Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine.

My guest today is economist Grace Blakely.

She previously was the economics commentator for the new statement,

served as a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

She is now a staff writer at Tribune Magazine and the host of its World to Win podcast.

She is the author of two books, Stolen, How to Save the World from Financialization,

and most recently the Corona Crash, how the pandemic will change capitalism.

A review of Stolen in Open democracy says that in Blakely's

hands, the history of the modern capitalist economy where we are, how we got here, what's next,

is told with renewed clarity, novel insight, and a stirring sense of the urgency of our times.

Grace Blakely, thank you so much for talking to me.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's great to be here.

Some of us on the left shy away from the math.

Some of us are not.

You are, I would describe you as to tell me if this is unfair, a Marxist finance nerd.

I like that description. That's great. Yeah, that is certainly one part of my,

my, you know, public persona, I suppose. Well, I, you know, I don't mean nerd disparagingly.

Nerds are the people who are so fascinated by a topic and every in and out of it.

I don't want to call you a wonk because that is genuinely disparaging.

Yeah, of course.

I like nerd.

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