269 episodes

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!

Macro N Cheese Steve D Grumbine MS, MBA, PMP, PSM1, ITIL

    • Education
    • 4.5 • 8 Ratings

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!

    There Is No Magic Pricing Fairy with Brian Romanchuk

    There Is No Magic Pricing Fairy with Brian Romanchuk

    ** Be sure to check the Real Progressives website’s calendar for upcoming events. On Sunday, March 17th at noon ET/9am PT, we’re hosting a webinar, RP Live with Esha Krishnaswamy: Putin’s Russia. On Tuesday evenings, 8pm ET/5pm PT, come to Macro ‘n Chill, where we listen to the most recent episode of this podcast and discuss it with the community. https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar/
    “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” Milton Friedman

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

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

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

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

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

    @RomanchukBrian on Twitter

    • 54 min
    Demystifying Sellers Inflation with Yeva Nersisyan

    Demystifying Sellers Inflation with Yeva Nersisyan

    The American people see through mainstream claims of “the greatest economy ever.” They are confronted by evidence to the contrary every day.
    Steve and his guest, economist Yeva Nersisyan, take a deep dive into the current US economy, looking at the repercussions of the high costs of education, healthcare, and housing.

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

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

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

    • 59 min
    Les Milei with Daniel Conceição

    Les Milei with Daniel Conceição

    ** Reminder: You are invited to listen to and discuss this episode with friends from Real Progressives on Tuesday, March 5th. Find the Zoom link at https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar/
    “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” — Victor Hugo
    Daniel Conceição talks with Steve about Argentina’s economic immiseration under newly elected president Javier Milei.

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

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

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

    @stopthelunacy on Twitter

    • 1 hr 5 min
    Is Marx Still Relevant? with Steve Maher

    Is Marx Still Relevant? with Steve Maher

    **To discuss this episode among friends, come to our listening party, Macro ‘n Chill, on Tuesday February 27th at 8pm ET/5pm PT. For the link go to our Events Calendar https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar

    “But fortunately for us, human nature is precisely the capacity to be creative; to imagine a different way of living together and to bring that into being through our conscious and deliberate actions by working together, by fighting for a different world against the class power that is interested in perpetuating things as they are. And so we can, through acting on the world to transform the world, we also transform ourselves. That's a basic principle of Marxist theory and Marxist politics. By acting on the world to change the world, we simultaneously transform ourselves through the act of struggle, to the act of building collective solidarity, we become different and we also make the world different.”
    Steve invited Stephen Maher for this interview to talk about some of the basic lessons of Marxism. While you may not agree with everything you hear in this episode, certain fundamentals of capitalism are beyond refute.

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

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

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

    @SteveMaher18 on Twitter

    • 54 min
    Deconstructing the Colonial Archetype with Fadhel Kaboub

    Deconstructing the Colonial Archetype with Fadhel Kaboub

    ** If you haven’t yet come to our Tuesday night listening party, this is the week to do so. Join the Real Progressives community as we dive in and discuss this episode. The registration link is posted on our Events Calendar prior to each Tuesday’s session — it’s usually up by Saturday. Look for Macro ‘n Chill. https://realprogressives.org/rp-events-calendar/
    This week Steve talks with our friend, economist Fadhel Kaboub. Followers of this podcast will recognize some of the themes we regularly focus on, including the debt trap facing countries of the global South, and the need for climate action and transformative economic development. Current plans under consideration are extractive and paternalistic, continuing the patterns of colonial exploitation.
    At the root of the external debt problem are three major structural issues: food deficits, energy deficits, and manufacturing deficits. Fadhel breaks down each of these problems, tracing the origins and suggesting how solutions will benefit not just Africa and the global South, but the international working class.

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

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

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

    @FadhelKaboub on Twitter

    • 56 min
    State of the Not So Free Press with Mickey Huff

    State of the Not So Free Press with Mickey Huff

    “We've been trying to get people to stop saying ‘mainstream media.’ I’ve got to do it now too, for the same reason that you just described: because there's nothing mainstream about 90 percent of the media being controlled by 6 private, for-profit corporations or 5 other big tech companies. There's nothing mainstream, or Main Street, about the ideas and the views that they platform. It's corporate media or establishment legacy press, and then there's independent media which means very little.” — Mickey Huff
    Project Censored was founded by a communications and sociology professor in the 1970s. He asked himself how it was that Richard Nixon was elected by a landslide despite ample coverage of his misdeeds and corruption in the independent alternative media. And why did it take so long for the establishment press to catch up?

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

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

    https://www.projectcensored.org

    On Twitter:
    @mythinfo
    @ProjectCensored

    • 57 min

Customer Reviews

4.5 out of 5
8 Ratings

8 Ratings

Maisy Newhouse ,

A+

So relevant, clear and concise! Just what the world needs. Keep up the wonderful work !

Barnsleybarnsley ,

Real Dissidents

Market failures designed to maintain poverty (political disenfranchisment), pro-class willfull ignorance & arrogant distain, corporate crime-spree abetted by near universally currupt politicians & media etc. all explained with credable guests and enthusiastic host! Federal public works program / Job guarantee required!

lukeyluck ,

Macro

Awesome show on economics!!!
Please try to improve the guests’ audio (garblgrble tbhx :))

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