))
Macroeconomics has never been so ... delish! Macro and Cheese explores the progressive movement through the lens of Modern Monetary Theory, with hot and irreverent political takes, spotlights in activism, and the razor sharp musings of Real Progressives Founder and host Steve Grumbine. The cheese will flow as experts come in for a full, four course deep dive into the hot queso. Comfort Food for Thought!
In September, Real Progressives had a webinar with Michael Hudson. It gave our volunteers the opportunity to ask him about his book, The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism. This week’s podcast brings you the audio of that event. Although his book looks at three economic philosophies, the Q & A focused o…
M
Macro N Cheese
551
A Crypto, MMT Retrospective with Rohan Grey
1:08:40
1:08:40
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:08:40
Rohan Grey always uses cool cultural references. Six minutes into the episode he brings up Tintin. Later we hear about Wile E. Coyote, Star Trek, Teletubbies and Wagnerian opera. The Tintin tale concerns a treasure hunt that required Tintin to find three maps; only when they were overlaid could he see the location of the treasure. Rohan Grey relate…
M
Macro N Cheese
851
Spelunking the Deep State with John Kiriakou
1:00:28
1:00:28
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:00:28
When you Google John Kiriakou, the descriptive label that pops up with his name is Whistleblower. John was an analyst and case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency during the anti-communist era and then the anti-terrorist era. (Where did all the communists go? Aren’t they a threat anymore? Were they ever? Those will have to be questions for …
**Happy New Year from Real Progressives and Macro N Cheese. If you would like to help us continue to bring you great content, please consider becoming a monthly sponsor at patreon.com/realprogressives. Your contributions help pay for the tech platforms and equipment that keep this podcast alive.** This week’s episode is the recording of a recent RP…
M
Macro N Cheese
1301
FTX and the Fall of Cryptocurrency with Robert Hockett
50:55
50:55
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
50:55
All digital currency is not created equal. Its technology can potentially be used as a force for good or a force of evil. Robert Hockett joins Steve to discuss both. Let’s start with the evil. The collapse of FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, is still sending shock waves through the mainstream and financial media. It seems that only…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
Japan: A Case Study in MMT with Bill Mitchell
1:07:09
1:07:09
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:07:09
**After the episode, visit our “Extras” page where you’ll find links to Bill Mitchell’s blog, books, MMT education course, and more. Every episode of this podcast is also accompanied by a full transcript. realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/** Usually when Steve and his guests talk about culture, they’re referring to that of neoliberalism. …
M
Macro N Cheese
1851
Exploring the Origins of Money with Clint Ballinger
50:14
50:14
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
50:14
Clint Ballinger is an economic geographer, a path he followed in search of answers to what he calls fundamental questions of political economy. Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in England and western Europe? What is the reason for the radically uneven distribution—radically unequal material well-being—around the world? It exists not only bet…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
System Dynamics and the Minsky Model with Tyrone Keynes
57:02
57:02
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
57:02
** Check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese on the Real Progressives website. This week’s episode looks at using a recently developed economic model application developed by frequent Macro N Cheese guest, Steve Keen. The software is aptly named “Minsky” and Steve Grumbine’s guest, Tyrone Keynes, is an experienced user o…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
Africa's Place in the Multi-Polar Order with Fadhel Kaboub
1:02:15
1:02:15
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:02:15
**Thank you to our listeners! Can you believe this is our 200th episode? Crazy, right? Well, it wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of a dedicated team. Our sound editor and engineer, Andy Kennedy, has spent thousands of hours (literally) producing these weekly gems. Then there’s the diligent band of copy editors—Brad Sandler, Jonathan …
M
Macro N Cheese
1
The Breaking of the World with Thomas Fazi
57:23
57:23
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
57:23
Steve talks with Thomas Fazi, journalist/writer/translator/socialist. Many of us know him as co-author, with Bill Mitchell, of Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World. A few weeks ago, we had an episode entitled Trussonomics. It was recorded a few weeks after Liz became Prime Minister, and mere days bef…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
The Trinity of Austerity with Clara Mattei
1:10:33
1:10:33
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:10:33
“Austerity is the best weapon they have to try to convince. And if they can't convince, they can't coerce. So in my book, I say austerity plays with a double strategy: coercion and consensus.” Clara Mattei is the author of The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity & Paved the Way to Fascism, published this month. Steve Grumbine, who uses…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
Gentrification and Culture with Davarian Baldwin
1:01:46
1:01:46
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:01:46
**Full transcripts of all our episodes are available on the website, where you will also find an “Extras” page with additional resources. realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ Steve’s guest, Davarian Baldwin, calls himself an urbanist. This affects his prescriptions for reparations in the US, which extend beyond ADOS and beyond individual pa…
“We have to understand neoliberalism as a particular phase of capitalism dominated by US imperialism. So let's start with the last point I mentioned: regime change operation. Any country around the world, any government that tries to have state oversight over the economy opposing neoliberalism was overthrown through regime change.” Ben Norton’s jou…
** Check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese at the Real Progressives website. Grumbine: I follow a lot of Brits on Twitter, and not just regular rank and file activists, but a lot of the actual economists. And the folks that are considered left, very strongly remind me of neoliberals. Wilson: Because they are. [laughter…
** To donate to the flood relief effort in Pakistan, please visit the Prime Minister’s Flood Relief Fund 2022 How do we unpack a problem like this year’s floods in Pakistan? Where do we place the blame? Steve invited our friend Aqdas Afzal back on the podcast to discuss his recent article, “Collapse of Civilizations.” The article’s title is a cheek…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
The Rise of Giorgia Meloni with Ivan Invernizzi
55:50
55:50
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
55:50
Ivan Invernizzi, of Rete MMT Italia and MMT France, returns to Macro N Cheese to bring us up to speed on the Italian political landscape. He and Steve met at the 2nd International MMT conference in NYC in 2018, and he was an early guest on this podcast. The US mainstream media tends to catastrophize the election of right-wing leaders around the wor…
The movement for free universal healthcare is under attack. Groups like March for Medicare for All, National Single Payer, and others, have been criticized for not buying into the Democratic Party’s agenda promoting individual state healthcare initiatives. The party wants us to stop pressuring Congress. They tell us to go home. They say there’s mor…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
Can We Make Money Work For Us? with L. Randall Wray
1:20:19
1:20:19
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:20:19
Grumbine: Can we have too much money? Wray: Yes, we surely can. Usually, our problem is that there's too much bank money, and the usual consequence is a financial crisis. Obviously, Steve and his guest are talking about the nation, not their own wallets. In this episode, he welcomes L. Randall Wray to Macro N Cheese for the eighth time to talk abou…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
Billionaires As Policy Failure Factories with Cory Doctorow
56:43
56:43
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
56:43
Cory Doctorow writes when he’s anxious. He has eight books coming out soon. Yep, it’s been a tough couple of years. The number of upcoming books gives us a sense of the wide range of subjects Doctorow concerns himself with. His upcoming Chokepoint Capitalism, co-authored with Rebecca Giblin, is about monopoly, monopsony, and fairness in the creativ…
Some of the more, um, senior members of the Macro N Cheese team can remember a time when the Democratic Party supported labor and the union movement. Then we came to realize we had it backwards – it's really the Party expecting support from the unions, who made donations, helped with campaigning, and got out the vote. Followers of this podcast are …
M
Macro N Cheese
1
Moral Economies And Money with Jakob Feinig
47:07
47:07
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
47:07
When Jakob Feinig speaks of moral economies, he’s talking about we, the people – the currency users – and how we relate to the institutions that issue money, as well as our monetary knowledge and its ability to inform direct action. Needless to say, Modern Monetary Theory is an essential component of this. This week he and Steve discuss both moral …
M
Macro N Cheese
1
When the Systems Fail Us with Latasha Holloway
1:10:32
1:10:32
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:10:32
**Every episode of Macro N Cheese is accompanied by a full transcript and an “Extras” page of additional resources. Find them at realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ This week Steve interviews Latasha Holloway, who is running for Congress in Virginia’s Third District. What makes the episode unusual is the fact that there’s very little campa…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
The Power of Organizing with David Van Deusen
48:59
48:59
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
48:59
David Van Deusen, president of the Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, talks to Steve about their radical ten-point program, adopted in 2019. In the interview, he explains why they were spurred to develop the plan and breaks down what it means in practice as they move away from lobbying and expand their focus on the rank-and-file. This includes t…
Near the start of this episode, Jason Hickel raises Noam Chomsky’s position that the urgency of the climate crisis is so dire it will have to be dealt with under capitalism. There isn’t time to transition to socialism. Hickel disagrees. Capitalism is incapable of handling the problem. Hickel, an economic anthropologist, begins the interview pointin…
M
Macro N Cheese
1
Is Geoengineering the Answer to Climate Crisis? with David Keith
40:50
40:50
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
40:50
We often talk about climate change on this podcast. The IPCC deadline is hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. This week Steve talks to David Keith, a professor of both Applied Physics and Applied Policy at Harvard, and author of A Case for Climate Engineering. Climate engineering, a term for solar geoengineering or solar radiation mod…
