Macro N Cheese

Our listeners know that Steve is a perpetual student -- his YouTube show is called The Rogue Scholar. He makes no apologies for past incomplete or erroneous thinking; he just soldiers on, deepening his understanding of the issues and course-correcting his analysis. He is a voracious reader and we can identify at least three books that led to this week’s episode: https://bookshop.org/a/82803/9780393651362 (The Divide), by Jason Hickel, https://bookshop.org/a/82803/9780872863293 (Blackshirts and Reds), by Michael Parenti, and https://bookshop.org/a/82803/9781913026028 (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism), by Vladimir Lenin.* They have all fed into his obsession with neocolonialism and the unholy trinity of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. The problem predates the modern neoliberal era: “Lenin talks extensively about taking out these loans. Now, mind you, the IMF wasn't around ... But this whole concept of global finance capital was already being talked about at the turn of the century. And what he showed