When there’s an attack on a high profile (read: white) target in the US, media attention is aimed at the perpetrators. If the act was politically motivated, that fact is either used to explain their psychopathy or dismissed altogether. The December shooting death of a UnitedHealthcare CEO has had a different reaction. As soon as the news broke, public sympathy was drawn to the shooter. The American people have too many horror stories about being denied medical coverage. Jordan Chariton, of Status Coup News, joins Steve to look at the significance of this story as representation of people’s outrage against a system designed to ignore people’s needs and reward the economic elite. As Jordan suggests, Luigi Mangione, the alleged perpetrator, wasn’t just attacking the health insurance industry, he was attacking predatory capitalism. Steve and Jordan discuss events of the past few decades, the futility of traditional political avenues, and the inevitability of a public breaking point and working-class uprising. Jordan’s coverage of the Flint and East Palestine crises have brought him into the lives of Americans who have been lied to and left to suffer the consequences of corporate malfeasance. If murder at gunpoint is immoral, can you keep making excuses for murder by policy?Jordan Chariton, Status Coup CEO, is an independent progressive journalist who has worked inside and outside the belly of the corporate media beast for over a decade. He worked at Fox, MSNBC, and TYT, before starting Status Coup. He is the author of the 2024 book, “We the Poisoned: Exposing the Flint Water Crisis Cover-up and the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans.” statuscoup.com @JordanChariton on X @StatusCoup 

History doesn’t stand still, and every time we talk about BRICS on this podcast, there’s more to unpack. To understand the significance of BRICS, we must begin with (wait for it) monetary sovereignty.   Economist Yan Liang is an expert on China’s economy and MMT. She joins Steve to discuss the evolving role of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the increasing number of countries becoming involved in challenging US dollar hegemony and the current global financial system. Weaponizing of the US dollar has reached an all-time high. Yan explains the specific ways in which US-dominated international institutions and dollar dependency impede development in the Global South.   The episode looks at the significance of de-dollarization and its possible longterm effects. Yan also touches on the importance of technology transfer and intellectual property rights in building sustainable economies. 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. @YanLian31677392 on X  

What’s the point of understanding money if we don’t look at the power relations controlling its distribution? Bill Mitchell, a key figure in the development of modern monetary theory, is back for his twelfth appearance on the podcast, beginning with Episode One, Putting the T in MMT.  As a key figure in the development of MMT, Bill articulates how this theory fundamentally challenges conventional economic wisdom by asserting that governments, as currency issuers, are not financially constrained in the same manner as households or businesses.  This critical insight dispels the prevailing narrative that insists the government cannot afford to invest in social programs. This forces us to look not only at political choices, but the class power behind those choices. The conversation delves into the dynamics of class conflict, inflation, and the role of private banks in shaping the financial landscape. Economic austerity, rising costs, and stagnant wages force the working class to take on more and more private debt.  Bill Mitchell is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) at the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia. He is also the Docent Professor of Global Political Economy at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Guest International Professor at Kyoto University, Japan.  Bill is a professional musician and plays guitar with the Melbourne Reggae-Dub band – Pressure Drop.    Follow his work on https://billmitchell.org/blog/   

Can you imagine granting personhood to AI entities? Well, some of us couldn’t imagine granting personhood to corporations. And yet... look how that panned out.In this episode, Steve talks with Duke law professor James Boyle about his new book, The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood. James explains the development of his interest in the topic; it began with the idea of empathy. (Then) moved to the idea of AI as the analogy to corporate personhood.  And then the final thing – and maybe the most interesting one to me – is how encounters with AI would change our conceptions of ourselves. Human beings have always tried to set ourselves as different from non-human animals, different from the natural universe.     Sentences no longer imply sentience. And since language is one of the reasons we set human beings up as bigger and better and superior to other things, what will that do to our sense of ourselves? And what would happen if instead of being a chatbot, it was actually an entity that more plausibly possessed consciousness. Steve and James discuss the ways in which science fiction affects our thinking about these things, using Blade Runner and Star Trek to look at the ethical dilemmas we might face. As AI becomes increasingly more integrated into our society, we will need to consider the full range of implications.  James Boyle is the William Neil Reynolds Professor of Law at  Duke Law School, founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and former chair of Creative Commons. He is the author of The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, and Shamans, Software, and Spleens. He is co-author of two comic books, and the winner of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award for his work on digital civil liberties.

Paul Gambles is back to help us unpack China's recent issuance of US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia. Paul begins by setting up the historical context. He takes us back to the end of the second World War and the Bretton Woods agreement, designed to bring a new world order, putting the US dollar as the global funding currency. China’s move signals a challenge to the petrodollar system – providing nations with new avenues for financing as an alternative to dollar dependency. Paul looks at the Global South in light of China’s behavior, including the Belt and Road initiative. Its infrastructure projects in Asia or in Africa enable local countries to reduce their potential dollar exposure and instead have either equity or other exposures to China. According to Paul, this is already having effects in terms of U.S. policy and the U.S. economy. Putting the bond issuance in perspective, Paul says: I think China has indicated that it plans to issue about $300 billion of sovereign bonds during 2024. So, you know, you can see $2 billion (of US dollar-denominated) out of almost $300. It's, you know, it's a relatively small proportion. He suggests it’s a warning shot across the bow. That's a very clear signal about how the potential power that China holds going forward if the U.S. government gets too stupid about things like tariffs or other anti-Chinese policies or even geo-politically. I mean, it might not be appreciated by listeners outside Asia, but American involvement in Taiwanese politics is a real sore point to the Chinese Government. And so I think this is a warning shot on a lot of different points.  Paul Gambles is the Co-Founder of MBMG GROUP and a Director and Chief Investment Officer of MBMG Investment Advisory, a SEC regulated investment advisor. Find Paul’s articles on https://mbmg.substack.com/  @PaulGambles2 on Twitter

Rohan Grey, who taught us to understand money as a creature of law, is back for his tenth appearance on Macro N Cheese. Steve and Rohan dissect the humor and horror of the political landscape. They make a realistic assessment of the Biden administration and look at figures like Elon Musk and Ramaswamy as part of a new wave of governance setting out to undermine the fabric of federal institutions.  The conversation touches on the absurdity of contemporary American politics, where a ‘meme president’ can emerge amidst a cacophony of discontent and confusion. All this against a background of imperialist atrocities and genocide.  As always, Rohan warns against viewing political and economic developments through a simplistic lens and suggests a nuanced understanding of these realities within their historical context Rohan looks at the alternating and sometimes contradictory positions taken by conservatives and progressives on several issues. Judicial activism was once identified with the left – Thurgood Marshall, for example. Today judicial activism is synonymous with Samuel Alito. What has it meant to conservatives in the past to have an independent Fed? What does it mean today? In what ways do Trump’s interests align with Main Street instead of Wall Street? Part of the episode is devoted to cryptocurrency. Rohan explains why he refers to 2024 as the ‘crypto election’ and then talks about some of the fears and predictions about the Trump administration.  Instead of comparing bitcoin to the US dollar, Rohan suggests we compare it to oil:  We're not talking about holding Bitcoin. We're not talking about internalizing Bitcoin into the payments architecture of the United States government. We are talking about taking an interest in stabilizing the price of something that is otherwise functioning as a commodity.  No Rohan Grey episode is complete without a couple of references to popular culture. Speaking of the broader issue of crytocurrency, he says it’s as if the digital dollar looked in the mirror and fell in love with itself. He compares it to a certain episode of Seinfeld. Rohan Grey is an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law, where he teaches contracts, business associations, financial institutions, and a seminar on law, money and technology.  Find his work and an expanded bio at rohangrey.net @rohangrey on Twitter  

In a stunning reversal, the Democrat Party has announced plans to reconnect with its New Deal roots in hopes of regaining the trust of the working class. Haha just kidding! This week, Yeva Nersisyan joins Steve to cut through the cacophony of phony punditry trying to explain the 2024 election results. Spoiler alert: it’s economics. It’s always economics. Yeva points to the stark realities of inflation, highlighting the persistent rise in food and housing costs. She points out that while inflation is often cited as a primary concern, the real issue lies in how US economic policies have consistently failed to address the needs of the people, especially those at the lower end of the income scale. Voters are not dazzled by Wall Street’s success. The conversation goes into the failures of past administrations and takes a look at mistakes made during and after the height of the Covid pandemic. Promising policies were on the table, yet the monies were often spent in ways least helpful to the majority. As an MMT economist, Yeva has worked on comprehensive economic proposals that demonstrate the affordability of providing a green new deal, healthcare, and a job guarantee. The episode continually reinforces the necessity of a class perspective when looking at the failure of neoliberalism. Yeva Nersisyan is an associate professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. She received her B.A. in economics from Yerevan State University in Armenia, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is a macroeconomist working in the Modern Money Theory, Post-Keynesian, and Institutionalist traditions. Her research interests include banking and financial instability, and fiscal and monetary theory and policy. She has published a number of papers on the topics of shadow banking, fiscal policy, government deficits and debt, and the Green New Deal. Nersisyan is currently coediting the Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory with L. Randall Wray. Find her work at levyinstitute.org/publications/yeva-nersisyan 

"Colonized people have the right to resist." Economist and friend of the podcast Fadhel Kaboub talks with Steve about the effects of global hegemony and the ongoing attempts to shift the balance of power. They look at BRICS, though it’s perhaps too soon to predict its ultimate outcome and influence. Fadhel argues that a true multipolar world cannot emerge without placing the Global South at the center of economic decision-making, challenging the existing economic domination by the US and other nations. The history of colonial exploitation continues to affect the resource-rich region.Fadhel also addresses the ways in which Israel is carrying out the US agenda in Gaza. He points out that the world’s reaction is being influenced by the ready availability of direct information via social media. "The world didn't start on October 7th. There was a world before that. And there is a colonial project that was being built in Gaza and Palestine. "Every colonial case we've seen in Africa and the rest of the Global South created resistance movements and resistance. Some people resist in the streets, some people resist with little pebbles and stones, some people resist with weapons. Some people resist with their voice, some people resist with their pen. But it's resistance. And it's a legitimate right to resist.  "It's beginning to click for a lot of people that colonized people have the right to resist." Fadhel Kaboub is an associate professor of economics at Denison University (presently on leave) and the president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He's the author of Global South Perspectives on Substack.Find his work at kaboub.com and globalsouthperspectives.substack.com@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

In this discussion, Jason Hickel, a Professor of Global Justice and the Environment at the University of Oslo, dives deep into the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the U.S.'s complicity in ongoing imperialist strategies. He explores how Israel's actions reflect a broader capitalist agenda while drawing parallels with apartheid South Africa. Hickel critiques the two-state solution, advocating for democracy and equal rights for all, and emphasizes the shifting global power dynamics, particularly with the rise of BRICS. A thought-provoking conversation on justice and advocacy!

Author and labor studies professor Eric Blanc talks about worker-led union organizing and why it is superior to the dominant model of staff-intensive unionism.“You just can't get the type of mass movement we need by relying on staff.   Even the best staff.” Eric lays out some features of worker-to-worker organizing: Workers are training other workers in the skills they need for a successful union drive. Workers are self-organizing before they affiliate with a union. As a result, the relationship between worker and union is more of a partnership; not a relationship of deference. Workers have decision-making power for the drive. They decide on strategy, tactics, even, perhaps, a political stance.  “One of the crucial turning points... that forced Starbucks to come to the bargaining table earlier this year, was the union came out for very strong stance around Palestine and solidarity with Gaza. “And it created this knockoff effect that ended up leading to a mass boycott that hurt Starbucks to the tune of 11 billion dollars.  And there's just no way that if workers hadn't been in the driving seat of this campaign, that they would have done such a risky thing very early on.” Political activists will take away a lot from this conversation.Eric Blanc is director of the Worker-to-Worker Collaborative and co-founder of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. He is professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He is also author of the substack Labor Politics, and author of the forthcoming monograph, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (UC Press, 2025)