In late September I was scheduled to attend a family wedding in Chicago. I didn't want to simply fly in to O'Hare one day and fly back to New York City two or three days later; been there, done that. So instead, after the wedding events, I rented a car at ORD and headed west on my first multi-day auto trip in years -- a trip that would take me through four of the U.S. states in which I had never set foot: Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.
In advance of this trip I emailed a former co-worker and veteran "Perl guy" who lives in Omaha and whom I hadn't seen since the Before Times. Internet search called my attention to the fact that in recent years this friend, Jay Hannah, had taken up podcasting. One of his older podcasts briefly mentioned Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which, as readers of Political Economy Watch know, has become my avocation since the Before Times. I asked Jay if he would be interested in interviewing me as a quasi-expert for an episode of his podcast. He agreed. We conducted that interview in the professional studios of Webberized in Omaha on October 1. You can access this podcast at these locations:
... and, as they say on public radio, "wherever you get your podcasts."
Some caveats
Podcasting has become incredibly professionalized over the past decade, so the podcasts you are probably most familiar with have been purged of verbal garbage, edited and polished until they get that "NPR nice" sheen. Not this one; this is pretty raw. If you can listen to it at an accelerated rate, do so.
The reason for the rawness is my own inexperience with podcasting conversations as a medium. When I give a presentation at a conference, I script my talks completely. That helps me eliminate verbal garbage and brings the talk in on time. This podcast was a very freeform conversation; I didn't refer to my prepared notes until then last fifteen minutes or so.
Hence, if listening to podcasts is your thing and you want to learn more about MMT from podcasts, once you've heard this one you should checkout one of several MMT-flavored podcast series such as Christian Reilly and Patricia Pino, Jeff Epstein's Activist #MMT, Steve Grumbine's Macro and Cheese or AppliedMMT.
For those of you who already are familiar with MMT, I'd appreciate feedback in the Comments as to any aspects of MMT which I mischaracterized in my comments.
Rough Guide to Topics Covered
5:00 - 22:00 Jim's long and winding road to MMT
24:00 2022 Levy Institute Summer Seminar on MMT, Minsky and Godley
28:00 Jay asks Jim about similarities/differences between Georgism and MMT
39:00 The saga of Warren Mosler
48:00 The 2023 Silicon Valley Bank failure
57:00 Jay asks Jim, "Why are you not a Georgist?" Jim replies that he has previous loyalties
1:00:00 Will anyone admit to being a neoliberal?
1:04:00 Keynes: How to Pay for the War; Nersisyan and Wray: How to Pay for the Green New Deal
Nice chat with Jay there, thanks for sharing.