Stephanie Kelton

EconomistModernb. 1969· American

Kelton is a leading proponent of Modern Monetary Theory and a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University who served as chief economist for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee's Democratic staff. Her bestselling book The Deficit Myth reframes how a currency-issuing government's spending, taxes, and borrowing actually work, arguing that a nation with full monetary sovereignty is constrained by real resources and inflation rather than by the size of its deficit. Through her newsletter The Lens and years of advising policymakers, she has pushed once-heterodox questions about who controls money creation into mainstream public debate.