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Listeners who came of age in the US since 2008 don’t remember a time when “class” was a term only used by politicians - and always with the modifier “middle.” Candidates of both parties assured us of their deep affection for and connection to the middle class. They left it up to us to define what exactly that meant. Unless you associated with leftists, you were more likely to hear “capitalism” spoken of by conservatives  again with a modifier: “free market.” For many, the global financial crisis was an undeniable wakeup call and Occupy Wall Street drew attention away from Washington, DC, and pointed it toward the financial industry. At last.   Steve’s guest, Joe Burns, is a union negotiator and labor lawyer. In the year and a half since he was last on this podcast, he completed and published his third book, Class Struggle Unionism. As we saw in his previous episode, Joe is a student of labor history, and he talks us through the historical division in the movement. Unsurprisingly, it coincides with the spread of neoliberalism.   Joe contrasts class struggle unionism to business unionism – or pragmatic unionism - that developed after the relatively strong labor movement that lasted into the 1970s. Business unionism by its nature is extremely conservative. It is pragmatic and bureaucratic.   But the problem is, as they say, capital is a relentless force, right? So society and the economy is constantly changing and employers, as I've noted, used their influence to change the rules of the game over the decades and the stable bargaining that might have existed 40, 50 years ago is gone now.  Throughout the episode, Joe and Steve return to the question of power. Joe defines the real powers in society as the big institutional investors and multi-billionaires who have used their resources and influence for the past century to shape the laws and transform the entire economy.  ...

This week, Harvey J. Kaye and Alan Minsky stop by the Macro N Cheese clubhouse to talk to Steve about the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. Kaye, a historian, brings stories of FDR’s four freedoms and the impetus for what he called the 2nd Bill of Rights – an Economic Bill of Rights. Minsky brings his experience in progressive politics, both as a journalist and with Progressive Democrats of America. Of course, the Minsky name holds a special place in our MMT hearts – our own Randy Wray studied under Alan’s dad, Hyman. When listening to Alan, one might suspect he’s also related to friend-of-the-podcast Robert Hockett, who coined the term “metabolic optimism.” Whether or not we share Alan’s optimism, we agree with his insistence that “our winning political hand is our economic message.” The economy is central to everyone’s life and should be central to our agenda. He believes the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights is the avenue to achieve that centrality in the left progressive program. As Harvey takes us through it, he adds historical details; many of these points can be traced back to FDR. 1. The right to a useful job that pays a living wage. 2. The right to a voice in the workplace through a union and collective bargaining. 3. The right to comprehensive quality health care. 4. The right to a complete, cost-free public education and access to broadband Internet. 5. The right to decent, safe, affordable housing. 6. The right to a clean environment and a healthy planet. 7. The right to a meaningful endowment of resources at birth and a secure retirement. 8. The right to sound banking and financial services. 9. The right to an equitable and economically fair justice system. 10. The right to recreation and participation in civic and democratic life. Roosevelt believed the American promise of “the pursuit of happiness” is not possible without economic security. FDR’s agenda lived on after his presidency – though without much success. Harvey names Jimmy Carter as the president who dealt the death blow to the New Deal: “Let me make it clear, ever since the 1970's the Democratic Party has not simply turned its back on the FDR legacy – the Jimmy Carter presidency was the launching pad of neoliberalism in the United States. People like to talk about Reagan. They like to talk about Clinton in the 1990s. Jimmy Carter was the first neoliberal president. The deregulation of finance, the deregulation of transportation, it all stems from Carter's determination ... It's Carter who first used the term austerity to promote the neoliberal agenda.” Alan adds: “the truth is, as every listener to Macro N Cheese certainly knows, that one party has been willing to run up deficits, the other party generally has not.” Democrats have wrapped themselves in a mantle of fiscal austerity and would sooner lose elections than change. This episode gives you history, it gives you economics, it gives you policy, and it engages in ever-popular political speculation. Did we mention Bernie? Yeah, his name comes up a few times. Harvey J. Kaye is Professor Emeritus of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of the newly published "The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great," "Take Hold of Our History: Make America Radical Again," and "FDR on Democracy." Alan Minsky is the Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America. Alan worked as a progressive journalist for the fifteen years before joining PDA. He was the Program Director at KPFK Radio in Los Angeles, and the coordinator of Pacifica Radio's national broadcasts. He was the creator and original producer for the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, as well as the political podcasts for The Nation and Jacobin Magazine. His many articles can be found at Common Dreams, The Nation, Truthdig and other platforms. Alan is the son of the late economist Hyman Minsky....

This episode of Macro N Cheese introduces us to Dr. Carey King of the University of Texas at Austin where he performs research and modeling of energy systems interaction with the economy past, present and future. He has published a book, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-50295-9 (The Economic Superorganism) describing his research extrapolating the results into policy suggestions. Steve opens the episode describing the term “real resources” and asks Dr. King to explain the approach he took in his book. The explanation reaches back into history to the 14th century all the way to the present. Through that time span, he discovered that energy costs can reliably correlate to GDP (gross domestic product). This formed the basis for his research work and, subsequently, his book. Much of the discussion, then, centered around two significant points; the efficiency of energy consumption or output in terms of cost and an examination of the first point in terms of the book’s title that connects economics to an organism. The input or output of energy discussion details how a supply chain functions and how energy is consumed at every link in the chain. The result shows that actual efficiency of production has diminished since the onset of the 1970’s. Examining energy and the economy as an organism requires a view that details the multiple connections that any organism has to survive. Steve draws the parallel to a “system” of any sort, and current events. Dr. King builds on Steve’s points with further emphasis on the choices made and their impact on current economic issues. Other topics discussed were Dr. King’s next steps in adding environmental variables into his models that could possibly expose some options for coping with climate change. Also talked about was the post production variable of energy costs of handling production waste which builds further on the environmental variables. Lastly, both Dr. King and Steve exchanged views on the expansion of China’s economy, macroeconomic issues, and even how Dr. King’s work intersects with evolution itself. Dr. Carey W. King is Assistant Director of the Energy Institute at University of Texas at Austin, where he has been a Research Scientist since 2016. He is author of The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth, and Policy (2021). Find his work at careyking.com @CoreyWKing on Twitter

Dr. Daniel Negreiros Conceição developed an interest in economics at a young age, having experienced the consequences of inflationary crises during his formative years. After being entranced by the writings of MMT economists as an undergrad studying economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, he came to the US to do his graduate studies at UMKC where he became a friend and colleague of so many of our favorite guests on this podcast. He left determined to use what he learned to help his own country achieve its potential. He spoke with us about the recent political and historical context for background into the broader political economic situation and the stances of the major political actors towards it. He pointed out the closely matching parallel track with our own political developments in the US and the economic underpinnings. He also discussed many similarities in the state of the discourse and misinformation in discussions of finance and government budgets. He then explained the mechanics of the Brazilian currency, the real, and discussed how the central bank manages it. He discussed balance of payment and foreign exchange situations, and explained why the issue of “monetary sovereignty” is part of the story, but not the end of it. He spoke of a country with monetary sovereignty and abundant natural resources. A country whose government accidentally proved with a massive pandemic economic bailout of the financial sector that the government can indeed do big things and better the lives of its people, if it really wants to. Daniel Negreiros 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). He is one of the authors of the book “Modern Monetary Theory: The Key to an Economy at the Service of People”. He is president of the executive board of Institute of Functional Finance for Development Brasil. https://iffdbrasil.org Follow Prof. Daniel Conceição on twitter @stopthelunacy

Our listeners know that Steve is a perpetual student -- his YouTube show is called The Rogue Scholar. He makes no apologies for past incomplete or erroneous thinking; he just soldiers on, deepening his understanding of the issues and course-correcting his analysis. He is a voracious reader and we can identify at least three books that led to this week’s episode: https://bookshop.org/a/82803/9780393651362 (The Divide), by Jason Hickel, https://bookshop.org/a/82803/9780872863293 (Blackshirts and Reds), by Michael Parenti, and https://bookshop.org/a/82803/9781913026028 (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism), by Vladimir Lenin.* They have all fed into his obsession with neocolonialism and the unholy trinity of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. The problem predates the modern neoliberal era: “Lenin talks extensively about taking out these loans. Now, mind you, the IMF wasn't around ... But this whole concept of global finance capital was already being talked about at the turn of the century. And what he showed was that these countries that took on these big loans, they would be fine for a year. And then by the next year, they were already losing money, deeply in debt, and by the third year, they had to take out another loan.” Steve summoned our old friend Fadhel Kaboub to take us through the history of the unholy trinity, connect it to monetary sovereignty, and untangle the cat’s cradle of international power and oppression. Who better than Fadhel, whose superpower is his ability to explain complicated systems in words anyone can understand? Fadhel begins with the currency wars in the period between the first and second World Wars. After WWII the allies gathered to establish a means of preventing currency wars in the future. You’ve heard of Bretton Woods? Well, did you know two competing plans were presented? Keynesian and... not Keynesian. Keynes’s plan was designed to promote full employment globally. The universe ended up with the non-Keynesian International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and the World Bank. “The World Bank was initially designed to be the bank for the reconstruction of Europe, essentially. And eventually after Europe was rebuilt, it was reinvented as an economic development bank for the global south, because in 1945, when the World Bank was designed, there were no developing countries, there were just colonies. So by the mid 1960s, all of those colonies are now developing countries, and the world needed a World Bank for economic development ... it's designed for long-term infrastructure, major projects, as opposed to the IMF, which was designed as the emergency room for financial crises.” The third leg of the unholy trinity is the World Trade Organization. Fadhel guides us through its origins and evolution. It turns out the entity committed to free trade limits itself to “free trade in everything but arms and farms.” Once the former colonies became independent, the former colonizers looked around and said, “Uh-oh, where are we getting our food?" With food now an issue of national security, powerful nations are subsidizing agricultural staples; farmers in the developing world cannot compete. Throughout the episode, Fadhel illustrates how these three institutions are able to ham-string the global south. He talks about the three main structural traps – food, energy, and low-tech manufacturing. The further the developing world is pushed into desperation, the greater the benefits to the global elite. Can the post-colonial nations cast off the chains of economic oppression and poverty? Fadhel provides answers, showing how the MMT analysis not only brings the problems into focus, but provides solutions. The final twenty minutes of this episode are perhaps the most important. *When you purchase these books through RP Bookshelf on our website, we make a small percentage on the sale. We are an affiliate of bookshop.org, not that online megamonster whose name shall not be spoken. Dr....

** Be sure to check out the transcript for each episode of this podcast on our website, where you will also find an “Extras” page with links to related resources. https://realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ (realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast) ** Robert Hockett drops into the Macro N Cheese clubhouse to talk to Steve about the usual stuff: inflation, monopoly capitalism, the massive scale of global inequality, and the climate crisis barreling down on us at an ever-faster speed. It is our ninth episode with Bob, this one spurred by his recent article, the alliterative “Prices, Preclusive Purchases, and Production: Some Forgotten Solutions to Forgotten Inflation Problems” (Forbes, 13 May 2022), which diagnoses the current inflation as three supply side dysfunctions – short, medium, and long term. Folks like Larry Summers focus on labor costs, in hopes of encouraging a further clampdown on labor, while executives are boasting record profits and chortling about marking up prices under cover of inflation. Isn’t this just the reality of capitalism? Can it be tamed – and if so, what would that look like? If we can’t yet get rid of capitalism, are there workarounds? Bob suggests identifying those products and services that are essential to leading decent, peaceful lives and removing them from the profit-maximizing system altogether. He goes into the history of public involvement in healthcare and home finance. Another area is food: “Here's a case where we allow the private sector beneficiaries of that socialization, namely big agriculture, to profit enormously … The agricultural sector is subject, of course, to the vagaries of weather, meteorological conditions, and so forth. Furthermore, it's subject to the potential for overproduction of exactly the kind that Marx and some other political economists in the 19th century predicted. And the only way, it turned out, to keep them in business and keep them producing was for the federal government to promise to buy any of the surplus.” There has been a lot of talk about supply chains, which Bob welcomes, ironically, for including the word “supply,” because it has been missing from American economic discourse for quite some time. “But one problem with that phrase is, it lumps together two distinct things, right? On the one hand, you have to have the production of that which is to be supplied, and then on the other hand, you have to have the delivery of the supplies. And the phrase ‘supply chain’ seems to lump those two things together.” Steve brings up the fact that exporting production means exporting pollution. In addition to exploiting cheap labor abroad, outsourcing production has allowed companies to evade US environmental regulations. The discussion leads to the need for a Green New Deal and the possibilities therein. They also talk about the IMF and World Bank and ask if the US is held to different standards. (It is.) A Bob Hockett episode is as much a conversation as an interview. These two old friends don’t just look at problems, they peer down the path to solutions – some possible, some not. Whether you agree with either of them, it’s worth a listen. Tell us what you think. Robert Hockett is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, Adjunct Professor of Finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and Senior Counsel at Westwood Capital, LLC. @rch371

Real Progressives and Macro N Cheese are committed to bringing MMT to activists and folks with no background in economics. Many of us were only interested in learning how MMT disrupts the concept of taxes funding federal programs, but the more we know, the more we want to understand. MMT is funny that way. If you’re new to MMT, this week’s interview with L. Randall Wray might appear to be wonky and intimidating. But we urge you to listen and promise it will be worth it. We’ve had a few episodes dealing with inflation in recent weeks because that’s where we are at this particular time in history. We believe it can’t be talked about often enough because we’re surrounded by misinformation in the mainstream media and lies from the mouths of so-called experts. Steve invited Randy to talk about the recent paper he co-authored with Yeva Nersisyan, another friend of this podcast. The title speaks volumes: Is It Time for Rate Hikes? The Fed Cannot Engineer a Soft Landing but Risks Stagflation by Trying. To put it bluntly, confronting inflation by raising interest rates is dangerous. Randy describes the catastrophic chain reaction – causing bankruptcies at home and tanking the economies of developing nations. He explains in detail how this happens, both to individuals and nations. The ‘experts’ love to blame government spending for today’s inflation – especially the paltry stimulus checks disbursed during the pandemic. Wages are another favorite culprit. Listeners to this podcast know these are not the causes. (How long ago were those damn checks?) However, both the pandemic and the current war have brought us supply chain disruptions. We can also look to corporate manipulation of prices and markups: “And they're very open about this. When they have their meetings with shareholders and others, they say, look, our customers are not going to blame us if we hike up the markups and take more profits, because they realize that inflation is creeping up. So, they're not going to blame us. So, let's do it. And they are.” Randy defines stagflation and its causes. He compares today’s inflation to that of the 1970s along with the actions of the infamous Paul Volcker. He explains why the Fed’s “tools” for fighting inflation are no tools at all. He suggests a legitimate role for a central bank includes protecting the public from banking fraud. He replies to Steve’s question about eliminating the interest rate altogether: “This was actually Keynes's proposal to have a zero overnight interest rate. His proposal was to euthanize the entire rentier class. You all know what euthanize means. Mercy killing of the rentier. That is the class of people that live off collective interest. He saw them as functionless in the economy. They don't serve any useful function. So, let's euthanize them now. Keynes didn't really mean kill.” Steve talks of people’s desperation as they look for solutions to the real-life problems that are not on the Fed’s radar. Inflation could be addressed with targeted spending on behalf of the public using the fiscal power of Congress. Expecting the Federal Reserve to fix it with interest rate adjustments is like giving a child a fake steering wheel in the back seat and expecting them to drive the car. L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at Bard College and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. www.levyinstitute.org/scholars/l-randall-wray

A false dawn is a promising situation which comes to nothing. This is how Aqdas Afzal describes the situation in his native Pakistan and India at the end of the Raj. “The point to remember here, Steve, is that the British were in India not to govern. They were in India to extract surplus and to maintain what they called law and order. And so the British left without giving the local people any taste or mechanism for bringing about accountability or democracy. But they did leave behind these two very, almost draconian institutions for keeping law and order. And because of these two institutions - these two state institutions that the British left behind - in the case of Pakistan, the first 25 years of Pakistan's history was complete chaos.” Aqdas talks to Steve about the chaos of partition – a humanitarian crisis. Remember, Pakistan was not only separated from India, but it was also cleaved from its own Eastern wing, now known as Bangladesh. The generation that sacrificed and struggled to gain independence was hoping for a bright future. That was the false dawn. Pakistan fell into the lap of neoliberal thinking because of the Cold War, as Aqdas explains it. When the Soviets entered Afghanistan, the military government took over in Pakistan, cozying up with the US defense establishment. Pakistani policy makers began to sound like the godparents of the neoliberal project, Thatcher and Reagan. The interview covers the destructive role of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO – what Steve refers to as the evil trinity. No matter how many of our guests talk about them, there is always more outrage to be uncovered in their manipulation of the economies of the global South. Steve and Aqdas discuss Francis Fukuyama’s concept of “the end of history.” With the collapse of the USSR, liberal democracy and capitalism were expected to be the final stage of human evolution, leaving no other pathway for developing nations. Aqdas counters with the notion that history is not linear. “Russia is a country that went through shock therapy, that was undertaken by experts coming from the World Bank and the IMF. These experts are basically telling Russia how to open its economy, how to change over from socialism to a market-based economy. The same Russia today is challenging the might of capitalist countries like Britain, United States, Germany.” He calls this the beginning of history. Aqdas Afzal finished his undergraduate and first master's degree in Political Science from Ohio State University, then returned to his native Pakistan. After working there for five years he won the Fulbright scholarship for his second master’s and PhD in Economics from UMKC. He teaches at Habib University in Karachi and writes https://www.dawn.com/authors/8439/aqdas-afzal (a monthly op-ed in Dawn), a leading English language newspaper there. @AqdasAfzal on Twitter

**Transcripts and extras for this episode can be found at realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast.** Iceland’s economy is an example of MMT working the way MMT economists say it works. It is the second smallest free-floating currency in the world. However, despite its size, conditions are dramatically different than in a country like Greece, shackled to a currency outside its control. For better or worse, Iceland has a bit of monetary sovereignty. “When you have your own currency, you can develop your economy by very smart economic decisions, domestic investments that build up the production capacity of the economy. Or you can use that currency to basically create a credit bubble, which then runs the economy to the ground.” Steve’s guest, Ólafur Margeirsson, has written more than 250 articles on the Icelandic economy over the past decade and, until recently, had a unique vantage point as an alternate member of the Central Bank of Iceland’s Supervisory Board. Despite Icelandic society’s Nordic influences, in this episode you’ll hear echoes of our past interviews with Fadhel Kaboub on the global South. With those countries it shares obstacles that arise from not producing all that they need. Its currency isn’t internationally accepted, so exports must generate income in foreign currencies to pay for imported goods. Iceland relies on three main exports - aluminum, fishing, and tourism – each about a third of the gross exports. These are vulnerable to all the problems of modern economies. The aluminum smelters are owned by foreign companies, so the profits do not benefit Iceland. Poorly managing their resources resulted in over-fishing, a blight on both the environment and the livelihoods of a sector of the population. Tourism, which helped Iceland recover from the 2008 global financial crisis, is dependent on the economic health of other countries. Like the US, shadow banking has been a huge problem, but unlike the US, it’s not a problem anymore. Not since 2008. There are other differences. Unlike the US, Iceland has a strong social welfare system. By saying no to austerity, it recovered from the GFC more rapidly. Instead of a standing military, Iceland has a SWAT team (of maybe 20 people?) which is the only weaponized force in Iceland. Imagine that. One more thing - shortly after the 2008 crisis they had a Debt Jubilee. “...proving the point that an economy that has its own currency can finance whatever it wants to. If it wants to finance a Debt Jubilee for the people, it can finance a Debt Jubilee for the people. Will it have economic consequences? Obviously.” … “So it goes back to the point that MMT always hammers on. If the problem is money, it's not a problem. If the problem is inflation, it is a problem. and that's something that actually I think Iceland has proven as well. Repeatedly.” Iceland is not a socialist paradise, but its story is instructive. With the clarity of his MMT perspective, Ólafur is an ideal tour guide. Ólafur Margeirsson writes about the Icelandic economy and specializes in financial instability, foreign direct investment, MMT, and real estate. Until recently he sat on the Supervisory Board of the Central Bank of Iceland as an alternate member. Currently, he is head of Global Real Estate Research at Credit Suisse. https://www.patreon.com/icelandicecon @icelandicecon on Twitter

Welcome to the third and final chapter in our series with Carl Zha on Mao and the Chinese Revolution. This one covers the sticky wicket of the Cultural Revolution, and the most controversial part of Mao’s legacy. It exposes the danger of a leader being out of touch with the base. The episode also looks at the complex political history of Tibet, an issue of concern to a few American celebrity Buddhists. (Spoiler alert: the story was rife with class conflict. Isn’t that always the case? What history books and media present as religious persecution turns out to be about money and power.) Tibetan monasteries wanted to maintain their serfs while the communists were into abolishing feudal relations of production. (Second spoiler alert: if you put your money on CIA involvement, you made a wise wager.) Carl brings the series to life with anecdotes from his own family. This episode is jam-packed with stories of his parents who grew up in the thick of these events. Some of their experiences were specific to their class and status, but they are a colorful illustration of this dramatic and significant period. Ultimately judgment of Mao’s legacy is mixed. It can be seen as both inspiring and concerning. According to Carl, the official assessment is that “he did 70% good, 30% bad.” He embodies the contradictions of China at the time. Mao should be given credit for massive improvements in the lives of the Chinese people - increasing life expectancy, abolishing illiteracy, raising the status of women, and lifting millions out of poverty. 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 @CarlZha and @SteelSilkn on Twitter

**Every episode of Macro N Cheese has a full transcript at https://realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ (realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast). While you’re there, check out the extras page, with links to further information related to the week’s topic. The first part of this three-part series talked about China from Mao’s birth in 1893 through the Sino-Japanese war to the eve of the Chinese Civil War in 1945. This week, Carl discusses the civil war and the ultimate success of the Chinese Communist forces, despite being vastly outnumbered – 1.2 million against the KMT’s 4.5 million. The US looked to China to be its junior partner in East Asia, much like Japan is today. They backed Chiang Kai-shek with military training, weapons, and other resources. A government led by the KMT would preclude a strong China-Soviet alliance. Most leftists are familiar with the historic revolutionary form of warfare developed by Mao and the People’s Liberation Army. Lacking the numbers and equipment for a traditional, positional war, the Communists applied the tactics of what would come to be called guerrilla warfare, which has since been used successfully in wars of liberation around the world, including Vietnam, Angola, and Cuba. The episode takes a detour to look at the history of Chinese paper money. Carl also describes how Mao won the support of local populations through land redistribution, then looks at some of the mistakes in the Great Leap Forward. Carl brings history to life with anecdotes from his own family. Come back next week for the conclusion of this three-part series. Carl Zha hosts Silk and Steel, a weekly podcast discussing history, culture and current events of China and Silk Road. Support him at patreon.com/silknsteel @CarlZha and @SteelSilkn on Twitter

In the first of a three-part series about Mao Zedong and the Chinese revolution, Carl Zha sets the stage with its pre-revolutionary history. Carl, host of the Silk and Steel podcast, was born in China in 1976, one month after the death of Mao, placing him squarely in the first post-cultural, post-Mao generation. The episode opens with Japan’s imperial expansion into China. After its defeat by Japan, there was a scramble to carve up China among the major world powers – France, Britain, Russia, Japan, and Germany. The US was a latecomer to the imperialist game. Fearing there would be nothing left... “The US actually proposed a so-called open-door policy, which means all the imperialist powers should enjoy equal access to the Chinese market. And in the US textbooks, that is presented as some kind of heroic effort on the US side to save China's territorial integrity.” This is the China Mao Zedong was born into, around 50 years after the first opium war, when Britain forced China to legalize opium in order to create a market for the product from British India. Carl tells the story of a nation teeming with predictable conflicts, odd alliances, and new conflicts. In the 1700s China had a quarter of the world’s GDP. By the time of the Chinese revolution, the country was desperately poor. From the Qing Dynasty to international imperialism, from the KMT/Guomindang to the Soviet Union and Chinese Communist Party, Carl paints a picture of China in conflict. Carl Zha hosts Silk and Steel, a weekly podcast discussing history, culture and current events of China and Silk Road. Support him at patreon.com/silknsteel @CarlZha and @SteelSilkn on Twitter

“In one sense, it's a state initiative, but in the other sense it's actually preserving rights of individuals against the state.”Rohan Grey is back with us for the seventh time. In this episode, he talks to Steve about the ECASH Act, which he helped craft as a step toward creating public digital dollars with the privacy and anonymity of physical cash. To explain the features this future currency requires, and the problems to be solved, Rohan takes us on a tour of the history of money, early record-keeping devices for the tax collector, and the development of banking. Tally sticks, which were broken in half (to be matched later) were primitive encryption keys. Further noteworthy events include the invention of the telegraph in the mid-1800s, the codebreaking and Navajo language speakers during World War II, and the cyberpunks of the 1980s. Rohan is an evocative storyteller, piquing our imagination with vivid references. By the end of the episode, he has mentioned five movies, plus Scrooge McDuck, Seinfeld, Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn. Oh, and Emma Goldman. Steve and Rohan sort through objections to the privacy we should demand of public digital currency. Arguments come from right, left, and libertarian factions, each believing their bogeymen will be free to do nefarious things under cover of anonymity. They put their faith in private entities. Digital public money would address the needs of populations who cannot or will not use banks. It can be accessed without an internet connection, and it is easy to see the benefits assured privacy provides to political dissidents, sex workers... and everyone else living under the gaze of surveillance capitalism. We have learned about the war on cash from our friend Bret Scott. It is time to fight back. Rohan Grey is an Assistant Professor of Law at Willamette Professor of Law at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and the founder and president of the Modern Money Network. @rohangrey on Twitter

** If you haven’t checked out the transcripts and extra resources for all 166 episodes of Macro N Cheese, what are you waiting for? Go to realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast ** Steve opens this episode with the MMT observation of the government’s ability to purchase anything for sale in US dollars if the real sources are available – and if we have the political will. When it comes to getting things done, this is of fundamental importance. Steve's guest, Paul Herman, agrees and looks beyond the government: “...because we have five crises of our time, and those crises are going to require a multi-sector approach. So, the five crises include a health crisis: COVID and its lingering effects ... and the impacts on our existing health care system and healthcare workers. We have a wealth crisis with inequality among many different geographies and income levels. We have an Earth crisis requiring climate action as fast as possible. That also requires equitable climate action because we have gaps in equality and inequality by race, by gender, by age. And then we have a trust crisis.” We met Paul Herman through the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, where he is a Research Fellow. He is also the founder and CEO of HIP Investors. In this episode you will hear areas of agreement between Steve, an unabashed anti-capitalist, and Paul, a portfolio manager and Chief Investment Officer: “Government's job is to ensure a better quality of life, a higher well-being, access to health, wealth, earth, equality, and trust.” As an activist and independent media content producer, Steve’s message sometimes leans toward the aspirational. Paul delves into complex problems in the here and now. Throughout the interview, he takes us through examples of consulting with private corporations or municipalities and using a multi-sector approach – primarily government, NGO, and private capital – to address complex issues of sustainability, environmental action, fair pay, or other social and governance factors. These are new waters for some of our listeners to navigate. There is always something to learn on Macro N Cheese, don’t you agree? R. Paul Herman is a Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, and founder and CEO of HIP (Human Impact + Profit) Investor. He is a globally recognized leader and author in sustainable finance, impact, ESG, and SDG measurement — and investing to pursue positive impact and profit. HIP manages diversified, fossil-fuel-free portfolios for investors. Herman is the author of The HIP Investor book (Wiley, 2010) and co-editor and co-author of the Global Handbook of Impact Investing (Wiley, 2021). @HIPinvestor on Twitter

What a pleasure hearing Phil Armstrong tell us how MMT makes him feel supremely confident. He’s not afraid of going toe-to-toe with “experts” despite their credentials, because he has the right model. He has MMT. Phil was teaching high school economics in Iowa before going back to the UK to get his Masters and, much later, his PhD. An interest in post-Keynesianism eventually led him to Mosler and the world of MMT. He has recently published his first book, Can Heterodox Economics Make a Difference? Conversations with Key Thinkers. He tells Steve that when he started working on the interviews, in 2018, most of the mainstream hadn't heard of MMT. By 2020, when it was published, the profile of MMT had increased. Now everyone knows of it. The episode revisits the many criticisms of MMT – we've heard them all – and demolishes them. As for Weimar, Germany: “If you think about it, plausibly, if you imagine intelligent German bankers in the Weimar Republic -- and these are bankers, they don't like inflation. You tell me a banker who likes inflation. Never met one. So the idea that they came in one day into the Reichsbank when Havenstein gets the other guys, the chairman says, ‘Right, lads, crank up the presses. I just fancy causing a bit of hyperinflation.’ The idea is ludicrous.” Phil talks about the failings of mainstream economics. After the 2008 financial crisis, with all its models having failed, one might ask why those models are still around. Phil has some ideas about that. Mainstream economics consists of mathematical modeling which has almost no relevance in the real world. Phil compares it to being an expert on the unicorn. You understand its biology. “When its horns are the wrong color, you know what to do; when its hooves hurt, you know what to do. Fantastic. The only problem is the unicorn doesn't exist.” He and Steve talk about theory - The T in MMT (which is the subject of our very first episode). They talk about the traps built into neoliberalism, and philosophy. Phil calls himself a realist social ontologist, or a critical realist. If you want to know what that means, listen to the episode! From Phil Armstrong’s bio at Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies (GIMMS) As an Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) member, Phil is a strong advocate of the need for pluralism in economics. He has spent the last 38 years teaching – in the main economics and business and lately, engineering. Phil is Post-Keynesian and a strong advocate of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and believes MMT provides both powerful insights into the way the economy works and how progressive economic policy can be put into practice. @PhilArmstrong58 on Twitter

It's hard to imagine ever having been unaware of the concept of bullshit jobs, but David Graeber made it official and helped us understand their role in our economy. Bullshit jobs are not necessarily shit jobs, nor are they low wage jobs, or dirty jobs. Bullshit jobs are those that are meaningless. The person doing the bullshit job doesn’t believe the work actually needs to get done. This week’s guest, Erik Dean, has studied the nature of modern jobs within money manager capitalism. He points out that bullshit jobs aren’t just a product of neoliberalism: “Speculative business and these labor hierarchies of the people with secure jobs versus the precariat … those things have been around. and it's not even necessarily part of capitalism. This is one reason it's good to read Thorstein Veblen, because in an anthropological sense, he takes it back to prior to capitalism. It's not like we didn't have hierarchies before capitalism. It's not like we didn't have power and it's not like we didn't have bullshit jobs. What the hell is a court jester? It's a bullshit job to entertain the king or whatever.” Dean talks with Steve about financialized capitalism – money market capitalism – and his disagreements with many on its basic characteristics. Just as bullshit jobs existed prior to our contemporary world, so did some of its other qualities, including its speculative nature and “short termism.” It was once thought that technology would relieve us of onerous jobs, allowing a shorter, lighter workweek, exchanging bullshit jobs for socially useful work. Steve confesses skepticism about the possibility of such a revolution. Dean responds: “If we were capable individually and collectively to reimagine what work is, what your time is best spent doing, and to break free of that encroaching neoliberal finance capitalist ideology that is, again, just gradually soaking into how we think about everything. To some extent, that is a revolution. If you can change the way you think and break free of the wider education of this neoliberalist ideology, that itself is a revolution.” **Don’t forget to check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese as well as the Extras page with additional resources. Find them at realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ Erik Dean is an Instructor of Economics at Portland Community College and researcher at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. His core expertise is in heterodox production theory, institutionalist methodology, and pedagogy in economics. His recent research covers a range of topics, including the nature of the modern occupational structure and the place of the corporation in money manager capitalism and the ramifications thereof.

Here’s an episode for those Marxists curious about MMT and MMTers curious about Marxism. Steve’s guest is comfortable identifying as both. Tony, better known as 1Dime on social media, believes MMT is not a threat to Marxism because it’s like comparing apples to oranges. They are designed to explain two different things. “Modern Monetary Theory is about understanding monetary operations in a fiat currency world – how things are financed. It's a narrow theory.” He’s careful about labeling himself, but in the marketplace of ideas, Tony says: “I find myself leaning the closest to Marxism in terms of its method because it sees things through the lens of class struggle and puts forth a first and foremost materialist view of history. I think that's very important because typically a lot of people will look at history as an evolution of ideas and will look at the individual as isolated from society. Marxism looks at things as an interconnected reality filled with contradictions.“ The ontology of Marxism is only part of the picture. “I think the word dialectical is often thrown around by Marxists. A lot of people don't know what it means … put simply, dialectics is looking at contradictions between things. You can't explain the world through one dimensional narratives. There are contradictions. For example, people often talk about the elites versus the people. You hear that a lot with both right and left populist pundits. Marxists wouldn't see it as so simple.” Class struggle is not always vertical. Covid revealed the contradictions within the ruling elite: some capitalists benefited from the pandemic, while others were hurt by it. MMT’s explanation of the role of taxes gets pushback from some who call themselves socialists. If we don’t need their tax dollars to pay for federal programs, are we letting the rich off the hook? Tony says taxing the rich can be used to reduce inequality, but it doesn’t touch the root of the problem. We’re not going to solve capitalism through taxation. The interview covers a range of topics, from cryptocurrency to Chris Hedges – all through the double lens of Marxism and MMT. (If you liked this episode, check out Steve’shttps://realprogressives.org/podcast_episode/episode-68-reframing-marx-through-modern-monetary-theory-with-nathan-tankus/ ( interview with Nathan Tankus). It’s from 2017 and still relevant.) Bio: Tony runs the YouTube channel 1Dime, where he makes leftist video essays and short documentaries that use ideas from Critical Theory, philosophy, and political economy to deconstruct hot socio-political topics. Notable 1Dime videos include "The Deficit Myth: The Biggest Lie in Politics", "The Burnout Society", "Planet of the Robots: Four Futures of Automation", and "The Socialism of Warren Buffett: How the Stock Market Works." He also runs a podcast called 1Dime Radio with similar content in audio form. @TheRapNerd7 on Twitter

**There’s a transcript accompanying every episode of Macro N Cheese. You'll also find links to other resources on the Extras page. Go to https://realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ (realprogressives.org.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ )** Alexander Valchyshen brings special knowledge of both economics and conditions in Ukraine. He’s a PhD student under Scott Fullwiler and has more than twenty years of experience in Ukraine’s banking and financial markets, so he has a point of view that the US public rarely hears. Given the current geopolitical conflict, Steve wanted to fill the gaps in his knowledge of Alexander’s homeland. It’s no surprise that social media and the major news organizations are unreliable. “As I said, it's a pretty difficult time. But at the same moment, this is a very crucial moment not only for Ukraine itself, for its existence, because we have to understand Ukraine as a sovereign country in every possible sense of that word, not only in the political terms, but also in the economic terms.” Some of what Alexander describes is very familiar, including the discrepancy between what Ukrainian policy makers understand and their public stance as fiscal conservatives. Alexander goes into some detail about the handling of budget deficits by turning to foreign markets. “I tend to differentiate between currency and money units of account ... What makes Ukraine vulnerable and weak is that historically, as many other countries, there has been instability, there has been a period of hyperinflation and people developed this habit to find a rescue in foreign money. And there is widespread usage of foreign money of account in this economy.” The episode looks at both the history and current conditions of Russia and Ukraine. At a time when most of the news from that part of the world is weighted with emotion and skewed by complex, often obscured interests, we're bringing you a perspective you may not be accustomed to. Alexander Valchyshen is a Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. student in the Economics department of UMKC, under the supervision of Dr. Scott Fullwiler. He holds an M.S. in Economic Theory and Policy (2019) from the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He completed his Master’s thesis under the supervision of Dr. L. Randall Wray and Dr. Jan Kregel. He has more than 20 years of experience in Ukraine’s banking and financial markets, including with some of Ukraine’s major banks and financial firms. During 2016-17, Alexander supervised a team of Ukrainian translators, who translated two books by Dr. Wray―Modern Money Theory and Why Minsky Matters―into Ukrainian. In the Fall of 2018, he held the position of visiting instructor of Finance at Bard College, and taught its Financial Management course to undergraduate students, supervised by Dr. Pavlina Tcherneva. @AlexValchyshen on Twitter

**Every episode of Macro N Cheese has a full transcript and an “extras” page with links to additional resources. Find them at https://realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast (realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/) Fadhel Kaboub introduces us to the best people, including Yeva Nersisyan, a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity who joined Steve to talk about a paper she recently co-authored with Randall Wray, "Are We All MMTers Now? Not So Fast." The COVID pandemic has put MMT in the news, with plenty of critics mistaking stimulus spending with “MMT policy.” This absurdity creates a convenient narrative for detractors: MMT is a failure! Our argument was that MMT-inspired fiscal policy is targeted fiscal spending and in particular spending on jobs. Job creation, the job guarantee that Pavlina Tcherneva has been talking a lot about... a jobs policy rather than just indiscriminate stimulus kind of policy. MMT economists were not at the table when COVID stimulus policy was being decided, nor were they at the table when Larry Summers and Jason Furman were crafting the inadequate response to the global financial crisis – another missed opportunity for fiscal policy to serve the public good. Yeva describes the different government responses to World Wars One and Two, compares Keynesian and MMT-prescribed policies, and lays out the consequences to the states – AKA the race to the bottom – when the federal government shirks its responsibilities. In the second half of the episode Steve brings up the roles of the Fed, Treasury, and private banks and asks Yeva to take us through their processes and explain reserve accounting. If you’re at all confused about this, you’ll want to hear what she says. Yeva Nersisyan is a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and an Associate Professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College. 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. Her research interests include monetary theory, financial instability and regulation and macroeconomic policy. Yeva has published a number of papers on the topics of shadow banking, fiscal policy, government deficits and debt, financial fragility and instability, financial reform and retirement policy.

Steve’s guest is Dr. Ruchira Sen who got her PhD at UMKC where she studied with a number of friends of this podcast. Herresearch areas are in feminist economics, informed by institutional economics, MMT, and Marxian economics. She describes an economy built on the backs of women, that exists outside the normal parameters of capitalism while making it possible for capitalism to thrive. We've had neoliberal reforms since the 1990s, which has meant a gradual withdrawal of the state from almost everything. And that has specifically impacted the lives of women. Because when the state withdraws from providing you basic services like water, electricity, then it's usually the women who become additionally burdened...The participation of women in the (paid) labor force is declining, their contribution to unpaid work is phenomenal. In a country as massive as India, with a population of around a billion, any change in government policy can have far-reaching and unexpected consequences. Ruchira describes the effects of the 2016 demonetization action, in which two currency notes – of the most widely used denominations – were taken out of circulation. Among a population where the majority of individual financial transactions are conducted in cash and many don’t have bank accounts, this “decashification” caused widespread suffering for the poor and working class. Steve asks Ruchira what drives poverty in India and she talks about British colonial policy and the deindustrialization of the Ganges plain. Poverty is essentially a result of the pushing of capitalist relations onto our population. Not to say that there was no hunger before but the colonial power imposed selective tariff policies on Indian textiles... They pretty much decimated the artisan population in the Gangetic Plains and destroyed much of local industry. That resulted in large bodies of people who were dispossessed. They had nothing but their labor and they became the proletariat. I think it's pretty fundamental to how colonialism works because you need general labor-ready bodies to do the work, to produce the exports that your home country needs, to produce the wealth that your home country will drain away. Ruchira talks about the pervasive threat of violence against women in India, and what she calls a watershed moment – the Nirbhaya Incident and anti-rape agitation. She talks about the left, including some active communist parties that have had successes but have also made questionable choices on occasion. And she talks about India’s lack of energy and food independence. Dr. Ruchira Sen is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Jindal School of Journalism and Communication at O.P. Jindal Global University in India. She teaches macroeconomics, data analysis for storytelling, and data journalism. Her PhD in economics is from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Ruchira is primarily concerned with low paid and unpaid labor in various fields from housework and marriage to the media. She has written on dowry as a gift system in South Asia and how it relates to violence, and on international networks of care and how they impact the USA. Her recent research is on mediated activism in India. Ruchira is primarily informed by an international post-colonial feminist view of the world by MMT and Marxism. @RuchiraSen67 on Twitter