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PODCAST

Funding the Future

Richard Murphy and occasional friends talking about everything you need to know to understand the economy, tax, finance and how we fund our future.

education politics

All Episodes

9:34

Israel is a rogue state

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/26

Israel is a rogue state. Its wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran have no justification in international law. More than 70,000 civilians have died in Gaza alone. Ambulances and crews are being deliberately targeted in Lebanon. These are war crimes — and the world has seen this before, in apartheid South Africa.What a full boycott must include: End all defence agreements and halt armed supplies immediately Ban trade, block financial flows, restrict travel Break sporting, artistic, and

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9:30

A finanacial crash is coming

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/25

The FTSE 100 and S&P 500 are near record highs. The real economy is deteriorating. And the Bank of England's Deputy Governor for Financial Stability, Sarah Breeden, has now said publicly what most politicians will not: a stock market crash is coming, and the financial system is not ready for it. This crash could be worse than 2008 because of overvalued stock markets, the AI bubble, an overexpanded and at-risk shadow banking system and the Iran energy shock, which the International Energy Agency

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18:28

What I would do as chancellor

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/24

What would I do on my first day in office as Chancellor to create an economy in the UK based on the thinking that modern monetary theory makes possible? In this video, I explain why MMT does not need to be “implemented” in Britain, because it already describes how government money works. The real task is to change policy. In that case, I set out six first-day reforms to: Replace false fiscal rules Launch a targeted public investment programme Create a policy that delivers secure,

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14:24

Should Bank of England independence end?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/23

Should the Bank of England control UK interest rates, or should that power return to elected government? In this video, I argue that the Bank of England's independence was never a neutral, technocratic decision. It was a deliberate political project, rooted in far-right Public Choice Theory, designed to strip democratic control away from ordinary people and hand it to unelected bankers. Since 1997, the Bank of England has been given a single tool, control of the base interest rate, to chase a single

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57:38

MMT and the job guarantee: essential partners?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/22

In this podcast, I speak with William Thompson to explore one of the most important internal debates within Modern Monetary Theory. We agree on the fundamentals: that governments with their own currency can fund full employment, and that the real constraints are resources, not money. But we disagree on how to achieve that goal. William makes the case that the job guarantee is central to MMT as a price anchor, an automatic stabiliser, and a mechanism for delivering dignity in work. I argue that while

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12:21

The global system has failed

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/21

What is next for the world? I think we may already know the answer — and it is deeply troubling. In this video, I argue that the conflict driven by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing the global economy towards a crisis on the scale of World War II. Not in terms of deaths, but in terms of systemic economic breakdown. This is not a short-term shock. It is a structural rupture. The warnings are already being issued. The International Monetary Fund, alongside firms such

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23:03

Will your pension fail?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/20

The UK pension system is built on a false idea: that savings and financial assets can guarantee security in old age. In this video, I argue that pensions do not ultimately depend on money saved in the past, but on the productive capacity of those still at work in the present. That is the real pension contract, and it is one the UK has steadily abandoned. I explain how the state pension once reflected this collective responsibility, why Thatcher’s reforms changed the whole theory of pensions, and

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48:49

Is capitalism undermining democracy?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/19

In this podcast, I discuss with John Christensen how capitalism and democracy have come apart — and why this was not an accident. Together, we explore the growing fracture between democratic accountability and economic power, and the role of James Buchanan in shaping the ideas behind it. Public choice theory, which he created, claims to defend freedom, but in practice, we argue that it works to constrain democracy and protect wealth from challenge. As a result, we examine the idea of the

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12:53

The Pope vs Trump

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/18

Donald Trump is waging a war that will actively harm the poorest people on earth, and the world's political leaders are almost entirely silent in response. The exception is the Chicago-born Pope, who has issued fearless, gospel-based criticism of Trump's actions, while the UK government plans a state visit to the USA for King Charles, Labour's Deputy Prime Minister is meeting JD Vance, and the new Archbishop of Canterbury has said nothing worth noting. This is not a failure of courage

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9:10

We need freedom from fear

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/17

The core purpose of government is to provide freedom from fear. That means freedom from physical threat, Freedom from want, freedom from discrimination and freedom from the deliberate chaos that destroys the social fabric on which democracy depends. That is what government is for. And right now, in the UK and across the Western world, government is doing the precise opposite. The far-right has a strategy. It is not chaos by accident. It is chaos by design. Disorder is their desire. Crisis creates

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12:49

Who is Britain's real enemy?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/16

Lord George Robertson - a former Labour defence secretary, and former Secretary General of NATO - has made a claim about the UK's defence capability that is not merely wrong; it is dangerously wrong. His argument is that the Iran War now justifies higher defence spending, and that social security is the obstacle standing in the way of a proper defence strategy for Britain. This video explains why that argument is the precise inversion of the truth. Defence is not about weapons, budgets, or

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13:22

MMT v neoliberalism. Which wins?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/15

We are heading into an economic crisis on a scale comparable to the aftermath of a World War. Supply chains are fracturing. Energy costs are rising. Shortages of fuel, food, and raw materials are already visible. And the economic framework that has governed the West for the last 45 years - neoliberalism - is not just incapable of managing what is coming. It is designed to make it worse. This is not an accident. Neoliberalism deliberately keeps people unemployed. That is not a side effect - it is

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9:12

Orbán is out

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/14

Viktor Orbán has been defeated in Hungary. After sixteen years in power, during which authoritarian rule, rampant corruption, the systematic dismantling of Hungary's free press and independent judiciary became the norm, and the deliberate undermining of the European Union and Ukraine took place, the Hungarian people have delivered a supermajority to the country's opposition. Orbán is gone. And this matters far beyond Hungary's borders. This was not supposed to happen. Orbán was the template for the

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16:45

What's the stock market myth?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/13

Just about everything you have been told about stock markets and the UK economy is wrong. Politicians talk nonsense about stock markets. Financial advisors repeat it. The BBC reports FTSE 100 movements as economic news, and economics textbooks embed a set of false thinking in students' heads. But the truth is that while the City of London likes to claim that stock markets are essential to saving, investment and economic growth, that is not true.In this video, I challenge the claim that

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8:46

Austerity won't work now

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/12

We are living through a wartime economic crisis. And our government is choosing not to act. Not because it can't. Because it won't. The claim that the UK cannot afford to respond decisively to this crisis is a fiction — a deliberate political choice dressed up as fiscal responsibility. The UK government issues its own currency. It cannot run out of money in the same way that a household or a business can. The real constraint is not financial. It is political will. And right now, Rachel Reeves and

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44:33

Economic breakdown: coming our way?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/11

I recently sat down with Steve Keen to explore a deeply uncomfortable truth: the global economic system is far more fragile than mainstream economics admits. In the resulting conversation, we explained why supply chains are not resilient, why energy underpins everything, and why even small disruptions can trigger systemic collapse, which we think might be coming our way, soon. This is not a temporary shock. It is a structural failure, and the policies we rely on may be making things worse. As a

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12:20

Why has the US had to beg for peace with Iran?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/10

The United States want to start peace negotiations with Iran because diplomacy prevailed. It did so because it had no choice. It is running out of weapons. In the course of a few weeks, the US military has used somewhere between eight and ten years' worth of Tomahawk missile production. The United States can manufacture approximately one hundred Tomahawk missiles per year. It has fired many hundreds, and possibly a thousand, in this conflict alone. Those stocks cannot be replenished quickly. They

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9:06

A new global power order?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/09

Yesterday might mark a turning point in global history, and not because of what happened, but because of what did not. For the first time in my life, I found myself relieved that genocide had been avoided. That alone tells us how dangerous this moment has become. We are now told there is an Iran peace deal. The United States is presenting this as a success. It is not. Strip away the rhetoric, and this looks like a retreat. After huge cost and escalation, the US has stepped back from a weaker

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6:14

This deal won't hold

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/08

Markets are celebrating a Middle East peace deal. They shouldn't be. This is not peace; it is a US strategic retreat, repackaged as diplomacy. And like Neville Chamberlain's declaration of "peace in our time" in 1938, the optimism is not only premature but also dangerous. Donald Trump agreed to this plan because he had no choice. He had to back down from the genocide he threatened. But what if this “peace” is nothing more than a pause in a conflict that has not been resolved? In this video, I

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10:46

Are we going backwards?

Funding the Future ·

2026/04/08

What happens when reason stops mattering in politics? We are living through the answer in real time. For 45 years, neoliberalism has been the dominant force in Western democracies, and in that time, it has done something far more dangerous than redistribute wealth upwards. It has systematically dismantled the intellectual and ethical foundations that make democratic politics possible. The Enlightenment gave us something extraordinary: the idea that reason, evidence, and the equal moral worth of

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733 results

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