{"id":15226,"date":"2026-06-09T13:30:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T17:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/?p=15226"},"modified":"2026-06-09T13:30:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T17:30:28","slug":"levy-economics-institute-40th-anniversary-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/2026\/06\/09\/levy-economics-institute-40th-anniversary-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Levy Economics Institute 40th Anniversary Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Cortney Sanders<\/strong><\/p>\n

On May 8, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College convened its annual conference marking 40 years since the Institute\u2019s founding. The occasion drew a distinguished assembly of economists, journalists, and policymakers united by a shared conviction that conventional economics has consistently failed to reckon with the realities facing the global economy and working Americans.<\/p>\n

The keynote was delivered by William H. Janeway, distinguished affiliated professor at Cambridge, veteran venture capitalist, and cofounder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Professor Janeway has a significant connection to Levy. In 1986, Hyman Minsky\u2014Levy senior scholar and foremost expert on financial instability\u2014asked Janeway to address the American Economic Association. Forty years later, Janeway returned the gesture, opening a conference devoted to Minsky\u2019s enduring relevance for scholarship, teaching, and\u00a0 research in the field of evolutionary institutional economics.<\/p>\n

The event\u2019s panels brought together leading voices in economics. Former FDIC chairwoman Sheila Bair joined Bloomberg\u2019s Tom Keene in conversation on the next financial crisis. John Cassidy of the\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0moderated the opening session on AI and the US economy. Isabella Weber of UMass Amherst and James Galbraith of the LBJ School at the University of Texas, Austin discussed the global energy crisis and China\u2019s domestic price stabilization policies. Finally, Levy Institute President Pavlina Tcherneva spoke alongside Darrick Hamilton, chief economist of the AFL-CIO and economic adviser to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, on employment and economic security\u2013moderated by Cortney Sanders, Director of National Jobs for All Network.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inescapable reality \u2014 the single most defining feature of our economy \u2014 is that it no longer works for most Americans,\u201d Tcherneva said: \u201cEverything else follows from this.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Tcherneva\u2019s opening address was both retrospective and strategic. She traced four decades of the Institute\u2019s real-world impact: predicting the private-sector debt bubble, calling the 2008 housing collapse before it arrived, and anticipating the doubling of central bank balance sheets. Since then, Levy has become a go-to source on financial instability and monetary policy, its influence reaching from the US Congress and European Parliament to the highest levels of the Chinese government, shaping legislation, stabilization policy in Greece, and methodological work by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and international statistical agencies.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Tcherneva identified two research and policy priorities: economic security for American families and the financial architecture on which that security depends.\u00a0\u201cFinance must be checked and economic security must be built \u2014 those are the twin pillars of Levy\u2019s agenda.\u201d<\/em> Professor Tcherneva sounded an alarm on GENIUS\/STABLE coin legislation, anticipated a paradigm shift under incoming Federal Reserve Chair Warsh, and called for a fundamental rethinking of the 21st-century job\u2014encompassing paid leave, childcare, healthcare, and retirement security alongside direct job creation.<\/p>\n

The conference also celebrated the Institute\u2019s graduate program and inaugurated the Levy Alumni Impact Award, presented to Oscar Vald\u00e9s Viera, Senior Economist at Americans for Financial Reform, recognized for his work on private equity\u2019s threat to retirement accounts. Forty years on, Levy\u2019s ideas have never been more central to economic debate \u2014 and the work of the next four decades has already begun.<\/p>\n

National Jobs for All Network was very well represented at the Conference. Featured speakers Pavlina Tcherneva, Darrick Hamilton, and Randy Wray are board members of NJFAN. In addition Cortney Sanders Director of NJFAN and Trip Powers, a new member and outreach volunteer, was in attendance.<\/p>\n

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May 8, 2026 Levy Economics Institute 40th Anniversar<\/strong>y <\/strong>Conference<\/strong>
\nPhotos by Karl Rabe for the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Cortney Sanders On May 8, the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College convened its annual conference marking 40 years since the Institute\u2019s founding. The occasion drew a distinguished assembly of economists, journalists, and policymakers united by a shared conviction that conventional economics has consistently failed to reckon with the realities facing the global economy… Read More Levy Economics Institute 40th Anniversary Conference<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,143,25,30,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educators","category-job-guarantee","category-policy-makers","category-solutions","category-unemployment"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15226"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15231,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15226\/revisions\/15231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njfac.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}