Category: Briefings

We begin with the emerging threat to the US economy Trump and his co-president Musk pose following their disastrous amateurism in trying to shut down the government to get their way as we now face their plans to abolish the debt limit to give away the treasury to their billionaire buddies, blowing up the deficit when already the biggest item in the federal budget is servicing a ballooning debt. Joining us is Robert Hockett, who has first-hand experience working at the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and continues to consult for a number of US federal, state and local legislators and regulators. He drafted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” resolution for the House of Representatives and officially advises her on economic policy. He is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law and a Professor of Public Policy at Cornell University and his latest books are Money from Nothing Or, Why We Should Stop Worrying About Debt and Learn to Love the Federal Reserve, Financing the Green New Deal: A Plan of Action and Renewal, The Citizens’ Ledger: Digitizing Our Money, Democratizing Our Finance and most recently Spread the Fed: Distributed Central Banking for Productive Monetary Policy.

An Even More Dysfunctional Congress With Trump and Musk in Charge of Both Houses?

Then we look into how our broken congress is likely to be even more dysfunctional with Trump and Musk in charge of both houses and speak with James Thurber, the University Distinguished Professor of Government and Founder and Former Director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, Washington, D.C. He is the author of numerous books and more than eighty articles and chapters on Congress, interest groups and lobbying, and campaigns and elections and his books include Congress and Diaspora Politics: The Influence of Ethnic and Foreign Lobbying and, most recently, Campaigns and Elections American Style.

The Foreign Policy Damage Musk is Already Doing

Then finally we assess the damage Musk is doing beyond his meddling in our domestic politics as the “Master of the Universe” tweets out his foreign policy preferences, endorsing the neo-Nazi AfD party claiming “Only the AfD can save Germany”, just ahead of next year’s elections on February 23rd. Joining us is Robert Benson, a senior policy analyst for National Security and International Policy at The Center for American Progress. Previously he worked as a global relations consultant at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and as a research fellow at the Social Science Center in Berlin.