[04:41:57 - 06:29:43] Session Four

Guest: Rohan Grey

• Chapter 6, “The Job Guarantee, the Green New Deal, and Beyond”

Use this link to order a copy of The Case for a Job Guarantee, by Pavlina R. Tcherneva

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC). He is an Associate Professor of Economics (on leave) at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College, the Director of OSUN’s Economic Democracy Initiative, and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, NY.  She specializes in modern money and public policy. Find her work at pavlina-tcherneva.net

@ptcherneva on Twitter

Benjamin C. Wilson is an Associate Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at Cortland and a research scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

@autogestion77 on Twitter

Rohan Grey is an Assistant Professor of Law at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and the founder and president of the Modern Money Network. MintTheCoin.org

@rohangrey on Twitter

Mat Forstater was on this podcast four years ago (episode 21!) recounting the history of MMT. He described his early days at Levy Institute and UMKC, his relationship with Warren Mosler and Pavlina Tcherneva, and how they established MMT as interdisciplinary, expanding into law and humanities. If you haven’t listened to that episode, we urge you to check it out.

This week, Mat talks to Steve about the role of taxation in the economy and its relation to government spending. It’s not enough to understand how taxes create a demand for the nation’s currency and give it value. Mat always reminds us to consider the total impact of any policy — from using taxation to encourage or discourage behavior, to its ripple effects and unintended consequences.

They touch on the importance of decoupling taxation from federal programs and the need to design tax policies that consider the indirect effects on society. They also talk about the potential deflationary impact of programs like Medicare for All, and whether a job guarantee can address unemployment and provide quality jobs.

Dr. Mathew Forstater is a professor in Economics at the University of Missouri/Kansas City and the Research Director of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. having received a Ph.D. at The New School for Social Research. His research focuses on the History of Economic Thought, Economic Methodology, Political Economy, Public Policy, Economics of Discrimination, Environmental Economics, African and African American Economic History. 

@mattybram on Twitter

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 production.

Capitalism creates an almost perfect circuit that begins and ends with commodification and enclosure. Well, actually, it ends with massive profits... and that double crisis we mentioned. With essential goods and services outside our control, we have no bargaining power when it comes to the cost of living. We are helpless in the face of artificial scarcity and price-gouging. Faced with the high price of necessities we are forced to work longer and harder in order to simply survive. And of course, the more we need to work, the less control we have over our wages. The capitalist class makes out at both ends.

There are at least two undeniable problems with this system. It wreaks havoc on the environment and is inconsistent with democracy, if you care about that sort of thing.

“This is where our analysis has to ultimately lead, and the underlying pathology is basically that capitalism is fundamentally not democratic.”

Even those of us who live in the US, Europe, or other countries with nominally democratic electoral systems have no illusions about their undemocratic nature.

“More importantly, when it comes to the system of production, which all of us are engaged in every day, on which our livelihoods and our existence depends, not even the shallowest illusion of democracy is allowed to enter.”

After identifying the quagmire, Jason and Steve talk about a solution. Jason lays out the necessary policies that ecosocialism should provide: universal public services, a public works program, and the job guarantee. Jason even suggests the possibility of post-capitalist firms and post-capitalist markets, and describes how they might operate in such a system.

We can’t have a Jason Hickel episode without a discussion of degrowth and whether that concept applies to the exploitation of the Global South. Nor is there a means of achieving our goals without domestic and international class solidarity.

“We can't underestimate the scale of the struggle that is really involved here. I think we have to take inspiration from successful social movements that have occurred in the past. There's this amazing line from Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso that goes 'we are the heirs of the world's revolutions'.

Pretty much every good thing that we have is the result of revolutionary forces that fought to bring that to be. Everything from literally the minimum wage, as pitiful as it is, to the weekends, to whatever admittedly meager forms of democracy we get to exercise. These are all the benefits of revolutionary movements that have at least won some concessions in the past, and in some cases against extraordinary odds.”

Dr. Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is Professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics, and Chair Professor of Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Health.

Jason's research focuses on global political economy, inequality, and ecological economics, which are the subjects of his two most recent books: The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Penguin, 2017), and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin, 2020), which was listed by the Financial Times and New Scientist as a book of the year.

@jasonhickel on Twitter

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 foreign currency for a number of reasons, including balance of payment constraints and the capture of export income by transnational corporations. Some debt was carried over from colonial rule. Ndongo emphasizes that these countries are often trapped in an extractive economic model. Their resources are exploited by foreign companies, leading to a cycle of debt and dependence.

Debt cancellation, while absolutely necessary, is not enough to address the structural issues that perpetuate the crisis. Ndongo mentions ecological debt — the extraction and exploitation of natural resources from the Global South by the Global North. He highlights the need for a fundamental change in the domestic economic model of accumulation to eliminate the role of debt as an instrument of domination.

Ndongo also traces the history of structural adjustments after attempts at reform in the 1970s, beginning with the proposal for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) that challenged the imperialist system. The austerity we witness today arose from the reaction to that agenda.

Ndongo Samba Sylla is a Senegalese development economist. He has previously worked as a technical advisor at the Presidency of the Republic of Senegal, and is Programme Manager at the West Africa office of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He is the co-author of Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story and author of The Fair Trade Scandal.

@nssylla on Twitter

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 

Guest economist Eric Tymoigne  

• Chapter 1, What is Money? 
• Chapter 2, Where Does Money Come From? 

[1:14:35] — Session Two 

Guest economist Yeva Nersisyan  

• Chapter 3, Can We Have Too Much Money?  
• Chapter 4, Balances Balance  
• Chapter 5, Life is Full of Trade-Offs 

[2:43:33] — Session Three 

Guest economist Randy Wray 

• Chapter 6, The MMT Alternative Framework for Policy  
• Chapter 7, MMT and Policy 

Use this link to order the book: Making Money Work for Us: How MMT Can Save America by L. Randall Wray

Eric Tymoigne is an Associate Professor of Economics at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon; and Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. @tymoignee on Twitter. 

Yeva Nersisyan is an Associate Professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. 

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at Bard College and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. 



Our guest this week is 1Dime, a content creator on YouTube and the podcast, 1Dime Radio, and a graduate student in political science. The interview is another stop on Steve’s journey to find the intersection of Modern Monetary Theory and Marxism. 1Dime is one of the few socialists – or democratic socialists – who accept MMT.

Our audience understands that capitalism is antithetical to democracy. 1Dime suggests that the US is unique in that it is very liberal in what it allows its citizens to do in the private sphere, or civil society, without allowing for real political power, which he defines as the ability of a social class to actualize its interests.

Steve and 1Dime compare the political history of the US with parliamentary democracies, discussing what that means for the working class. Agreeing that elections have limited value for American socialists, they look to alternatives. Tony brings up the idea of dual power: establishing power within the state while engaging in revolutionary actions outside it, building media institutions as well as organizations that can reach out to labor.

Tony runs the YouTube channel "1Dime" and the podcast 1Dime Radio. On his main channel, 1Dime does video essays and mini-documentaries that involve the political economy, history, geopolitics, leftist theory, and various socio-political topics. 1Dime is known most for his videos involving MMT and Marxian thought, such as "The Problem With Taxing The Rich" and "Why Billionaires Prefer Democrats." His most recent video series was on the History of Post-Soviet Russia and the Putin regime. Each video serves as both an educational analysis of a different topic and a unique artistic experiment.

Check out his YouTube channel, 1Dime and his podcast, 1Dime Radio, on Apple, Spotify, and most podcast platforms.

@1DimeOfficial on Twitter

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 causes and devastating effects of the massive transfer of income and wealth from the working class to the 1% — specifically the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors.

Michael slices through false promises of re-industrialization after half a century of brutal policies by both Democrat and Republican administrations.

“America cannot re-industrialize without reversing this whole philosophy of post-industrial society as a class war against labor. You can't have both. You can't have a class war against labor and re-industrialization, with the labor unionization that goes with it. That's the conundrum.”

It’s well known that the people want public spending on healthcare, student loan forgiveness, and other social programs. The episode looks at the complementary roles of both parties in opposition.

“The pretense is that the government has to borrow from bond holders. Because the bond holders decide what is economically worthwhile. Well, what does this ignore? That the bond holders are the 1%, and what they find economically worthwhile isn't using the government to benefit living standards, benefit labor, and to provide social services.”

Should either party feign to support a policy and pass legislation benefiting the people, the Supreme Court is there to stop it in its tracks, citing the original intent of the Constitution.

“Because the Constitution was drafted by authors who feared democracy. Who said that we have to make sure that we have enough checks and blocks, so that the mob cannot rule and take away the power of we, the bond holders, and landlords, and slave owners.”

There are certain themes Michael Hudson visits again and again, strengthening connections and adding nuance to a comprehensive class analysis and global political economy. If you’re lucky, he’ll pepper it with a few snarky observations as well.

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Support him at patreon.com/michaelhudson

Find his work at michael-hudson.com

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 in enforcing the law and fighting crime, the police are a coercive force, with origins as slave patrols, colonial militia, and strike-breakers.

Addressing possibilities of reform or abolition, the point is made that attempts at reform only serve to further maintain the legitimacy of the police. Reform does not address the monopoly on violence — a violence that is non-negotiable and non-reciprocal. Reform feeds into the myth that we hold the police accountable. Abolition, on the other hand, does not mean absence; it looks at possibilities for a different kind of world. Can this be done within the capitalist system?

David Correia is a professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. He writes about violence, law, and race under capitalism.

Tyler Wall is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His areas of interest include critical police studies; state violence and racial capitalism; law & society, race and class.

Correia and Wall are co-authors of Police: A Field Guide (Verso)

To celebrate all this good news, we brought back our friend, Yeva Nersisyan, associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College, research scholar at the Levy Institute, and frequent collaborator with MMT OG Randy Wray.

Yes, unemployment rates are lower, but we know those numbers don’t tell the true story. Or have you already forgotten our episode with Pavlina, just two short weeks ago? Yes, wages have gone up. But so has inflation. And in the race between inflation and wages, inflation is winning. Speaking of which, our Macro N Cheese family knows that one thing worse than inflation is the Fed’s cure for it.

In this episode, Steve and Yeva look at the disconnect between the ongoing immiseration of the working class and the rosy scenario painted by politicians, pundits, and economists. At least one of those groups should know better. They discuss the looming student debt crisis, and the effect of the Fed’s interest rate hikes on student loans.

When discussing MMT-informed solutions, Yeva warns:

“You have to be consistent — whether it's the Trump tax cuts, whether it's the social security question. And you have to consistently say: the question of taxes and government spending, it should not be about deficits, should not be about debt, it should be about: is this the right thing for the economy? Is this what the people want? Is this what the people need? That's what you need to start with. And just because you want to raise taxes on the wealthy, which I do too, but I don't want to tie it to things like social security, because I think that's just a losing argument, and that's just not true.”

MMT points toward answers, if anyone is asking.

Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, and a research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

Paul and Steve talk about the clarity that MMT provides. The public is kept intentionally misinformed by a mainstream narrative purposely obscuring the power relations of the capital order.

Paul describes capital flight in developing nations and how the US gains and maintains economic control through dollar hegemony, international institutions like IMF, and military aggression. The western system imposes itself on emerging markets as if drawing them into a warm pool of water, a step at a time. Once they are in the system, they find it is shark infested.

The discussion covers conditions that led to the banding together of BRICS to create an alternative pathway to the US-dominated system. Paul warns that western hegemony is not going to surrender easily and is practicing economic terrorism against emerging markets trying to disentangle themselves from dollar hegemony.

“I don't believe that anybody can hand on heart say that there's no connection whatsoever with the BRICS attempts to disentangle themselves from Western commercial, economic, and currency hegemony and the actions that we've seen in terms of American geopolitics in and around the Ukraine and in and around the South China Sea ... I think we're seeing it move into a geopolitical and into a military sphere, and I think that's terrifying.”

Just like old-fashioned colonialism, the US is engaging in a form of value extraction and will use all the means at its disposal to continue the plunder.

Paul Gambles is the Co-Founder of MBMG GROUP and a Director and Chief Investment Officer of MBMG Investment Advisory, a SEC regulated investment advisor. Find Paul’s articles on https://mbmg.substack.com/

@PaulGambles2 on Twitter

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 several angles, including geography, demographics, and of course, economics.

Pavlina and Steve discuss MMT, the politics of NAIRU, and the debt ceiling. They look at a job guarantee as an automatic stabilizer, similar to entitlements like social security and unemployment insurance, possibly shielding it from shifting political tides.

Pavlina tells Steve about her collaboration with the Democratizing Work Initiative, a group of academics who are organizing around the principles of democratizing work, decommodifying labor, and decarbonizing the planet.

Pavlina Tcherneva is an Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College, the Director of OSUN’s Economic Democracy Initiative, and a Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, NY.  She specializes in modern money and public policy. Find her work at pavlina-tcherneva.net

@ptcherneva on Twitter

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 unruly world of labor asserting itself, demanding higher wages, refusing to go back to work, and progressives were among the most effective political force in developing a new order. And that new order required a different cop.”

Despite occasional protests and demands for reform, we always end up with more police and more police brutality. Police reformists prioritize law and order over justice, which is why they fear abolition. David asks us to define what order and disorder is. “Because usually cops produce the disorder that they then resolve.” The very language of reform legitimizes the police.

David Correia is a writer and professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of a number of books, and co-author, along with Tyler Wall, of "Police: A Field Guide." He is the recipient of a Ford Fellowship, a Henry Belin du Pont Fellowship, and a Lannan Residency Fellowship.

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 financial crisis, China has been diversifying its foreign exchange reserves and establishing currency swaps with more trading partners. The goal is to dilute the power of the dollar and temper US hegemony with a more stable and development-friendly system.

Yan and Steve consider the loss of jobs in the US – a consequence of perpetual trade deficits. She maintains that the competition is not between domestic and foreign production, but between high financial returns and real productive capacity.

The episode looks at China’s future role in global trade and finance, and how it might provide support and relief to developing nations. The conversation also touches on the flaws of the Western-led multilateral lending system and the need for alternatives.

Dr. Yan Liang of Willamette University specializes in Post Keynesian-Institutionalist approach to international trade and finance, financial macroeconomics, and economic development with a regional focus on China.

@YanLian31677392

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 all still living. The contemporary capitalist economy. The need to kind of keep reinventing oneself to adapt to the constant changes, but also the kind of contradiction generated on personal and collective level. So, the coexistence of opportunities, risk and frustrations. So this is, I think, what I try to document in the book, the everyday labor of entrepreneurial reinvention.”

Dr. Zhang and Steve discuss the support provided by the state, which is no small matter. It makes entrepreneurism in China different from that of the US, or from India or developing countries of the global South.

Zhang also talks about the roots of Chinese nationalism in China's socialist anti-imperialist history, which are reinforced by recent American sanctions and containment of China.

Zhang argues that the US tends to view China through a simplistic lens of authoritarianism versus democracy, while the majority of Chinese people do not see their relationship with the party state in such terms. She provides a more nuanced picture of the Chinese state, discussing the competing demands of the central government to maintain economic development, social equity, and national security, as well as the discrepancies between central and local states.

Dr. Lin Zhang is an assistant professor of communication and media studies at the University of New Hampshire. She graduated from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, with a PhD in Communication, and MA from NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. She is the author of The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy, one of the first multi-sited ethnographic accounts of the rising entrepreneurial labor in urban, rural, and transnational China since tech innovation had accelerated in the country after 2008.

https://linzhangweb.org

“So of course the labor laws are different in Germany compared to Italy, to France and so on. If the French workers go on strikes, they burn stuff. It's always amazing for us Germans to see it happening, but their productivity is even higher. So maybe German workers should burn stuff when they go on strike. So that increases productivity.

No, I'm just joking. I never said that!"

Dirk talks about changes in regulations on deficit spending and his belief that the ECB understands MMT, as evidenced by their support of national governments during economic crises. When monetary sovereignty was returned to Eurozone countries over a four-year period, “the results were pretty good.” They now have a lower rate of unemployment than ever before. It’s still high... but not as high as before. He thinks inequality is not quite so bad as in the US and explains why this is.

Steve and Dirk discuss how Europe is affected by the US Fed’s raising of interest rates. “So it's just giving money to people who have money like Warren (Mosler) always says.” But ultimately, “the net effect is that we have roughly zero growth in the European economy.”

Dr. Dirk H. Ehnts holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Oldenburg and a diploma in economics from the University of Göttingen. A heterodox economist, he is one of the leading proponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).  He has taught classes on macroeconomics, money and currency, European and global economics, and the origins of political economy at a number of institutions. Every summer since 2016 Dirk has held a course on Modern Monetary Theory at the Summer School of Maastricht University and has published numerous articles in specialist journals and daily newspapers.

https://www.dirk-ehnts.de/en-us/

@DEhnts on Twitter

Steve and Bijou talk of popular concern about the petrodollar, and how economic illiteracy distorts its importance. The role of the US dollar in global political economy is poorly understood without the insights of MMT.

Smith criticizes the false psychology that views currency as a finite resource and is locked into the image of fixed exchange rates. He argues that this creates mental models that are not true but are still played out as if they are. He distinguishes between false conceptions of dollar hegemony and the very real struggles that countries face when they are indebted to the IMF and believe the imposition of austerity is the only way out.

The discussion looks at the way foreign exchange rates affect and do not affect national economies. Smith explains that this process does not have anything to do with confidence in a particular currency. It is a market-making activity.

Those who follow us know that Steve has long been searching for a way to bring the understanding of MMT to the left. This episode is a continuation of that journey.

Bijou Smith has lectured and taught general physics, magnetohydrodynamics, undergrad mathematics, statistics and IT. He now devotes most of his time to independent research in theoretical physics and studying implications of Modern Monetary Theory. Check out his blog, Ohanga Pai, at bijou.substack.com

@MathWillSuffice on Twitter

On Tuesday, May 2nd, Professor Mattei will be joining us for the first of two sessions of RP Book Club on The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism. There’s still time to register using the link at the bottom of this page.

At the end of The Capital Order Mattei writes:

"This book has detailed a set of influential economic patterns that are pervasive across the globe and that shape our daily lives. Contrary to what the proponents of austerity would have us think, however, the socioeconomic system we live in is not inevitable, nor is it to be grudgingly accepted as the only way forward. Austerity is a political project arising out of the need to preserve capitalist class relations of domination. It is the outcome of collective action to foreclose any alternatives to capitalism. It can thus be subverted through collective counteraction. The study of its logic and purpose is the first step in that direction."

Join us for RP Book Club, May 2nd and 16th. To register, go to https://realprogressives.org/rp-book-club/

Clara E. Mattei is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department of The New School for Social Research and was a 2018-2019 member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Her research contributes to the history of capitalism, exploring the critical relation between economic ideas and technocratic policy making.

@claraemattei on Twitter

https://realprogressives.org/podcast_episode/episode-198-the-trinity-of-austerity-with-clara-mattei/

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 allow plenty of shenanigans, despite recognizing “one China” since the 1970s.

“We know how the Cold War 1.0 played out. We isolated the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc. We cut off all the trade and then eventually the Soviet Union collapsed. This is how we won the Cold War 1.0. So we'll just play the same playbook to win Cold War 2.0 against China. But this is crazy talk because China is nothing like Soviet Union of the yester years; China is the world's largest trading economy. It has trade not just with United States and Europe but also has a huge trade with the global south. So, what the US is doing in its attempted decoupling from China, actually it's cutting US off from the rest of the world.”

The United States has gone from being a major industrial power to being a service economy with a neglected, crumbling infrastructure. China is building economic relationships around the world “without tanks and nuclear arms and planes,” says Steve. “China has been working in a much more cooperative way and people are lining up to say, ‘sign me up. I don't want the US having its hands on me.’”

The conversation covers the economic and political implications of this reversal of fortune. With their massive exports to the US, China has accumulated vast amounts of US dollars. The 2008 financial crisis supplied impetus for China to seek new uses for their dollars reserves. Carl explains the Belt and Road Initiative and its multifaceted benefits.

Carl Zha hosts Silk and Steel, a weekly podcast discussing history, culture, and current events of China and the Silk Road. Support him at patreon.com/silknsteel. His YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@CarlZha.

@CarlZha on Twitter

t.me/CarlZha on Telegram

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.”

“...they hold the economy hostage. And nowadays they hold the global economy hostage. And if you hold the global economy hostage, you hold global politics hostage. So that needs to be fixed. And the way to fix that is not to allow such institutions, right? Duh,”

The episode looks at the capture of government by the financial industry. Bill talks about his experience during the savings and loan crisis and the transition from somewhat effective regulatory apparatus to a fully cock-blocked system. (Our words, not his.)

Bill Black is a professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC) and the Distinguished Scholar in Residence for Financial Regulation at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is a serial whistleblower and authored The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.

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 the 1979 revolution as a David and Goliath story. The Sandinistas inherited a country steeped in poverty, with no infrastructure. The US-backed counterrevolution began almost immediately. Ronald Reagan and the Contras are just a small piece of it.

Dan grew up believing the US was the beacon on the hill, committed to spreading democracy and freedom. His first trip to Nicaragua changed his politics and his life.

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer and peace activist. He teaches International Human Rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is the author of several books, including The Plot to Scapegoat Russia and Nicaragua: A History of US Intervention and Resistance.

@danielmkovalik on Twitter

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 also just going to remind people that both the Bolshevik Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, in particular, come out of the context of world wars. They happen when they happen during the world wars for a reason. You have highly traumatized societies where the power has been broken because of the consequences of world war, even when the powers at hand are actually allied with the winners.

Steve asks whether one should excuse abandoning civil liberties in order to protect the gains of a revolution against very real internal and external threats. “What civil liberties?” asks Varn. Some revolutions never even got rid of their monarchies.

The episode considers Bolshevism, Trotskyism, and fascism. Varn talks about why both socialists and capitalists were attracted to fascism, looking, again, to the conditions of the time.

C. Derick Varn is a poet, teacher, editor, podcaster, and broadcaster. He is the host of VarnVlog and co-host of Gaming Materialists. According to his Patreon, Varn Vlog is a podcast and YouTube channel dedicated to delivering high-quality interviews and analyses on philosophy, art, political economy, culture, geopolitics, pop culture, and history. Support his work at patreon.com/varnvlog

@skepoet on Twitter