Macro N Cheese

Stuart Medina is a founder and current president of Red MMT Spain. He joins Steve this week to talk about conditions in Spain after two years of the pandemic, more than two decades as a member of the eurozone, and nearly half a century since the death of General Franco, dictator from 1939 to 1975, when Spain became a parliamentary monarchy. In the 1960s and 70s Spain had a fairly successful state-led industrialization policy. Franco’s death coincides with the ideological victory of neoliberalism. The elites turned to deregulation (“let the market decide”) and shut down all the public banks. When asked to summarize the situation in Spain today, Medina brings up the astounding unemployment figure of 15%, which doesn’t begin to reflect the reality. In 2011 it was as high as 27%, a rate which the US hasn’t seen since the Great Depression. But we are suffering those unemployment rates currently, as we speak. And when you look at the details, when you look at the youth unemployment rate there, we're talking of