Stony Brook University
05/02/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 05/02/2024 11:01
Kelton Documentary, ‘Finding the Money,’ Showing in New York City May 3-9
Finding the Money, a documentary film on Modern Money Theory featuring economist and Stony Brook University professor Stephanie Kelton, will have its official U.S. release on Friday, May 3, at The Quad Cinema in New York City.
The documentary, focusing on Kelton and "an intrepid group of economists on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping our understanding of the national debt - and the nature of money - upside down," will run at the theater through May 9, with a schedule featuring several panels and discussions, including Kelton, the filmmakers and other experts.
Finding the Moneyfollows Kelton on a journey through Modern Money Theory or "MMT."
From the press release: "Kelton provocatively asserts the National Debt Clock that ticks ominously upwards in New York City is not actually a debt for us taxpayers at all, nor a burden for our grandchildren to pay back. Instead, Kelton describes the national debt as simply a historical record of the number of dollars created by the US federal government currently being held in pockets, as assets, by the rest of us."
Directed by Maren Poitras, the film had its world premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival last year and has appeared in several other festivals, winning the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Green Festival of San Francisco 2023.
"If we have a vision for a better future, money is not the scarce resource we need to go out and find before we can start building it," Kelton says in the film. "Money is the organizing tool we can use to mobilize our people and real resources to make that vision a reality."
The film traces the conflict all the way back to the story we tell about money, injecting new hope and empowering countries around the world to tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century: from climate change to inequality.
View schedule of upcoming screenings
Kelton is a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a leading expert on MMT, a former chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee (Democratic staff), and an advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. She was named by POLITICO as one of the 50 people most influencing the policy debate in America. Her highly-anticipated book, The Deficit Myth (2020), became an instant New York Times bestseller.