Macro N Cheese

By Steven D GrumbineNews Education Politics History

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Macro N Cheese episodes

March 06, 2021 Taming the Megabanks with Art Wilmarth
This week Steve talks with Arthur Wilmarth, fresh off his appearance in our current series, The New Untouchables: The Pecora Files, which dovetails neatly into the subject of Art’s latest book, Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act.

Art takes us through the original Glass-Steagall, adopted at the start of the Roosevelt administration as an early part of the New Deal when it became clear that allowing banks to get into the securities business and sell high-risk securities to investors around the world played a very large role in creating the conditions for the Great Depression. Congress saw that banks won’t be objective lenders or impartial investment advisers if they're taking loans and packaging them up into securities and selling them. They become biased and inclined to take lots of risks, which is not what banks should be doing. The act also prevented non-banks or “shadow banks” from engaging in the banking business.

And so there was a very strict wall of separation created between banks and the capital markets, which operated very effectively, and helped maintain a very stable financial system from 1933 at least into the 1980s. There were no major systemic financial crises during that period. There were problems, but the crises that happened tended to occur within particular sectors and they could be contained because you didn't have banks exposed to what was going on in the capital markets.
Art points out that the stock market crash of 1987 didn't affect the banks because Glass-Steagall was in effect, preventing the banks from being involved in the stock market. After a series of liberalization from the late 1980s through ‘90s, Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, removing the firewall between banks and the capital markets. When the next boom and bust cycle brought global financial crisis, it started in the shadow banking area in the capital markets and spread very quickly to the banks.

From the global financial crisis through the pandemic crisis, there’s been a continued expansion and explosion of all types of debt. We had a record amount of corporate debt by 2020, including an unprecedented amount of high-risk corporate debt. Much of that debt involved companies borrowing trillions of dollars to finance stock buybacks, serving only the interest of insiders by driving up their stock price. Meanwhile, we’ve had a continuing run-up of consumer debt, particularly in things like car loans, student debt, and credit card debt, all exacerbated by the pandemic.

Art reminds us we’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result - the very definition of insanity. We're continuing the system that churns out debt, protects Wall Street and then bails out Wall Street when the crisis comes. We keep giving them incentives to take on more risk. They think they won't fail.

Art says they will fail. Eventually, they'll get to the point where the government can't bail them out.

But I think the pandemic crisis, in my opinion, confirms everything that I argued in my book: that we're in this global doom loop, I say, where the central banks and the governments are backing up the universal banks and the shadow banks on Wall Street, and everybody is churning out more and more debt without any understanding of how we could make that sustainable over the long term.
Art’s prescription is a new Glass-Steagall, ending bailouts for every hiccup in the capital markets. “Markets are supposed to be where you take risks - and if you lose, you lose. If you win, you win. If we keep bailing them out, they're not markets anymore. They're just one-way gambles on the federal government and as I say, they're crony capitalism.”

Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of Law at the George Washington University Law School and author of Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act. He has testified before committees of the U.S. Congress and the California legislature on financial regulatory issues.
1 hr 3 min
March 03, 2021 Ep 109.5 - Austin Needs Water with Romteen Farasat
In this extra edition of Macro N Cheese, Steve talks with Romteen Farasat, Incident Commander of Austin Needs Water.
We all saw the news photos of Texas under a blanket of snow and ice. The freeze occurred the night of February 14th, yet two weeks later, people are still living without water. Public water has returned but private water lines are still off. They serve apartment buildings and housing complexes, so tens of thousands of residents are still going without.

When government fails to step up, the people step up. But the people have very limited resources. Romteen tells Steve the enormity of their needs and reminds us this is happening under a Biden presidency. Those who celebrated the ousting of the orange monster must now concede that candidate Biden was truthful in his campaign pledge that nothing will fundamentally change. Crises continue to engulf us, inaction remains the same.

The city of Austin doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle this disaster, but as MMTers we know that the US government has the money. Sending dollars is the easiest thing in the world, yet the residents haven‘t seen a single dime. Where is it?

Without a functioning government, it falls to us to care for our neighbors. Water, food, and monetary donations are needed, as well as volunteers on the ground.

Austin Needs Water is led by volunteers from BASTA, WDP, UPO, Austin Urban League, AFA, DSA Austin, Foundation Communities, Austin Mutual Aid, Street Medics Austin, and many more local organizations.

To donate: AustinNeedsWater.com

@RomteenF on Twitter
15 min
February 27, 2021 Institutions with Linwood Tauheed
This week Steve talks with Linwood Tauheed, someone we’ve heard about from several of our recent guests. Dr. Tauheed is an institutionalist economist; he looks at the economy not as a macroeconomy or a microeconomy, but as an economy that's founded on institutions. Beyond the economy, or perhaps intertwined with it, institutional frameworks enable and constrain all parts of social life. They are sometimes the unconscious or conscious ideas that structure the way ordinary people live their lives.

Such an expansive, dialectical look at society inspires Steve to take this interview down a number of paths, visiting both recent and distant history. They talk about the stark differences between the French and American revolutions. Slavery was outlawed during the French revolution, which was fought by the poor against the rich:

It was a class-based revolution, whereas the American Revolution was a revolution of the very well-off in this country against the monarchy, the very well-off in Britain. And so it wasn't a revolution that was based on freeing the poor. It was a revolution based on freeing the rich.
The US Constitution is just one representation of the institutions that undergird the divisions of race and sex in the service to capitalism. According to institutionalist Thorstein Veblen, capitalists organize systems enabling them to “make a living without earning a living.” There are micro-institutions and “habits of thought” that continue to divide people whose common oppression should unite them.

This episode includes discussion of A Tribe Called Quest, the life of Malcolm X, and, of course, Modern Monetary Theory. A transcript of the interview is available on our website. For additional, related content, check out the Extras page.

Linwood Tauheed is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City, and teaches introductory and advanced courses in Institutional Economics, Political Economy of Race, Class, and Gender, Economic Development, and a doctoral seminar in Interdisciplinary Research Methodology. His primary research interests are in Economic Methodology, Community Economic Development and Analysis of Education. A major research project involves the development of ‘Critical Institutionalism,’ an interdisciplinary metatheoretical framework for developing models for evolutionary institutional change in social systems through social action.

He is the immediate past president of the National Economic Association (NEA), which was founded in 1969 as the Caucus of Black Economists and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
1 hr 2 min
February 20, 2021 Knowledge is Power with Rev. Delman Coates
The last time Delman Coates was a guest on Macro N Cheese, the Our Money campaign was still fairly new, this podcast was on its 20th episode, and none of us had heard of COVID-19. Now, almost two years and 100 episodes later, it was long overdue for him and Steve to get together again.

Delman believes the federal response to the pandemic has been an eye-opener. People saw the government use the public purse to provide economic stimulus. New money was created through deficit spending without the need for new taxes to pay for it. It’s out in the open: whether deficit spending is being done to bail out corporations or whether it’s spent on emergency relief, everyone can see it happening.

And so that's why I think that there is so much power in MMT. Paulo Freire talked about the pedagogy of the oppressed. MMT is a pedagogy of the people. And as people see their government working and functioning, they understand that the concepts that we've been espousing are true. And because of that, I think it's unassailable.
Delman says it’s our charge to educate all across the political spectrum. When the people understand how our economy actually works, they’ll realize we’ve been asking for far too little. Believing the public purse is funded through tax revenue, “we've been asking for crumbs when we could get the loaf.”

Our Money’s Repair and Restore agenda is centered around a federal job guarantee, free health care, and federal funding of public education, pre-K through college. Delman describes these three central policies as the biggest, broadest, and most robust form of automatic stabilizers to benefit the American people and black folks in particular. He emphasizes the use of stabilizers as opposed to stimulus. Stimulus is temporary.

When we provide FDIC insurance for banks to go out here and treat the commercial lending market like it's a casino, we are providing public supports to the financial sector. So I want to be clear that when we talk about the power of the public purse, we're not talking about giving people something that they don't deserve.
Delman goes into the job guarantee’s history in the civil rights movement. From Sadie Alexander, the first black American economist, to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and A. Philip Randolph, through today’s leaders, many have understood what guaranteed jobs could do in the battle against racism and the struggle for a secure decent life for all. The results would be profound.

You won’t want to miss this episode. Delman’s eloquence and clarity are inspirational.

Reverend Delman Coates is the Senior Pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, MD. He’s the Founder of Our Money, an economic justice campaign that seeks to solve some of our nation’s greatest social and economic challenges. Dr. Coates also founded the Black Church Center for Justice and Equality to address the social and spiritual challenges of the African American faith community.

ourmoneyus.org

On Twitter:
@iamdelmancoates
@ourmoneyus
58 min
February 13, 2021 We Are Losing The Media War with Jordan Chariton
From his days at TYT to his ground-breaking investigative work at Status Coup, Jordan Chariton has been on the front lines of journalism for years. The stories he covers should be plastered all over cable news and the national publications… but they aren’t. While the mainstream is obsessed with impeachment and a newly-elected Republican who follows QAnon, Jordan has been reporting on the tragedies and travesties being visited upon American communities far from Washington, DC.

From Flint’s poisoned water supply to Iowa’s fraudulent Democratic caucus, what’s notable is the absence of the national press corps. Jordan travels to trailer parks and tent cities where he educates himself and his followers about the day-to-day misery perpetrated on the people.

I'd be seeing what's actually happening in the country, which was just an economic Hunger Games mixed with environmental genocide. And I'd get back to the hotel or wherever I was staying, and the media's main focus would be on whatever Trump tweeted.
Jordan and Steve delve into our current political reality, agreeing it’s increasingly unlikely substantive change will come from the halls of Congress. Steve suggests the progressive movement will need to engage in direct action while organizing legal and mutual aid. In Jordan’s view, targeted public pressure is important. He thinks we should focus on pressuring and dismantling the current corporate media monolith. We need to quell the mass public brainwashing, as well as disseminate the real news to a confused population.

Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who’s worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He has worked at Fox, MSNBC, and The Young Turks, before starting Status Coup. His team’s investigative work is attracting attention and expanding their reach.

@JordanChariton @StatusCoup

statuscoup.com

Check out Jordan’s article on DNC tampering
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/dnc-iowa-caucus-app-shadow/

and on Snyder’s prior knowledge of Flint
https://theintercept.com/2021/01/13/flint-michigan-rick-snyder-legionnaires/
1 hr 10 min
February 06, 2021 Reform or Revolution with Danny Haiphong
We at Macro N Cheese are big fans of Black Agenda Report because of their clear, no-bullshit analysis and their global perspective. This week’s guest does not disappoint. Danny Haiphong is a contributing editor of BAR, co-host of The Left Lens, and co-author of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News―From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.

Danny describes austerity as the assault on the rights and well-being of working people. It has been normalized and disconnected from the issues of xenophobia and white supremacy being peddled by both parties in a kind of faux competition between the elite over who is going to lead the charge for the empire at this given moment.

Steve and Danny spend much of the episode addressing the distinction between reform and revolution and the dangers inherent when the lines are blurred. While it’s becoming clear that electoral politics are inadequate for bringing the kind of revolutionary change we need, we can’t entirely dismiss them. Unfortunately much of the American left lacks a historical materialist analysis and holds the mistaken belief that time can be reversed.

And sometimes a disservice is really done, I think, when folks in the Sanders camp, for example, talk about the New Deal and FDR being the model, when at that time there were forces in that camp who were purging and attacking the left, socialists, communists in order to purify them from those ideological elements and in fact, save capitalism.

We ignore, at our peril, the massive struggles it took to achieve even minor reforms,
We neglect the historical context of the New Deal or the civil rights era and don’t consider the economic base of society. Many in the progressive movement believe we can repeat the New Deal in the 21st century without asking what was the development stage of capitalism then... and what is it now?

This episode goes into censorship, the media, and monopoly ownership. Is censorship ever warranted? Steve and Danny take a deep dive into political theory and practical possibilities given the reality of the American empire, global and domestic.

Danny Haiphong is a contributing editor to Black Agenda Report and co-host of The Left Lens. His work has been published widely elsewhere and maintains a blog at patreon.com/dannyhaiphong.

@SpiritofHo on Twitter

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News―From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41953443-american-exceptionalism-and-american-innocence
1 hr 7 min
January 30, 2021 The Case for Scottish Independence with Kairin Van Sweeden
We’ve had several episodes on Brexit, but this is the first time we’re talking about it with a Scottish nationalist. Kairin Van Sweeden is the executive director of Modern Money Scotland and works with the SNP, the Scottish National Party.

Joining the union was forced upon the Scottish people in 1707 against the wishes of the majority. With the seat of government and economic power concentrated in London, the needs of Scotland are not a priority in the UK. Despite the continual growth of the independence movement, they couldn’t get it passed in the 2014 referendum. By the time of the Brexit vote in 2016, many realized their mistake as the majority in Scotland voted to stay in the European Union.

Scotland has an abundance of resources, with a huge farming sector and an excess of renewable energy potential in the form of tidal and wind energy. They have 60% of the UK’s ocean water but only 8% of the population. Enter a problem. Scotland has an aging (shrinking) population and needs to attract young people. The result of the Brexit vote led to an immigrant exodus.

Kairin’s anti-Brexit sentiment isn’t a signal of approval of the European Union. As an MMTer she understands the powerlessness coming from the lack of monetary sovereignty. Scotland is at the mercy of the Bank of London in a situation not so different from the EU nations’ impotence at the hands of the troika.

We can see that neoliberalism is built into the EU. You cannot have more than a three percent deficit just across the board for all countries, you know, and that's complete nonsense. Of course, that can't possibly apply to all different countries. And different countries have different requirements as well. Greece is never going to be anything like Germany, so you can't expect it to be an industrial powerhouse in the way that Germany is.

Kairin and Steve talk about the neoliberal mindset which is recognizable regardless of nationality. We’ve all heard of the Northern Europeans who blame Greece for its economic problems, but Kairin tells us of a former editor of The Sun newspaper who was recently online saying, "Yeah, that would be good if Scotland got their independence because I'm sick of paying for them out of my taxes."

The COVID pandemic is opening many eyes. In recent years the UK’s national health care system has been eroded by privatization. Consumer choice is portrayed as a human right. But the public health crisis demonstrated that money can be created when politicians choose to do so. People must now ask why we’ve had decades of austerity.

Kairin Van Sweeden is Executive Director of Modern Money Scotland, Convener @Yes Edinburgh North and Leith, and North East Coordinator of Scottish National Party Common Weal Group.

@IndyAnatomist

@ModernMoneyScot

modernmoney.scot
1 hr 12 min
January 23, 2021 Focus on the Family with June Carbone
Recently our friend Bill Black introduced us to June Carbone. He suggested she could tell us how the job guarantee fits into cutting edge research on the family. June holds the Robina Chair in Law, Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota Law School and writes about the intersection of family, the economy, and politics.

In this episode, June takes Steve through the evolution of the American family as it transitioned to meet the economic needs of modern society. She says what excites her is not so much what things are, but why they change. When the US was founded, it was an agricultural society. The foundation of the colonial era family was the farm, owned and controlled by men and primarily a self-contained unit.

Industrialization and urbanization disrupted the system. The entire economy became dramatically more insecure, with boom-bust economic cycles. Women are no longer helping in the fields.

They are the moral centers of the family. What's their job? Well, we think of it as sparkling kitchen floors from the 50s. But the real job of the women in the separate spheres is the creation of a new upper-middle class. It is to have the girls prevent the boys from getting them pregnant. Why? Because if the girls get pregnant too early, the boys have to marry them and that derails the whole enterprise. You’ve got to keep the boys in school. They've got to get the job. They've got to get through the first couple of years when they're working their way up, and then they can afford a wife.

June talks to Steve about the changing economic conditions through the 19th and 20th centuries, and their effect on demographics and family behavioral trends. Race and class distinctions were sharp. Patterns of migration during WW II and the postwar period have had long-term effects, especially on African Americans. She explains how trends like divorce rates and single parenting reflect economic precarity. The Reagan years saw massive increases in both instability and inequality.

By today’s unrealistic model of the urban middle class family, young people have cycled through the first three or four jobs, and have settled on a career. They’re able to marry and have children with the financial security to weather a downturn or allow the spouse to go back to school. As June points out, the majority of the population cannot get there.

Well, start thinking of what it would mean to empower workers the way we empower employers. The corporate world wants flexibility, the ability to move plants abroad, to a different state, to automate, to sell one unit and buy another unit, to reinvent the iPhone. They have the iPhone replace the PC. We build in disruption in the corporate model. What would it mean to provide stability and security for people?

Steve and June go through much of the interview without mentioning the job guarantee, yet there’s no doubt June is constructing the case for it. Our listeners may never have heard it approached from these angles. It will give you a whole new perspective.

June Carbone holds the Robina Chair of Law, Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota School of Law. She is coauthor of RED FAMILIES V. BLUE FAMILIES: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture (Oxford, 2010) and MARRIAGE MARKETS: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family (Oxford 2014)

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=165168

@carbonej on Twitter
1 hr 9 min
January 16, 2021 Ep 103 - Anatomy of a Job Guarantee with Fadhel Kaboub
What can we say about the job guarantee that hasn’t already been said? Quite a bit, actually, as you’ll see in this and upcoming episodes.
This week Fadhel Kaboub is talking to a mellower Steve, fresh from the hospital and still on the mend from Covid19. Fadhel begins with the reality that capitalism is a brutal system that constantly leaves people behind. It’s driven by technological change, and as this develops, we require some workers with new skill sets, while others are rendered virtually obsolete. We don’t have an existing system bringing them into the new technology.

We count on individual workers to do this on their own, to somehow anticipate technological change, take time and money from their own budget, so to speak, to invest in learning new skills that will be useful for this new industry that doesn't exist yet and somehow be ready to go to transition to those new jobs. And those jobs sometimes are in a different location. Sometimes they're completely in a different country, a different part of the world. So that is the absurdity of the system that we leave this up to individuals to struggle.

A job guarantee will treat training and education as part of the job. Advancing technology tends to be more capital intensive, requiring a smaller workforce. What do we do with all the surplus labor? Fadhel explains why it’s not enough to provide a basic safety net, such as healthcare and social services, though they are desperately required as well. Work is more than an income, with well-proven benefits to individuals and families beyond the paycheck. JG advocates like Pavlina Tcherneva and Fadhel speak of a “care economy” of the most valuable work from a broader human and social perspective. Fadhel says it’s “a social, economic and political consensus, a social contract that doesn't throw people under the bus as the economy changes over time.”

Steve asks Fadhel about the job guarantee in a mixed economy and command economy. They discuss workers’ co-ops and the aversion, from some on the left, to state control. Fadhel reminds us the JG talks about federal funding. Everything else, from job creation to implementation and management, is done at the local level through a participatory democracy model.

Some tricky questions arise. Who defines local? Is it state, municipal, county?

How many grassroots voices do we have in the decision-making process? Is all the money going to go to the same city council officials who will hand out these contracts to the same developers who exclude minority groups from access to jobs, who always invest in the wealthier part of town? So those are important details so that we don't end up feeding the system and recreating the same problem. So grassroots participation, community participation is important. It can't be just symbolic.

Fadhel talks about the role of nonprofit organizations, which are important not only because they are existing organizations we don’t need to invent or create from scratch. They’re also in touch with the people who need the most services, so are in the best position to speak to what will benefit them.

The interview covers the UBI, with enough information to handle any debate. Fadhel explains the meaning of “buffer stock,” with examples of how economists normally use the term. He reveals the real reason UBI is being heavily promoted by Silicon Valley.

Steve and Fadhel look at the need for independent media like Real Progressives. Democracy without a fourth estate is not a democracy. The privatization and monopolization of the media over the past 40 years has served to destroy local journalism, meaning we don’t have full-time reporters covering local news, city councils, how the money is spent.

This episode covers much more than can be described here. You’ll just have to listen for yourself.

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

global-isp.org

@FadhelKaboub & @GISP_Tweets
1 hr
January 09, 2021 The Global Scourge of Neoliberalism with Patricia Pino
Steve Grumbine has been in the hospital with Covid-19 complicated by pneumonia. We’re encouraged by his progress and expect to have him back in the saddle soon. Since he was unable to record a new interview this week, we’re reviving a 2017 conversation he had with Patricia Pino from the UK. Our listeners know her as co-host of the MMT Podcast, but this was recorded several months before that project was launched.

It’s amusing to revisit the past, comparing ourselves then and now. In 2017 Steve was still very much into a heavy metal, confrontational style. He was constantly being challenged by folks obsessed with the “Illuminati.” They were more willing to believe in Rothschild conspiracies than in the reality of sovereign fiat currency. In contrast, Patricia was remarkably optimistic, assuring us that we’re “almost there”... MMT is catching on.

American progressives had been frustrated by the results of the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and identified with the disappointment in the Labour Party’s defeat in the UK. Many of us saw similarities between Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie, though the electoral systems, political parties, and governing structures are quite different. Patricia enlightens us on both.

A large part of the discussion is about Brexit, which British liberals associate with racism and xenophobia. Patricia talks about the history of the European Union, a project that was sold to the public as a means of keeping the European countries united after WW2. Eventually, the neoliberal agenda slipped in by way of government spending treaties and single market agreements. Many still see in the EU the ideal of a united Europe and international cooperation. The extreme suffering of the Greeks is blamed on their own mismanagement. According to Steve, we can’t understand the Greek crisis without considering sectoral balances. Greece is a net importer.

They have no ability to really produce any kind of export activity, not at least at the level required to sustain their existence. And when they gave up their monetary sovereignty by joining the EU, they, in essence, gave up the ability to offset the fact that they're a net importer. And so now they're basically a debtor nation enslaved to the troika.

Eurozone countries that are net exporters, like Germany, are doing fine while non-sovereign countries that are net importers are struggling. This is as true of Greece as of Puerto Rico.

Patricia and Steve look at the concept of government debt in both the US and UK and agree that when the public understands how things actually work there will be millions of angry people ready to make demands and accept no compromise. Folks won’t need to understand economics to see the truth.

Patricia Pino is a London-based engineer, artist, and activist. She is co-host of The MMT Podcast and a research fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

@PatriciaNPino on Twitter

https://pileusmmt.libsyn.com/

http://www.global-isp.org/patricia-pino/
48 min

About Macro N Cheese

From the publisher's feed

A podcast that critically examines the working-class struggle through the lens of MMT or Modern Monetary Theory. Host Steve Grumbine, founder of Real Progressives, provides incisive political…