mmt

Jordan Klepper and Ronny Chieng tackle Jesse Watters labeling Trump being forced to sit in a courtroom for eight hours a day as cruel and unusual punishment and Joe Biden's controversial claim that his uncle was eaten by "cannibals" in New Guinea. Plus, Desi Lydic gives live updates on Trump's endless string of gag order hearings. In today's world, you need a car where you can sit in the front seat and record yourself going on an unhinged rant. That's where Rant-A-Car comes in. You provide the rant, we'll provide the car. Also, Stephanie Kelton, bestselling author of “The Deficit Myth” and professor of economics and public policy, talks to Jordan and Ronny about changing our understanding of government spending through MMT, or Modern Money Theory. She also explains how the national deficit is not a number to be fearful of, but can be put to good use, and how government finance is far more flexible than you might think.

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The Biden administration’s first legislative priority is a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package. It’s the kind of mega-package where the individual policies contained inside it — a $15 minimum wage, $1,400 checks, a huge child tax credit expansion, a $50 billion virus testing infrastructure — would be big deals on their own. But together, this would be one of the most consequential packages ever passed.

So there’s a lot to talk about here. And who better to talk about it with than my now-colleague Paul Krugman? We dig into the details of the plan and then spiral off into some other topics I wanted to run by the nearest Nobel laureate: the major rethinking of debt and deficits among left-of-center economists, the differences between Keynesians and Modern Monetary Theorists, how Krugman made a bunch of money off Bitcoin (it’s not how you’d think!), why progressives need a better theory of technological change, Krugman’s favorite indie bands of the mid-2000s, and more.

Mentioned in this episode: 

“Notes on the Coronacoma (Wonkish)” by Paul Krugman

“Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery” by Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai

“Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?” By Jason Furman and Lawrence Summers

“Public Debt: Fiscal and Welfare Costs in a Time of Low Interest Rates” by Olivier Blanchard

“America’s anti-democratic Senate, in one number” by Ian Millhiser

Book Recommendations: 

“Laundry Files” series by Charlie Stross

“Merchant Princes” series by Charlie Stross

“The Price of Peace” by Zachary Carter

Band Recommendations: 

The Be Good Tanyas

Larkin Poe

Reina del Cid

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, you heard a lot of talk about the US becoming like Greece unless the budget deficit were brought under control. However, these warnings proved to be unfounded. That being said, there are risks of a different variety. On the latest Odd Lots, we speak with the economist Michael Hudson on the risk of too much private sector debt, which could lead to permanently degraded consumption and investment.

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Officially, the US unemployment rate stands at 11%. This is higher than the worst levels of the financial crisis. And there are reasons to think that the actual state of unemployment is even worse. There’s a wide variety of views on how to address this, but what about the government simply guaranteeing everyone a right to a job? On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Pavlina R. Tcherneva, an economist at Bard College, and the author of The Case for a Job Guarantee about what the government can do right now to end the crisis.

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The amount of negative-yielding debt keeps climbing and now includes bonds issued by emerging market countries and some junk-rated companies. On this week's episode, we talk to Viktor Shvets, Macquarie's Head of Asia Strategy, about why interest rates keep getting lower and why that's a problem for the global economy and financial system. He argues that undermining the 'time value' of money–or the principle that money available now is worth more than money in the future because you can use it to earn additional money–won't lead to economic growth. In fact, he says, negative rates are going to end up leading to a rethink of modern capitalism and political society once people realize they have big consequences. He's also one of the few sell-side analysts who takes Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) pretty seriously.

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Cullen Roche, the author of the financial blog Pragmatic Capitalism, explains why he went from an adherent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to one of its loudest critics. 

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