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Carlos García Hernández, author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism Through Modern Monetary Theory, joins Steve to revisit their discussion of topics covered in his earlier visits to the podcast.

Their dialogue wrestles with a deceptively simple question: if we already have the monetary capacity to guarantee jobs, housing, and public goods, why does capitalism still dominate? Through a sharp exchange, Steve and Carlos explore whether Modern Monetary Theory can be a pathway to socialism or whether deeper structural barriers rooted in class power and imperial dominance stand in the way.

While there’s broad agreement on the failures of neoliberal capitalism and the need to subordinate economic power to political control, tensions emerge around strategy and theory. Carlos leans toward a vision of “fiat socialism” centered on access to goods and services and the transformative potential of monetary sovereignty, while Steve pushes harder on the limits of education alone, emphasizing class struggle, ideology, and the near-impossibility of reform within existing institutions.

The result is less a blueprint and more an investigation that forces us to confront not just what’s possible, but why it isn’t happening.

Carlos García Hernández is the founder and director of Lola Books, a publishing house that has introduced MMT to Spanish and German readers. He is the author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the Goals of Socialism Through Modern Monetary Theory.

@Carlos_G_H_ on X

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Thomas Fazi joins Steve to dissect the geopolitical and ideological structures that have rendered Europe strategically subordinate to the United States. Thomas argues that NATO’s true purpose, from its inception, was not to defend Europe but to ensure its vassalization by keeping "the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down." He contends that the war in Ukraine was a deliberately provoked conflict designed by US planners to sever Europe’s economic and energy ties with Russia, forcing the EU into deeper dependency on American energy and military infrastructure.

The conversation goes into the weaponization of media narratives and the management of dissent through censorship and “acceptable” politics, connecting the cultural Cold War to today’s crisis of hegemony. Ukraine, Greenland, and Europe’s energy self-sabotage aren’t anomalies, they’re features of an imperial system that requires subordination abroad and confusion at home.

Thomas Fazi is a “journalist/writer/translator/socialist.” who lives in Italy. He is the co-director of Standing Army (2010), an award-winning feature-length documentary on US military bases featuring Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky; and the author of The Battle for Europe: How an Elite Hijacked a Continent – and How We Can Take It Back (2014) and Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (co-authored with Bill Mitchell, 2017). His articles have appeared in numerous online and printed publications.

Find his work on Substack: thomasfazi.com

@battleforeurope on X

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One of our favorite guests is back to talk about the central problem facing much of the Global South. It is not simply bad policy or weak leadership, but the persistence of colonial economic structures. He explains that many countries, especially in Africa, remain trapped in roles designed by empire: exporters of cheap raw materials, importers of finished goods, and sites for low-value production. Political independence did not end these structures, and debt, IMF intervention, and external pressure have only deepened the trap.

"Colonialism and its economic structures were not designed for development, they were not designed for democracy, they were not designed for justice, they were not designed to produce a just transition or human rights or any of these things. If anything, colonialism and its economic structures were hierarchical, abusive, violent, extractive."

Fadhel was one of the economists we originally turned to for our education in MMT. In this conversation with Steve he makes the case that MMT is not a theory of everything. Issues of race, class, and colonialism require their own lenses. Whether the issue is climate change, migration, development, or reparations, the entry point has to be the lived material conditions. MMT becomes crucial when the question turns to how to mobilize resources, avoid debt traps, and finance transformation without inflationary collapse.

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is a Tunisian American economist. He is an Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University and president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. He’s the author of Global South Perspectives on Substack. In 2025, Dr. Kaboub was recognized by the New Africa Magazine in the top 100 most influential Africans under the Thinkers and Opinion Shapers category. He currently serves a two-year term on the United Nations High Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs at UN DESA.

Find his work at globalsouthperspectives.substack.com

@FadhelKaboub on X