Jane D'Arista, 1932-2026
We at PERI mourn the passing of our great colleague and friend Jane D’Arista. For decades, Jane has been a major contributor both through elucidating the political economy of U.S. and global finance over the era of neoliberalism and through developing robust policy ideas to advance a safer and more egalitarian financial system. Jane has been a PERI Research Associate since its 1998 inception.
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Below are some materials about and by Jane. They include the following:
- The obituary from July 4, 2026
- An extended interview with Jane from the 2021 book Economics and the Left
- A tribute to Jane from the 2008 PERI conference in her honor
- The forward to Jane’s 2018 book All Fall Down: Debt, Deregulation and Financial Crises
- A short review of Jane’s 2014 book of poems, The Overgrown Copse and link to the book.
- A short review of Jane’s collaborative book with Sigrid Miller Pollin of poems and drawings Erratic Boundaries, and link to the book
- A blurb of Jane’s 2024 memoir One Among So Many and a link to the book.
- A series of interviews with Jane from 2009 – 2014 about the global financial crisis and Great Recession and their aftermath
- The SAFER Finance Reform project, Co-Directed by Jane and Jerry Epstein from 2009 – 2012
- A link to Jane’s PERI bio page and list of recent research
Jane D’Arista obituary, July 4, 2026.
Jane Webb D’Arista, a poet and expert in international financial regulation and monetary flows, who has lived in Hadlyme and on Mill Pond Lane in Old Lyme for decades, died early on July 4 in New London at the age of 94.
Jane was a graduate of Barnard College in New York. Returning from Italy where her husband studied on a Fulbright, she served for two decades as a staff economist for the Banking and Commerce Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, as a principal analyst in the international division of the Congressional Budget Office, and as an instructor of international finance from 1988-1999 at the Boston University School of Law.
She continued to her work as an economist as a Research Associate at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at U Mass, Amherst, and lectured there, at the University of Utah, and at New School University. She was also involved with the Economic Policy Institute and devoted to her colleagues there.
Jane authored numerous books and publications focused on reforming the financial sector, on the history of U.S. monetary policy and financial regulation, and international and domestic monetary systems, including her notable two-volume 1994 work ‘The Evolution of U.S. Finance’. In the past decade, she published a comprehensive economic analysis tracing how changes in financial structure and regulation eroded monetary control and fueled historically high levels of debt leading to the 2008 financial crisis, a publication entitled, ‘All Fall Down: Debt, Deregulation and Financial Crises’ (2019).
Jane was also a gifted poet. She published a collection of her poems as ‘The Overgrown Copse & Other Poems’ and co-authored a book of poetry with artist Sigrid Miller Pollin that explored the intersection of landscapes, nature, art, and poetry. More recently, she authored a memoir of her experiences as an economist, poet, and avid gardener in a work she titled ‘One Among Many: A Memoir.’
She helped organize and often hosted a group of New England-based poets at monthly meetings to discuss poetry and share one another’s work and reveled in a broad community of friends and colleagues culled from her life in Old Lyme, Washington, DC. and Massachusetts.
Jane was predeceased by her husband Robert D’Arista an artist who taught a generation of artists at American University in Washington DC and then at Boston University. She leaves her children Carla D’Arista of Old Lyme; her sons Peter and Thomas D’Arista, also part-time residents of Old Lyme; her daughter Toni D’Arista, and her brother Hank Webb.
A memorial service is planned for early Fall in Old Lyme.
Interview with Jane D’Arista from the 2021 book, Economics and the Left
Jane D’Arista is a research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is an expert on monetary policy, financial regulation, and issues of international finance. Previously, D’Arista served as a staff economist for the Banking and Commerce Committees of the US House of Representatives and as a principal analyst in the international division of the Congressional Budget Office and has lectured in graduate programs at Boston University School of Law, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Utah, and the New School for Social Research. Her economics publications include The Evolution of US Finance (two volumes) (2009), All Fall Down (2019), and numerous articles. She published a book of her poems, The Overgrown Copse, in 2014, and a book of her poems with drawings by Sigrid Miller Pollin, Erratic Boundaries, in 2020.
Bob Pollin tribute to Jane from 2008 PERI conference in Jane’s honor
It is hard to write a tribute to Jane D’Arista without sounding fake. This is because it is hard to think about Jane as a person, her life-experiences, and her accomplishments, and to resist the temptation to simply gush out, “Jane, you are amazing!”
Jane is the most astute observer around thinking about the operations of modern financial markets and institutions. She can see through their often Byzantine complexities, to really understand who benefits from their operations and who gets hurt. Because of her deep knowledge, Jane is also the most capable person around thinking about how to re-regulate the markets so that they stop working only on behalf of Wall Street barons and their minions.
I like to imagine the time when financial markets will be reasonably stable, and access to credit will be affordable and widely available—so that it can serve the needs of working people, small businesses, homeowners, and even the poor. When we have reached this huge historic turning point, it will no doubt be because people with political power decided, either directly or indirectly, to listen to Jane. They probably won’t have read The Evolution of U.S. Finance, Jane’s two volume masterpiece. But somehow, the lessons of the books and of Jane’s steady stream of writings since will have become wired into our basic notions of right and wrong, sense and nonsense.
Jane has done all of this without ever having taken a single economics course in her life. She also still considers herself at least as much a poet as an economist. Of course she has brains galore. But there are lots of smart people around. Jane has the rare combination of head and heart. And she has the energy, fortitude and personal courage to not simply figure out what is right, but to also act on it in effective ways.
Jane is also a great friend and lots of fun. She wouldn’t want me to gush. That’s why, in her honor, I have actually written this tribute with circumspection. Just imagine what I would say if I could truly bust out.
Bob Pollin forward to Jane’s 2018 book All Fall Down: Debt, Deregulation and Financial Crises
For decades now, Jane D’Arista has been among the tiny handful of people in the United States and globally who truly understand how financial markets and institutions both function and malfunction. A lot of complex razzle-dazzle does certainly take place in contemporary financial systems. And among the Wall Street operators, academic finance professors, and government policymakers and regulators, there is no shortage of people claiming expertise on every possible topic in the realm of finance. Most of them are compensated handsomely for proffering their views. D’Arista stands apart from all such people, for the simple reason that she has always deployed her formidable talents in behalf of the general good. She has never sought the approval of either mainstream economists or Wall Street titans. This has enabled her to examine reality undistracted, with a powerful combination of depth, breadth and clarity.
All Fall Down builds from D’Arista’s long list of distinguished previous contributions. These earlier works include her classic 1994 two-volume monograph The Evolution of U.S. Finance, and a wide range of research papers and policy studies she has published subsequently. Many of these previous publications came out of her 20 years of work, from 1966 – 86, as a staff member with, respectively, the U.S. House of Representatives Banking Committee, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Energy and Commerce Committee. She continued to publish steadily as Director of Programs for the Financial Markets Center and while teaching Ph.D. courses at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, The New School for Social Research and the University of Utah from 1999 – 2006. Most recently, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, many of D’Arista’s writings grew from her involvement with SAFER–A Committee of Economists for Stable, Accountable, Fair and Efficient Financial Reform, a project that she co-directed with Gerald Epstein.
With All Fall Down, D’Arista is able to synthesize and significantly extend this earlier work to deliver original perspectives on two fundamental questions: first, what caused the 2007-09 global financial crisis; and second, what needs to be done to prevent another such calamity?
Review of Jane’s 2014 book of poems, The Overgrown Copse
“I love the poems in The Overgrown Copse, especially for the scenes they depict, and for their quiet passion and the consciousness they reveal. Whether the poet finds herself in King’s College Chapel, her Connecticut garden, a Roman street on a fall evening, or at a window with a billowing curtain, her gaze probes, fixes on the details that speak to her and then turns inward for meaning. Her words are simple, unerring, unflinching and lead you to the truth she has discerned. Often startling, it lingers with you for days. Love and loss are in this collection, gross injustice and public folly and the beauties of the natural world. In compelling language, they are made real to us. We feel the poet’s pain and joy; we awake to the intelligence that shines through the poems; we come to appreciate the life that has informed and enriched her work.” –Elizabeth Stable
Review of Jane’s collaborative book with Sigrid Miller Pollin of poems and drawings, Erratic Boundaries
Begin with the book in your lap. It’s a long rectangle most resembling a sketch pad. Opened it’s two pads, the left containing a drawing, the right a poem looking at the drawing. The reader looks back to see what the poet sees then glimpses some fleeting other configuration of his or her own. This rich sensual exchange continues from page to page and with each new viewing/reading. What makes this so compelling, of course, is the amazing complexity of the drawings and the deep personal statements by the poet. The latter sees the beauty of the natural world as her salvation from the dark lines. This reader drew darker pictures than she did, which is not a criticism of her but an insight about myself. And the artist who has placed her musing before us? She too may have reason to look again. Buy this book. Engage yourself.
A review of Jane’s 2024 memoir One Among So Many
Jane D’Arista’s One Among So Many is an astonishing book about an unusual life. Written with the grace and beauty of a poet, the sensibilities of an artist, and the love of a wife and mother, it tells the story of a self-taught, brilliant economist pushing through to make an important impact in a man’s world of finance, government and economic policy. Committed to social justice informed by objective economic analysis, D’Arista had to swim against the fierce tide of an ideologically driven, ascendant free market economics in the 1970s. The book includes entertaining, insightful and funny portrayals of an amazing array of people, as well as accounts of far-flung travel.
This memoir is made deeper and richer by the inclusion of many of the author’s poems. The voice of the poet carries strong emotional meaning, weaving a deep and detailed look at the path of grief, the wonders and joys of childhood, travel, marriage, motherhood, nature, and art.
A series of interviews with Jane on the 2007-09 global financial crisis and its aftermath
The SAFER Finance Reform project, Co-Directed by Jane and Jerry Epstein
Note: SAFER was active during 2009-2012.
A Committee of Economists and other Experts for Stable, Accountable, Fair and Efficient Financial Reform (SAFER) is a focal point, clearinghouse and coordinating mechanism for progressive economists and analysts to gather and present their views on financial re-regulation and reform; to reach, to the degree possible, a consensus on the key issues relating to regulation and reform; and to help incorporate this work into the public debate over these issues that will ensue over the coming six to nine months or so. By bringing these analysts together to speak in a concerted voice, we will be able to broaden the perspective on financial regulation and reform, and enhance our impact on this public debate.
SAFER webpages and resources here
Jane’s PERI bio page and list of recent research