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Bard economists L. Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton weigh in on if and how principles of Modern Monetary Theory have been incorporated into the U.S. economy since the start of the pandemic. “The jobs guarantee would make a lot more sense than ramping up jobless benefits and paying airlines $300,000 per job,” or mailing checks to households that didn’t need the money, says Randall Wray, a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute in New York and coauthor of the first MMT textbook. “Even if in the beginning you couldn’t put the people to work because of safety concerns, you at least would be targeting the spending” to people who were out of work. L. Randall Wray is professor of economics and a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Stephanie Kelton is professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University and a research associate at the Levy Institute.

“Successful goal pursuit has positive downstream consequences for an individual’s self-confidence, health, and well-being, but perhaps self-regulation of daily eating behavior has some of the most obvious and direct impacts on health,” writes Assistant Professor of Psychology Richard Lopez. “Thus, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying daily eating behavior, with a special focus on regulatory strategies that are associated with healthier eating patterns, which not only provide nutritional benefits but can also reduce the risk of obesity and other health conditions.”

Madeline Firkser’s advice for activists and young job seekers is the same: Participate. Firkser spoke with the Wall Street Journal about how she pivoted after realizing her first job wasn’t a good fit. Firkser is the special projects associate at JustLeadershipUSA, a New York City–based criminal justice reform organization.

Michelle Murray, associate professor of political studies and director of global initiatives at Bard, comments on the new Comac C919 airplanes from China Eastern Airlines. Aiming to reduce China’s dependency on foreign technology, the People’s Republic has unveiled the new jets with plans to operate about 1,000 of them by the end of the year. But can the Comac C919 compete with the likes of Boeing and Airbus?
 

Cryptocurrency’s libertarian vision of operating outside the mainstream is giving way to the need to comply with regulators, writes Bard alumnus Adam Samson ’09, the markets news editor at the Financial Times. “One of the main draws for hardcore advocates of digital assets is that many theoretically sit outside the reach of government and monetary authorities that oversee activities in conventional markets,” Samson writes. “While the dream of a decentralised financial system is still alive and well in the crypto community, what has actually developed is an industry full of very large financial companies.”

Lebanon is experiencing what the World Bank has described as one of the worst economic depressions in modern history, and a massive political crisis following the deadly explosion at the Port of Beirut last August. Ziad Abu-Rish talks about the lack of accountability for the political class in Lebanon, and its culpability for the Beirut port explosion and the country’s economic collapse. Ziad Abu-Rish is visiting associate professor of human rights and director of the new MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard.