Hi, I'm Ashley, one of the producers here at Pitchfork Economics.

Today, we're re-releasing one of our most popular episodes all about modern monetary theory.

MMT is an attempt to accurately describe how government debt and complex financial systems actually work,

and it can help us responsibly use our resources.

No one is more knowledgeable on the subject than returning guest Professor Stephanie Kelton.

On this episode originally released in 2020, Kelton explains the myths surrounding MMT and

what a new understanding of the budget could do for our economy.

We hope you enjoy.

We've been running an experiment in MMT for the last 20 or 30 years.

I mean, the country went into the crisis with 20 trillion in deficit and virtually no inflation.

We were already doing it, just calling it a different thing. Well, that's how we think about deficits.

There's something wrong with them.

There's something you want to eliminate.

They're a problem.

I'll tell you what worries me right now, that we may let the deficit get too small. From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.

I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.

Well, Goldie, today we get to interview the woman of the moment, our friend Stephanie Kelton,

who is one of the nation's biggest proponents of modern monetary theory.

And it's the moment because one of the things that MMT says is that federal debts and deficits don't really matter in and of themselves.

The deficit doesn't matter. It's inflation we should be looking at.

Are we maxing out the resources in the economy rather than these fictional numbers about dollars

...