Macro N Cheese

Ep 357 - Socialism with Chinese Characteristics with Yan Liang

In today’s world, anyone serious about anti-imperialism, global development, and monetary sovereignty needs to break through the well-funded US propaganda machine and develop a fact-based, nuanced understanding of China.  To this end, Steve asked Yan Liang to come back to the podcast to look at China through the MMT lens, analyzing its economic management, global role, and response to Western villainization. They discuss China’s development ethos and describe China as a state that actively uses its monetary and fiscal sovereignty to guide development towards internal goals (poverty alleviation, technological self-reliance, common prosperity) and external partnership (Win-win cooperation, Belt and Road Initiative).   Illustrating the difference between state steering and the so-called “free market,” the conversation goes into China’s mobilization of real resources through strategic state guidance, like Five-Year Plans and state-owned enterprises in key sectors.   Yan talks about the use of capital controls and a managed exchange rate. She details lessons from 2015 and the application of MMT principles to insulate domestic policy from volatile external forces.  Without romanticizing China, Yan also walks through its real challenges. But from an MMT-aware lens, these are seen as problems of policy design and resource use (issues a sovereign, planning-oriented state can address!) rather than proof of an impending collapse.  Yan Liang is Peter C and Bonnie S Kremer Chair Professor of Economics at Willamette University. She is also a Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Global Development Policy Center (Boston University), and a Research Scholar of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.  Yan specializes in the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the Political Economy of China, Economic Development, and International Economics. Yan’s current research focuses on China’s development finance and industrial transformation, and China’s role in the global financial architecture.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/yan-liang-1355b91a2/  [https://www.linkedin.com/in/yan-liang-1355b91a2/] @YanLian31677392 on X

Ep 356 - Scotland's Economic Suicide Pact? with Will Thomson

Steve and his guest, Scottish political economist William Thomson, use the fight over Scotland’s independence to dissect how class power hides inside “neutral” economic rules.   Will, founder of SCOTONOMICS, talks about his journey from neoclassical training to a heterodox, political-economy perspective grounded in MMT, ecological economics, and class analysis.  He recently wrote a paper (with friend-of-the-podcast Dirk Ehnts) showing how the Scottish government’s plan to copy the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact and delay its own currency would lock an “independent” Scotland into permanent austerity and dependence on markets and foreign owners.  Will explains that more foreign direct investment, supply-side reforms, and 3% deficit caps aren’t “responsible” policy – they are mechanisms to protect external and domestic elites at the expense of workers and communities.  Steve and Will stress that MMT is just a lens without an explicit socialist or working-class political economy. The same monetary tools can be used for empire, war, and repression. They argue for an independence project built on monetary sovereignty, full employment, ecological limits, and economic resilience... not on appeasing markets and Brussels.  William Thompson is a Scottish political economist and founder of SCOTONOMICS. He worked for almost a decade in the financial services sector in London. He has an MSc in the Green Economy and MEcon in the Economics of Sustainability. Based in Dunblane, Will writes regular blog posts and articles on economics in various publications including The National newspaper in Scotland and the Scottish Left Review. Support SCOTONOMICS: patreon.com/Scotonomics.  @Williamgallus on X  https://scotonomics.org/ [https://scotonomics.org/]

Ep 355 - Dialectics of Dominance with Aaron Good

“We’re at an inflection point – a civilizational crisis. Western imperial dominance is ending, and its dying spasms are only accelerating the collapse.” Aaron Good  Aaron Good, author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, is back to talk with Steve about the crisis of the US-led imperial order and the manufactured “common sense” that keeps people trapped inside a rigged system.  Centuries of Western imperial dominance are unraveling, and the US responds with flailing, genocidal actions in Gaza and Ukraine. These aren't signs of strength; they're the death rattles of a corpse that doesn't know it's dead yet.  “Realizing you’re not voting your way out of it might be the most terrifying ‘aha moment’ of them all.” Steve Grumbine  At home the two major US parties are presented as alternatives, the ballot is a participation trophy in the “managed spectacle” of elections. Obama? Trump? Biden? Different brands, same oligarchy. Corporate media and algorithmic “alternative media” work together to keep people confused, divided, and clinging to the fantasy that if they just vote harder, donate more, and binge the right “left” YouTubers, they can reform a system designed to crush them. The empire’s to-do list (crush dissent, steal resources) remains the same.  What are we to do? Maybe we can't break the system yet, but we can stop being dupes. See the Matrix.  Aaron Good holds a doctorate in political science from Temple University. He is the author of American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. He is the host of American Exception podcast https://americanexception.com/podcast/  Follow Aaron’s work at americanexception.substack.com/   @Aaron_Good_ on X

Ep 354 - The Fed As a Weapon of Class Power with L. Randall Wray

Randy: “We’re supposed to believe the central bank manages inflation by using interest rates?"  Steve: “It’s ridiculous.”  L. Randall Wray, one of the original MMT economists, recently wrote a paper with Yeva Nersisyan entitled, No, the Fed is NOT Independent – It is a Creature of Congress.  Steve invited Randy for a conversation about how the Federal Reserve is, and always has been, a "creature of Congress," and its supposed independence is a smokescreen that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. The Fed has a dual mandate of full employment and price stability, yet it consistently prioritizes the stability of Wall Street over the well-being of Main Street, bailing out banks while leaving workers to face the fallout of manufactured recessions.  Randy describes how raising interest rates – the Fed’s so-called tool – works to suppress wages by slowing the economy and killing job growth. Federal Reserve transcripts explicitly state that they fear “wage inflation” but see “profit inflation” as desirable. Randy wants Congress to take control of the central bank. (Some of us don’t see Congress as independent either.) But whatever our belief in the role of the state and who it serves, the episode contains valuable information on central bank operations, how interest rate hikes discipline labor, the truth about “fighting” inflation, and the difference between monetary and fiscal policy. We need to understand the mechanics of power if we’re going to build the future we deserve. L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, and Emeritus Professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is one of the developers of Modern Money Theory and his newest book on the topic is Understanding Modern Money Theory: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies [https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/understanding-modern-money-theory-9781800375147.html] (Elgar, 2025).

Ep 353 - Dollars for Oligarchs, Austerity for Argentina with Daniel Kostzer

** Want to take a deeper dive into this podcast? Join us on Tuesday evenings for Macro ‘n Chill, where we listen to the most recent episode together. Ask questions, share your insights, or just hang with us. 8pm ET/5pm PT. Find the registration link at realprogressives.org. And while you’re there, sign up for book club. It’s not too late – there are still two more sessions in our current series. **  Trump’s “$20B for Argentina” wasn’t aid – it was a heist. Economist Daniel Kostzer joins Steve to explain. Basically it’s just same ole same ole. Milei’s government crashed the value of Argentina’s currency and jacked up interest rates, drawing in big investors looking for fast profits. Then, under pressure from the IMF and the US, Argentina opened up its financial system, letting those hedge funds cash out in US dollars and leave the country, taking the money and leaving ordinary Argentines to deal with inflation, frozen pensions, and gutted public services. The media story about soybeans and China? Simply a cover for another bailout of the rich.  Daniel describes Argentina’s inflation as a symptom of class struggle. He connects the dots between today’s crisis and a long history of U.S. financial “help” that only props up Wall Street. The conversation exposes how the global elites use debt, currency crises, and friendly politicians to extract wealth while selling it as economic stability.  The episode is a deep dive into modern imperialism, media manipulation, and class politics. It’s also a reminder, as Gramsci said, to keep the pessimism of the intellect but the optimism of the will.  Daniel Kostzer is Chief Economist at ITUC-CSI (International Trade Union Confederation-Confederacion Sindical Internacional). Much of his research is in labor economics, poverty reduction, and income distribution. Follow him: @dkostzer on X; https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-kostzer-884318165/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-kostzer-884318165/]