Policy Challenges for the New US President
EPS Symposium
Program
Welcoming Remarks: James K. Galbraith — Economists for Peace and Security
Session One: Global Security: Russia, China, Europe and Latin America (video)
Chair: Richard Kaufman — Bethesda Research Institute
Mark Weisbrot — Center for Economic and Policy Research
Matias Vernengo — Bucknell University
Carl Conetta — Project on Defense Alternatives
Keynote: Bill Goodfellow — Center for International Policy (video)
Session Two: Jobs, Wages, Health & Social Security: What Next? (video)
Chair: James K. Galbraith — Economists for Peace & Security
Josh Bivens — Economic Policy Institute
Nancy Altman — Social Security Works
Pavlina Tcherneva — Levy Economics Institute
Stephanie Kelton — University of Missouri – Kansas City
Session Three: An Agenda for Growth, Clean Energy and Climate Stabilization (video)
Chair: Jeremy Richardson — Union of Concerned Scientists
David Colt — Efficient Resource Management
Eban Goodstein — Bard Center for Environmental Policy
Andrew Holland — American Security Project
Gallery
Participant Biographies
Nancy Altman
Nancy J. Altman has a thirty-five year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is co-director of Social Security Works and co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition and campaign. She is the author of The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).
From 1983 to 1989, Ms. Altman was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and taught courses on private pensions and Social Security at the Harvard Law School. In 1982, she was Alan Greenspan’s assistant in his position as chairman of the bipartisan commission that developed the 1983 Social Security amendments. From 1977 to 1981, she was a legislative assistant to Senator John C. Danforth (R-MO), and advised the Senator with respect to Social Security issues. From 1974 to 1977, she was a tax lawyer with Covington & Burling, where she handled a variety of private pension matters.
Ms. Altman is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of beneficiary rights. She is also on the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a membership organization of over 800 of the nation’s leading experts on social insurance. In the mid-1980’s, she was on the organizing committee and the first board of directors of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Ms. Altman has an A.B. from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Josh Bivens
Josh Bivens is the Research and Policy Director at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). His areas of research include macroeconomics, fiscal and monetary policy, the economics of globalization, social insurance, and public investment. He frequently appears as an economics expert on news shows, including the Public Broadcasting Service’s “NewsHour,” the “Melissa Harris-Perry” show on MSNBC, WAMU’s “The Diane Rehm Show,” American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” and programs of the BBC.
As a leading policy analyst, Bivens regularly testifies before the U.S. Congress on fiscal and monetary policy, the economic impact of regulations, and other issues. He has also provided analyses for the annual meeting of Project LINK of the United Nations and the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Bivens is the author of Failure by Design: The Story behind America’s Broken Economy (EPI and Cornell University Press) and Everybody Wins Except for Most of Us: What Economics Really Teachers About Globalization (EPI). He is the co-author of The State of Working America, 12th Edition (EPI and Cornell University Press) and a co-editor of Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: Labor Markets and Informal Work in Egypt, El Salvador, India, Russia and South Africa (EPI).
His academic articles have appeared in the International Review of Applied Economics, the Journal of Economic Issues and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Bivens has also provided peer-reviewed articles to several edited collections, including The Handbook of the Political Economy of Financial Crises (Oxford University Press), Public Economics in the United States: How the Federal Government Analyzes and Influences the Economy (ABC-CLIO), and Restoring Shared Prosperity: A Policy Agenda from Leading Keynesian Economists (AFL-CIO and the Macroeconomic Policy Institute).
Prior to becoming Research and Policy Director, Bivens was a research economist at EPI. Before coming to EPI, he was an assistant professor of economics at Roosevelt University and provided consulting services to Oxfam America. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland at College Park.
David Colt
David Colt is an expert on strategic financial solutions for energy companies and assets. David established Efficient Resource Management (ERM) in 2011 as a boutique advisory firm serving leading energy investors, developers, and technology companies. At ERM, he has leveraged a diverse investor base to deliver over $400 million in structured products and vendor programs to solar, energy efficiency, trucking, energy storage, natural gas transportation, and electric vehicle infrastructure projects and companies.
Prior to ERM, David was the Senior Analyst on the founding team at Richard Branson's Carbon War Room, where he led research on business solutions to global-scale climate change challenges. Previously, he was an energy analyst at the Prometheus Institute and Atlas Capital Investments, where he covered global solar, fuel cell, and trucking sectors.
David serves as an advisor to innovative energy startups and nonprofits, and as a mentor in Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20 program. He is a graduate of Reed College where he wrote his thesis on cost reductions in the US solar market.
Carl Conetta
Carl Conetta is director of the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). He was a founding co-director of PDA beginning in 1991. Formerly he was a Research Fellow of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS) and also served for three years as editor of the IDDS journal Defense and Disarmament Alternatives, and the Arms Control Reporter.
While with PDA, Mr. Conetta has authored and co-authored numerous reports on security issues and has published in Defense News, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, NOD and Conversion Journal, the Boston Review, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the American Sentinel, Security Dialogue, and Hawk, the journal of the Royal Air Force Staff College of the United Kingdom. Mr. Conetta has also made presentations at the Pentagon, US State Department, US House Armed Services Committee, Army War College, National Defense University, UNIDIR, and other governmental and nongovernmental institutions in the United States and abroad. He is a frequent expert commentator on radio and TV.
James K. Galbraith
James K. Galbraith teaches economics and a variety of other subjects at the LBJ School. He holds degrees from Harvard (B.A. magna cum laude, 1974) and Yale (Ph.D. in economics, 1981). He studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge in 1974–1975, and then served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1985. He directed the LBJ School's Ph.D. Program in Public Policy from 1995 to 1997. He directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group based at the LBJ School. Galbraith maintains several outside connections, including serving as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and as Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. He writes a column called "Econoclast" for Mother Jones, and occasional commentary in many other publications, including The Texas Observer, The American Prospect, and The Nation. He is an occasional commentator for Public Radio International's Marketplace.
Bill Goodfellow
Bill Goodfellow was one of the founders of the Center for International Policy in 1975 and has been its executive director since 1985. Goodfellow oversees fundraising, program development and the day-to-day operations of the Center. During the late 1970s, Goodfellow and his colleagues at the Center successfully lobbied for legislation that requires the executive branch to consider a country’s human rights record before providing economic and military aid.
In the 1980s, Goodfellow promoted negotiations to end the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He worked closely with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and championed the Arias/Contadora peace process in the United States. He attended every Central American summit meeting and spoke and published articles about the peace process, which silenced the guns in Central America and earned President Arias the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987. From 1972 to 1975, Goodfellow was an associate with the Indochina Resource Center, a Washington-based non-profit that provided the anti-war movement with academic research about Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Eban Goodstein
B.A. (Geology) Williams College; Ph.D. (Economics) University of Michigan. Goodstein directs two national educational initiatives on global warming: C2C and The National Climate Seminar. In recent years, he has coordinated climate education events at over 2500 colleges, universities, high schools and other institutions across the country. Goodstein is the author of a college textbook, Economics and the Environment, (John Wiley and Sons: 2010) now in its sixth edition; Fighting for Love in the Century of Extinction: How Passion and Politics Can Stop Global Warming (University Press of New England: 2007); and The Trade-off Myth: Fact and Fiction about Jobs and the Environment. (Island Press: 1999). Articles by Goodstein have appeared in among other outlets, The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Land Economics, Ecological Economics, and Environmental Management. His research has been featured in The New York Times, Scientific American, Time, Chemical and Engineering News, The Economist, USA Today, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He serves on the editorial board of Sustainability: The Journal of Record, and Environment, Workplace and Employment, and is on the Steering Committee of Economics for Equity & the Environment. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Follett Corporation, and is on the advisory committee for Chevrolet's Clean Energy Initiative.
Stephanie Kelton
Stephanie Kelton, Ph.D. is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She served as Chief Economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee (minority staff) in 2015 and then became an Economic Advisor to the Bernie 2016 presidential campaign. She was the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the top-ranked blog New Economic Perspectives and a member of the TopWonks network of the nation’s best thinkers. In 2016, POLITICO recognized her as one of the 50 people across the country who is most influencing the political debate.
Her book, The State, The Market and The Euro (2001) predicted the debt crisis in the Eurozone, and her subsequent work correctly predicted that: (1) Quantitative Easing (QE) wouldn’t lead to high inflation; (2) government deficits wouldn’t cause a spike in U.S. interest rates; (3) the S&P downgrade wouldn’t cause investors to flee Treasuries; (4) the U.S. would not experience a European-style debt crisis.
She is a regular commentator on national radio and broadcast television.
Stephanie consults with policymakers, investment banks and portfolio managers across the globe. Her research expertise is in: Federal Reserve operations, fiscal policy, social security, international finance and employment policy. Follow her on Twitter.
Richard Kaufman
Richard Kaufman is a member of the board of directors and a vice chair of Economists for Peace and Security, and Director of Bethesda Research Institute, which he founded. He was formerly a staff economist and general counsel of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. At the Joint Economic Committee he directed numerous investigations of the Pentagon and its spending and contracting practices. As he would point out, that was at a time when there was more rigorous and relevant congressional oversight than we have had over the past 8 years, and when oversight meant to look hard, not to hardly look.
Andrew Holland
Andrew Holland is the American Security Project’s Director of Studies and Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate. As an expert on energy, climate change, and infrastructure policy, he has worked at the center of debates about how to achieve sustainable energy security and how to effectively address climate change for the last decade.
He served as Legislative Assistant on Energy, Environment, and Infrastructure for United States Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska for three years from 2006 through 2008. He worked in the US House of Representatives for the House Ways and Means Committee and the Office of Congresswoman Roukema.
He holds a Master’s Degree in International Strategy and Economics from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Economics from Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
He is originally from New York City, grew up in New Jersey, and currently resides in Alexandria, VA.
Jeremy Richardson
Jeremy Richardson is a senior energy analyst in the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, conducting analytical work on the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon regulations, and working in other areas of energy research. He is continuing research on economic diversification in his native West Virginia that he began while in his previous position as the program’s Kendall Science Fellow.
Dr. Richardson’s Kendall work examined the economic impacts of projected future coal production on the state’s economy, and looked at the potential of other sectors for creating jobs; his research found strong support for economic diversification. During a two-day forum held in Charleston, West Virginia, Dr. Richardson shared these results with local leaders as they discussed their long-term visions for the state.
Before joining UCS, Dr. Richardson was a senior analyst at New West Technologies. Prior to that, he served as senior fellow for science policy at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. He was also a science and technology fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where he analyzed the potential for energy efficiency and renewable energy in the U.S. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, studying the atmospheres of planets around other stars. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in physics from the University of Colorado Boulder and earned a B.S. in physics from West Virginia University.
Dr. Richardson has been quoted widely, including by the Associated Press, The Charleston Gazette, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, and has appeared on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry.
Pavlina R. Tcherneva
Pavlina R. Tcherneva is an associate professor of economics and director of the economics program at Bard College. She previously taught at Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Missouri–Kansas City. During 2000–6, she served as the associate director for economic analysis at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, where she remains a senior research associate. In the summer of 2006, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy, and since July 2007 she has been a research associate at the Levy Institute.
Tcherneva conducts research in the fields of modern monetary theory and public policy, and has collaborated with policymakers from Argentina, Bulgaria, China, Turkey, and the United States on developing and evaluating various job-creation programs. Her current research examines the nexus between monetary and fiscal policies under sovereign currency regimes and the macroeconomic merits of alternative stabilization programs. She has also examined the role, nature, and relative effectiveness of the Federal Reserve’s alternative monetary policies and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act during the Great Recession.
Tcherneva is a two-time recipient of a grant from the Institute for New Economic Thinking for her research on the impact of alternative fiscal policies on unemployment, income distribution, and public goods provisioning. Her work has appeared in the Review of Social Economy, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, International Journal of Political Economy, and Rutgers Journal of Law and Urban Policy, among other journals, and she is the coeditor of Full Employment and Price Stability: The Macroeconomic Vision of William S. Vickrey (Edward Elgar, 2004). In January 2013 she received the Helen Potter Prize, awarded annually by the Association for Social Economics to the author of the best article in the previous year's Review of Social Economy.
She holds a BA in mathematics and economics from Gettysburg College and an MA and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Missouri–Kansas City.
Matias Vernengo
Matías Vernengo was, before coming to Bucknell, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, and former Senior Manager of Economic Research at the Central Bank of Argentina. He has also taught at Kalamazoo College, and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Universidad Nacional de San Martin was a Visiting Lecturer at the Université de Bourgogne, and acted as external consultant for the International Labor Office (ILO), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Dr. Vernengo has co-authored one book, edited four books and published over fifty academic and popular articles, and contributes to the blogs Naked Keynesianism and Triple Crisis. He is also the co-editor of the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE).
His methodological view emphasizes the importance of the history of ideas for the development of economic theory, and is based on the surplus approach of the classical political economy authors and Marx, as reinterpreted by Sraffa, and the heterodox followers of Keynes, like Kalecki and Kaldor. He has written on the effects of external liberalization in Latin America and alternatives to the Washington Consensus, on the international role of dollar, on current monetary and fiscal policy, on macroeconomic policy during the 1930s, on the history of economic ideas, and on several other topics. He has also published in the popular press in The Guardian, Dissent, Dollars & Sense, Challenge, and in newspapers in Latin America like Página/12, O Globo, and Valor Econômico.
Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is author of the book Failed: What the "Experts" Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy.
He writes a regular column for The Hill, and a regular column on economic and policy issues that is distributed to over 550 newspapers by the Tribune Content Agency. His opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and almost every major U.S. newspaper, as well as in Brazil’s largest newspaper, Fohla de São Paulo. He appears as a weekly guest on "The Big Picture" with Thom Hartmann, and regularly on national and local television and radio programs. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.