Reviving Growth Keynesianism Robert Manduca and Nic Johnson

For this episode we talk to Herman Mark Schwartz on a wide range of issues - from biopolitics, industrial policy, and the New Cold War political economy to why "financialization" is a limited analytical frame for recent history. Mark argues that conflict between firms over profits is just as important - if not moreso - than conflict between capital and labor over the consumption share. The shift from midcentury "Fordism" to today's three-tiered economic structure happened as the result of a "Kalecki moment" in the late-1960s and early-1970s: workers, women, and the third world wanted more, and corporate strategy transformed to meet, and rebuff, their challenges.


*** LINKS ***

You can find his faculty profile here: https://politics.virginia.edu/people/profile/schwartz

And the articles we discussed today here: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/author/herman-mark-schwartz/

and here: https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/manufacturing-stagnation/

Jamie Martin joins us to discuss his new book *The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance.* After the first World War, the tools  that European empires had used to govern their colonies' economies were applied to Europe itself. To stabilize that respatialization politically, the victorious powers had to invent new institutions - what Martin calls "legitimation machines" - to justify treating European countries like colonies. The new institutions were supposed to legitimize global economic governance, but were castigated as "meddlers" as often as not. We ask him what we would have to do to escape the imperial roots of today's institutions.


*** LINKS ***

Follow Jamie Martin on twitter @jamiemartin2

Faculty page: https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/jamie-martin

Book page: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674976542

Interview mentioned:
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/the-rotten-roots-of-global-economic-governance/

Wanting more? Check out other interviews Martin has done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoOE3Qg_zN4&ab_channel=TheMajorityReportw%2FSamSeder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RBIpteLAbk&ab_channel=HarvardBookStore

Eric Monnet joins us to discuss his book *Controlling Credit: Central Banking and the Planned Economy in Postwar France, 1948-1973.* Prior to the neoliberalizations of the late 20th century, most central banks in Europe worked very differently than they do today. Interest rates played less of a role than credit controls in a more concentrated, segmented, and statist banking system. Representatives from all across the economy  - farmers, workers, industrialists - sat on important decision making boards that oversaw credit policy "in the general interest." A vision for "nationalizing" credit brought together right-wing Bonapartists, Gaulists, and neo-Simonian planners focused on efficiency with left-wing forces of the popular front focused more on social justice. But starting in the late 1960s, technocratic pressure to liberalize financial markets from economists and the bureaucracy overwhelmed the merely "particular" social interests which were embedded and represented in the French credit system.

Andrew Elrod from seven episodes back also joins the team!

For this episode, we talk with Nina Eichacker, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Rhode Island. We discuss her wide ranging work on green industrial policy, the politics of Eurozone monetary policy, and two pre-pandemic books about American socialism.

*** LINKS ***

Read more of Nina Eichacker's work on her web page: https://ninaephd.org/

Follow her on twitter: @nina_econ

"The Case for More Solyndras" https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/19/1012302/solyndra-climate-change-industrial-policy-opinion/

"Institutions, Liquidity Preference, and Reserve Asset Holding in the Eurozone Core and Periphery Before and After Crises: Some Stylized Facts" https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/qprm3/

"A Political Economy of Fiscal Space: Political Structures, Bond Markets, and Monetary Accommodation of Government Spending Potential at Municipal, National, and International Levels" https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/yxjh5/

"Can America Truly Turn Socialist?" https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05775132.2019.1694274

Although we did not discuss it, also be sure to check out her NOEMA article with Jason Oakes: "Fight Inflation with Surplus, not Scarcity" https://www.noemamag.com/fight-inflation-with-surplus-not-scarcity/

For this episode, Christy Thornton joins us to talk about her book *Revolution in Development.* It tells the story of the revolutionary Mexican state's exclusion from the international financial system in the early 20th century, its new conception of credit and push for multilateral development lending in the interwar period, and its ultimately tragic defense of the Bretton Wood institutions in the postwar period. Along the way she asks us to think about hegemony in the world-system, agency in the global south prior to the much-hyped moment in the 1970s, and Mexico's revolution in development as a cautionary tale about compromise with dominant institutions.

Thank you to our intern, Keegan Hill, for helping to edit this episode.

*** LINKS ***

Christy Thornton's faculty page: https://soc.jhu.edu/directory/christy-thornton/

Buy *Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy* here: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520297166/revolution-in-development

For this episode, we talk with Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America. We discuss some of the myths about inflation in the 1970s, the forgotten inflation of early 1950s, how monetary policy really works, and Paul Volcker's stolen valor.

Follow Skanda on twitter @IrvingSwisher and Employ America @employamerica

Read more about Skanda and EA's work here: https://www.employamerica.org/

For more on what we talk about in the show specifically, see:

https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/how-the-fed-affects-inflation/

https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/expecting-inflation-the-case-of-the-1950s/

https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/beyond-the-phillips-curve-a-dynamic-approach-to-communicating-assessments-of-maximum-employment/


*** OTHER LINKS ***

Jeremy Rudd (2021) - "Why Do We Think That Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation? (And Should We?)," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-062. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021062pap.pdf

Cambridge Capital Controvercy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_capital_controversy

Jay Powell - "Monetary Policy in a Changing Economy" - https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20180824a.htm

Isabella Weber - "Could strategic price controls help fight inflation?" - https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/inflation-price-controls-time-we-use-it

Great Grain Robbery - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_United_States%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_wheat_deal

Medicare and inflation:

Employ America - https://www.employamerica.org/researchreports/inflation-and-healthcare/

San Francisco Fed - https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2016/may/medicare-payment-cuts-affect-core-inflation/

Chicago Fed - https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2018/407