This is the Tom Hartman program.

And welcome back, Professor Richard Wolff is with us, the Economist, Professor of Economics

and Fact, co-founder of Democracy at Work.info, author and numerous books is most recent.

Now available as an e-book as well, the sickness is the system when capitalism fails to save

us from pandemics or itself, Democracy at Work.info, RDWolff with 2Fs.com, and you can tweet

him at ProfWolff with 2Fs.

Dr. Wolff, welcome back to the program.

I'm reading this article in the Fiscal Times in which Janet Yellen says that at the end

of next month, the end of July, Congress is going to have to raise the debt ceiling.

This is something that goes back to the fifties, as I recall, one of the periodic Republican

hysteria is about national debt.

And if they fail to raise that debt ceiling, it will be to use her word.

This is the Treasury Secretary, Catastrophic.

Can you give us a kind of Econ 101?

What is the debt ceiling?

Why does it matter?

How would it be catastrophic and why are Republicans playing political games with us?

Yes, it's a kind of recurring story in American history, particularly the last, the

couple of decades.

Okay, first of all, the debt ceiling.

That is the limit put on by the Congress of the United States, limiting the total amount

of money that the federal government can borrow.

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