Activist #MMT - podcast Jeff Epstein

Here's a preview of my soon-to-be-released interview with Finding the Money director, Maren Poitras. It's a four-minute segment where Maren describes what YOU can do to help Finding the Money be seen by others.
The big launch is less than three weeks away. This means the most important thing is to get people to buy tickets for screenings. The documentary's website (findingmoneyfilm.com) is the best place to go for this, and especially the "where to watch" page.
Here are the major upcoming screenings:
This Tuesday, April 16, is the New York City premiere with "DOC NYC" at IFC Center at 7 pm. Get your tickets here./ New York City: May 3-9, each followed by a Q&A Washington, DC: May 9th at AFI Silver Theater, followed by a Q&A with Stephanie Kelton and Sara Nelson LA May 14-16 followed by a Q&A with Stephanie Kelton, Cory Doctorow, and Harry Shearer (Harry Shearer!) Other dates in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are coming The film will be available On Demand nationwide wherever you rent movies on May 3!
(I'm going to stream it with my family as soon as it's available. I'm pretty sure my boys, 14 and 17, will sit through the whole thing, but I have carrots (homemade popcorn) and sticks (threat of no bed to sleep in) at the ready.)

Welcome to episode 148 of Activist #MMT. Today I talk with post-Keynesian economist Steve Keen about his decades-long fight against mainstream economics, what MMT convinced him of, and the couple parts of MMT he still disagrees with. This first part is a half-hour long audio interview, which will be followed next month by an hour-and-a-half-long video interview, where Steve walks me through the basics of his Minsky modeling software, and why he believes it's an important tool for MMTers.
(Here's a link to PART TWO. A list of the audio chapters in this episode can be found right below.)
MMT and Steve are in complete agreement with how banks spend (lend money into existence). After reading Stephanie Kelton's book in 2020, Steve realized that government spending also creates money. National governments don't tax in order to spend, they spend in order to tax. Steve quickly created a Minsky model convincing himself that MMT is indeed correct regarding this. This insight is also completely compatible with his understanding of bank spending.
As far as Steve's disagreements with MMT, they are important, and Steve lays them out in detail in the last ten-or-so minutes of this episode. But let it be known that they are far from core issues. In other words, the amount of agreement is far greater. It's good to understand what these disagreements are, but as Steve says, we have much bigger fish to fry.
This is the first main episode of Activist #MMT since August. Although I've released three chapters from John Harvey's readings of his book Contending Perspectives (with lots more to come!), the past six months have been all consuming, starting with my third Torrens course – which was coincidentally taught by John on that very book. It was both incredibly enlightening and unbelievably exhausting.
I've also become a full-time musician. I now sing several times each week at retirement communities and related facilities (independent living, assisted-living, nursing homes, etc.). Coincidentally, back in July, I met Steve in person for dinner in Princeton, New Jersey, which is about an hour north of my home. After dinner and conversation, Steve gave me an initial walk-through of Minsky. We ended the night with me singing a few songs on the sidewalk – just me, my phone, and a little Bluetooth speaker. At the very end of today's episode, after the closing theme music, you'll hear a small highlight from that experience. You can check out my singing website at seejeffsing.com.
And now, onto my conversation with Steve Keen. Enjoy.
Audio chapters 4:24 - Hellos, and the plan 5:53 - His journey fighting mainstream, and, in 2020, to MMT 8:19 - Marx's view of money, Steve's PhD, Minsky's financial instability hypothesis, double entry bookkeeping, thinking of government spending differently 9:43 - Modeling money properly with double entry bookkeeping 10:49 - Discovering MMT in 2020, which changed his view on government spending 12:56 - Mild criticism of MMT's consolidated view 14:29 - Money creation is the expansion of balance sheets. The same thing happens on both the asset and liability side. If it ONLY happens on the liability side, it's a liability swap it. If it ONLY happens on the asset side, it's an asset swap. 16:42 - Regarding government money creation, how does your model distinguish between money creation and the supposed recycling of collected money? 19:12 - The only insight MMT gave Steve was that government spending creates money. All his work on banking is exactly compatible. 20:09 - Steve's two disagreements with MMT 21:31 - Disagreement 1: MMT says that in general, imports are a benefit and experts are a cost. 25:48 - Disagreement 2: The JG and UBI are actually complementary 27:59 - A dangerous follow up question: danger of UBI is that it could undermine the job guarantees Price anchor. Steve's response: the UBI would need to be below the job guarantee wage 30:25 - Have you modeled these disagreements in Minsky to confirm you

John Harvey reads the introduction to (chapter one of) his book, Contending Perspectives. Here's the original video from where this audio came.
Here's a list of links to John reading every chapter (released so far) in his 2021 book Contending Perspectives.
Note the original video is unedited, but the audio has been edited to eliminate obvious mistakes, coughs, interruptions, and etc.
Audio chapters Use the below timestamps to navigate to each major section and occurrence in this section:
0:00 - The Cowboy Economist's cousin, John Harvey, introduces himself 0:41 - Page 1: Introduction 8:56 - Page 4 14:35 - Page 6

Here's the original video from where this audio came.
Here's a list of links to John reading every chapter (released so far) in his 2021 book Contending Perspectives.
Note the original video is unedited, but the audio has been edited to eliminate obvious mistakes, coughs, interruptions, and etc.
Audio chapters Use the below timestamps to navigate to each major section and occurrence in this section:
0:00 - Opening thoughts by John's cousin, the Cowboy Economist 6:37 - Page vi: Acknowledgements

Welcome to episode 147 of Activist #MMT. Today's the second in my two-part conversation with author, mathematician, and bond analyst Brian Romanchuk (Twitter/RomanchukBrian), on the basics of the secondary market and how it relates to the primary market. Today in part two, Brian continues describing the participants in the secondary market, why they do what they do, and shares several anecdotes from his many years of experience as a bond analyst for fixed income recipients in Canada.
A fuller introduction can be found before part one. But for now, let's get right back to my conversation with Brian Romanchuk. Enjoy.
A fuller introduction can be found at the beginning of part one, but for now, let's get right back to my conversation with Brian Romanchuk. Enjoy.
Audio chapters 4:03 - The internet allows you to do a large quantity of small transactions BUT everyone can see it (it's publicly viewable) 4:47 - "Reallocation between bonds and equities." 8:19 - What is the population of who purchases bonds? 26:24 - The rich don't just buy bonds themselves, as individuals. 28:22 - Municipal bonds don't play a large role in the macro economy 30:01 - Z-1 document from the Federal Reserve 32:11 - Who exactly are the supposed bond vigilantes? (The really powerful bond purchasers would never say anything publicly. It would be a breach of their fiduciary duty! Anyone talking on the news is only talking for themselves.) 33:57 - The most important players keep their mouth shut 36:07 - Speaking publicly is marketing and manipulation 41:40 - Anthropomorphic 45:08 - What people say, when not under legal obligation to be truthful, is sometimes manipulation and marketing. 49:03 - Reasonable people know the national government isn't really going to default 55:28 - Bringing it back to the beginning: The three core reasons why the government, not the market, is in control 58:47 - How would everything we've discussed change is we lived in a ZIRP world? 1:03:12 - ZIRP is bad only in the sense that 1:15:15 - Duplicate of introduction, with no background music (for those with sensitive ears)

Welcome to episode 146 of Activist #MMT. Today I talk with author, mathematician, and bond analyst Brian Romanchuk, on the basics of the secondary market and how it relates to the primary market. Brian starts with a brief tutorial of how bonds are priced, which is seen very differently from the points of view of the primary and secondary markets. For an in-depth treatment of this topic, you can listen to episodes 30 and 31 of MMT Podcast with Steven Hail.
(Here's a link to part two. A list of the audio chapters in this episode can be found right below [above the full-question list].)
Brian then describes bonds (and more broadly, securities) in general, the population of who buys and sells them, some of the reasons why they are bought and sold, and several anecdotes of how it all happens.
What can be said is this: rich people rarely if ever buy US treasuries on their own, as individuals. Additionally, the biggest players in securities trading never speak publicly in order to prevent jeopardizing their advantage – they keep their mouths shut. These two facts alone put a huge hole in the idea of so-called bond vigilantes. Although I'm not necessarily interested in the idea of bond vigilantes, it's one of the most obvious and common myths that comes up regarding the secondary market.
Whatever the case, the idea that the market can somehow overrule the national government is clearly false. This is for at least the following three reasons:
only the national government can create and delete its own bonds. Only the national government can create and delete its own money – which is required to purchase those bonds. And the national government (for countries such as the United States, UK, Australia, Japan, and Canada) have little to no foreign denominated debt, which means they do not offer to convert their money into anything else. What this means is that the national government, through the collective action of its citizens (US!), has the power to stand up to the market even if they somehow object to the actions of that government.
The only way the market can overpower the national government is if the government chooses for it to be that way – such as when representatives and regulators are bought off by the biggest players in that market. This is further bolstered by the populace being sufficiently duped into believing it all to be "unfortunate, but necessary." This is a primary battle-front in the centuries-long war between rich and poor, which, unfortunately, the rich have all but won.
And now, onto my conversation with Brian Romanchuk. This is part one of a two-part conversation. Enjoy.
In order to preserve both my podcast and my sanity as I proceed through Torrens University and Modern Money Lab's graduate program in MMT and ecological economics (🦉🤝🌍), I've slowed my podcast from one episode a week, to once a month. For as little as a dollar a month, patrons of Activist #MMT can hear all three parts with Brian right now. You can start by going to patreon.com/activistmmt.
Resources The Federal Reserve's Z1 document Brian's July 2023 Q&A with Torrens University students Audio chapters 5:33 - I don't care about bond vigilantes per es, it's just the most common (mythical!) topic discussed. 7:43 - The core reasons why the government, not the market, is in charge. 11:18 - The definition of money. Even a pizza coupon is money, but not as understood by the general public. 12:04 - A government bond is a security, governed by securities laws. 12:49 - The basics of price and yield 21:41 - Price and yield versus par value and coupon rate – terms as used in the primary versus secondary market 24:45 - Computer era versus pre-computer era 29:48 - despite lots of corruption and instability, he will always get $100 back from that. 33:14 - Primary market 36:05 - "Basis points" 44:34 - Your company benefitted fixed-income earners 47:11 - Does your company know when bonds are purchased from primary or seco