Hi, this is Kevin Fong, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of humans landing on the moon,

I've made a podcast with some of the people involved.

13 minutes to the moon from the BBC World Service is available now,

and I'll be back at the end of this podcast to tell you more about it.

But now, here it is.

Thank you. to tell you more about it. But now, here it is. Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. I'm Manuela Saragossa. Coming up, the magic

money tree. Some say it doesn't exist. But what if it does? What if governments could spend much more

than they actually do? It dawned on me that the government doesn't need to borrow money to be able to

spend. We have done immense damage to our economies by scaring ourselves silly over government

debt and deficits. Coming up in this business daily from the BBC, do we worry too much

about countries going bust?

It's a wisdom widely accepted in economics that governments should not spend more money than they

earn. They should instead try

to balance the books and not borrow too much, keep their deficits as small as possible.

But an economic theory known as MMT is turning all that on its head. MMT stands for modern

monetary theory, but some people call it the magic money tree as a bit of a joke.

And there are plenty of politicians now taking it seriously, including US Democrat Party

politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So what exactly is MMT or modern

monetary theory? Well, it was first put forward by a hedge fund founder called Warren Mosler back in the 1990s.

I caught up with Mr Mosler by phone

to have him explain MMT,

so get ready to put on your geeky economics hat and concentrate.

...