Greetings and happy summer twilight! I hope the next few weeks bring you some time to relax and rejuvenate, inspired by that quote by Wallace Stevens.
On my end, starting today, I’m the inaugural fellow with the State Financial Officers Foundation. SFOF is comprised of 23 state treasurers--the highest financial officers in their respective states, and they manage trillions of dollars in state budgets and retirement funds. Drawing on my muni background at Goldman Sachs and Moody's Investors Service, I'm looking forward to working with these financial officers to strengthen industry best practices and grow opportunities in our states. See info from the SFOF newsletter below:
For The New York Post, I wrote on how “First, do no harm” is the basic rule of the Hippocratic Oath, the age-old physicians’ ethics covenant. The same applies to our public policies, especially those aimed at helping the most vulnerable through our social-safety net. Yet we have fresh evidence of the harmful, unintended consequences of welfare programs on poorer households. That “free money” comes at a cost: increased emotional stress with no additional benefits. Those findings are from a new study by University of Exeter and Harvard University scholars. I also appeared on Fox Business discussing a new Atlanta Federal Reserve study showing how our tax code penalizes marriage among low-income families.
Elsewhere on the media front, I joined Fox Business to discuss mass migration from Blue States to Red States. I also visited Fox Nation on site in Las Vegas to discuss Freedom Fest and the Women’s Bill of Rights. For the Daily Wire “Morning Wire” podcast, I reported on threats to credit unions and created a longform podcast on academic freedom declining on campuses. I also enjoyed my interview with Monty Python star John Cleese—a brilliant comedian, though things took a serious turn—about what he sees as a decline in America’s culture of free speech.
I dusted off the violin for my local Episcopal church a couple weeks this month, here’s a snippet below:
Next week, I’m departing for a European cruise to Spain, Italy and France. It’s difficult to believe I haven’t left the country since 2015, but that’s what an intense start up, followed by eight startup-induced hospitalizations, followed by a global pandemic will do to your travel life! I did cover lots of ground before that, visited every continent—including Antartica—before I turned 30! Until next month, stay cool and think of Antarctic snow :)
Cheers,
Carrie
Vernadsky Research Base, Ukrainian Antarctic Station, in 2013