Radiolab15 Jan 2021

More Money Less Problems

Back in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning and the shelter-in-place orders brought the economy to a screeching halt, a quirky-but-clever idea to save the economy made its way up to some of the highest levels of government. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib proposed an ambitious relief bill to keep the country’s metaphorical lights on: recurring payments to people to help them stay afloat during the crisis. And the way Congress would pay for it? By minting two platinum $1 trillion coins. (You read that right).

In this episode, we take a jaunt through the evolution of our currency, from the gold-backed bills of the 19th century, to the most powerful computer at the Federal Reserve. And we chase an idea that torpedoes what we thought was a fundamental law of economics. Can we actually just print more money?

This episode was reported by Becca Bressler and was produced by Becca Bressler and Simon Adler.

Special thanks to Carlos Mucha, Warren Mosler, David Cay Johnston, Alex Goldmark, Bryant Urstadt, and Amanda Aronczyk.

To learn more about these ideas check out:

Stephanie Kelton's book The Deficit Myth

Jacob Goldstein's book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing and the Planet Money podcast

Betsey Stevenson's podcast Think Like an Economist

This website for more about #MintTheCoin

And for a fun quick read, check out this WIRED article about the surprising origin of the trillion dollar coin.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(670)

23 Weeks 6 Days

When Kelley Benham and her husband Tom French finally got pregnant, after many attempts and a good deal of technological help, everything was perfect. Until it wasn't. Their story raises questions tha...

11 Sep 1h 3min

60 Words

We’re coming up on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and it had us thinking about an episode we produced in 2014. It’s the story of one sentence, written in the hours after September 11th, 200...

4 Sep 58min

Dolly Parton's America: Sad Ass Songs

The world lost a legend recently, and we wanted in some small way to pay tribute to the great Dolly Parton. So we’re playing you an episode from a series we had a small part in back in 2017, Dolly Par...

28 Aug 1h 4min

Patient Zero

The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center—someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the story unfolds. In epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zer...

21 Aug 51min

Nigel and the Real Gannet

In 2016, Chris Bell, a ranger with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, was the sole human inhabitant of a small island off the west coast of the country, called Mana Island. He was there to take...

14 Aug 25min

Red Herring

It was the early '80s, the height of the Cold War, when something strange began happening off the coast of Sweden. The navy reported a mysterious sound deep below the surface of the ocean. Again, and ...

7 Aug 36min

The Shoe Thrower

When no one seems to be listening, how far do you go to be heard? In December 2008, George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad for a press conference. And at the very end of his remarks, a shoe c...

31 Jul 1h 17min

Return of Alpha Gal

Several years ago, in 2016, we told a story about Amy Pearl. For as long as she could remember, Amy loved meat in all its glorious cuts and marbled flavors. And then one day, for seemingly no reason, ...

24 Jul 55min