Protesters ask Fed to delay at Jackson Hole summit
About 50 demonstrators gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, holding signs reading "whose recovery is this" and "how many jobs do I have to work to be middle class?" Surrounded by the protesters,...
About 50 demonstrators gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, holding signs reading "whose recovery is this" and "how many jobs do I have to work to be middle class?" Surrounded by the protesters, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz also lent his voice, saying "this is not the time" to tighten policy.
"We are not algorithms in your computers. We are real people with real bills and real responsibilities," said Rod Adams, a protester who added that he makes $10.10 per hour.
The Fed's plans to abandon its yearslong near-zero interest rate policy have taken a turn recently amid stock market volatility fueled by concerns about the Chinese economy. The U.S central bank in recent months said it saw a strengthening labor market, describing job gains as "solid" after its July policy meeting.
Two former top Fed officials told CNBC that the central bank needs to evaluate how best to boost conditions for workers. Based on the last few years, easy policy may not necessarily fuel wage and job gains, noted former Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser.
"It's very important that we look beyond what's happening now and are looking to the long run," he told CNBC from Jackson Hole on Thursday.
While the central bank takes worker concerns "very seriously," it needs to evaluate how best to boost employment and wages, said Randall Kroszner, a former Fed governor. He added that it cannot base its decision on the fundamentals of another economy.
"You can't have Fed policy responding to every bump and wiggle that are coming out of the markets," he told CNBC from Jackson Hole.
He added that a rate liftoff in September of December of this year could make sense without a "negative downward shock" to inflation.
Panelists talk immigration policy at CNN documentary screening
Panelists talk immigration policy at CNN documentary screening
Ana María Archila, the co-executive director for the Center of Popular Democracy, said immigrants are frightened and anxious just living their lives and going about their daily routines.
...
Ana María Archila, the co-executive director for the Center of Popular Democracy, said immigrants are frightened and anxious just living their lives and going about their daily routines.
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Detener los préstamos de día de pago es apenas el inicio
Detener los préstamos de día de pago es apenas el inicio
En los últimos años, se han incrementado las críticas contra los préstamos de día de pago por explotar a los prestatarios de bajos ingresos y atraparlos en un ciclo de endeudamiento. El problema...
En los últimos años, se han incrementado las críticas contra los préstamos de día de pago por explotar a los prestatarios de bajos ingresos y atraparlos en un ciclo de endeudamiento. El problema ha alcanzado tal magnitud, que este verano, la Oficina de Protección Financiera del Consumidor (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau o CFPB) propuso nuevas normas para acabar con las prácticas más abusivas en este sector.
Sin embargo, los prestamistas de día de pago no son los únicos que lucran con las dificultades de las comunidades de bajos ingresos al otorgarles préstamos engañosos que a menudo hacen que la gente termine con deudas abrumadoras. De hecho, esas prácticas orientadas a grupos de bajos ingresos se han vuelto comunes en muchos sectores económicos, desde préstamos hipotecarios hasta financiamiento para estudios universitarios.
Durante décadas, prácticas discriminatorias en ciertos vecindarios les negaron a las personas de color acceso a préstamos hipotecarios, cuentas de banco y otros servicios importantes. Hoy en día, se hace lo mismo con esquemas engañosos de préstamo que les niegan a mujeres negras y latinas la oportunidad de una vida mejor.
Un informe reciente subraya el impacto que dichas prácticas han tenido en las mujeres de color. Entre otros datos alarmantes, el informe indica que 6 de cada 10 clientes de préstamos de día de pago son mujeres, que la probabilidad de que las mujeres de raza negra reciban un préstamo con tasa no preferencial es 256% más alta que la de hombres blancos de las mismas características y que las mujeres de color terminan pagando deudas estudiantiles durante mucho más tiempo que los hombres. El estudio, encargado por la Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New Jersey Communities United e Isaiah, un grupo religioso en Minnesota, también prueba que las prácticas agresivas en préstamos, desde aquellos contra el cheque de pago hasta hipotecas con tasas altas, han aumentado considerablemente en años recientes. Muchos estudios han demostrado que se manipula a prestatarios con una buena historia crediticia, particularmente mujeres negras y latinas, para que saquen préstamos con intereses altos incluso cuando reúnen los requisitos para tasas más bajas.
Las mujeres de color son vulnerables a prestamistas de dudosa reputación debido a que el racismo y sexismo del sistema de por sí pone a muchas mujeres en una posición económica precaria. Cada vez más, se ha empujado a las mujeres a aceptar trabajos con poco control y paga. En la fuerza laboral con sueldos bajos predomina la mujer, y la brecha salarial entre los sexos afecta mucho más a las mujeres de color. En el año 2014, las mujeres de raza negra ganaban 63% de los ingresos de hombres blancos, y las latinas, 54%. Muchas mujeres de color, estancadas en empleos con poca paga, horarios imprevisibles y pocas oportunidades de superarse, se ven forzadas a sacar préstamos simplemente para subsistir o tratar de mejorar su desesperada situación.
Durante demasiado tiempo, se ha permitido que proliferen los préstamos usurarios y otras prácticas empresariales que les niegan oportunidades a comunidades y explotan a los más vulnerables en términos económicos. El mes pasado, la Consumer Financial Protection Bureau comenzó a tomar medidas contra los préstamos de día de pago o garantizados con títulos de propiedad de autos, pero es necesario hacer más. Las entidades normativas deben asegurarse de que todos los préstamos tomen en cuenta la capacidad del prestatario de pagar la deuda y de que los prestamistas no vayan en pos de los menos protegidos desproporcionadamente y traten de lucrar con ellos.
Las normas para préstamos de día de pago del mes pasado muestran claramente un ímpetu en combatir los préstamos cada vez más abusivos de los banqueros. Estas normas son un paso en la dirección correcta, pero no van suficientemente lejos. Estamos avanzando, pero queda mucho por hacer para asegurar que no se explote a las mujeres negras y latinas con esta versión de discriminación del siglo XXI.
Por Marbre Stahly-Butts
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Five Long Island nonprofits to share $70,000 in grants
Five Long Island nonprofits to share $70,000 in grants
Five Long Island nonprofits concerned with progressive social change were awarded funding by the Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund, which doled out $70,000 in its first round of grants for...
Five Long Island nonprofits concerned with progressive social change were awarded funding by the Long Island Unitarian Universalist Fund, which doled out $70,000 in its first round of grants for 2017. Three organizations received $15,000 apiece. These are the Center for Popular Democracy, which will use its award to organize elected officials on Long Island around progressive public policy solutions. The Child Care Council of Suffolk’s award has been earmarked for a graduate coalition for parents who have completed parent leadership initiative training, while the Pulse Center for Patient Safety and Advocacy will use its $15,000 award to train and empower African-Americans to advocate for better medical care.
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When It Comes to Jobs, Fed Up With the Fed
The News & Observer - March 5, 2015, by Kevin Rogers - When the monthly jobs numbers come out Friday, many economists will say that the economy is healthy. Some will even say that wages are...
The News & Observer - March 5, 2015, by Kevin Rogers - When the monthly jobs numbers come out Friday, many economists will say that the economy is healthy. Some will even say that wages are rising too fast and that steps need to be taken to slow economic growth. But out in the real world, working families and particularly communities of color are being left drastically behind in the recovery.
The disconnect between the rich and the rest of us is only widening, and that is a real problem when the rich are making the decisions for everyone. For higher wages and more robust employment growth, we don’t need to limit ourselves to the usual discussions and the typical solutions. Rather, we should look in a new direction, to the Federal Reserve, for the necessary policy changes that will usher in real growth on Main Street, not just on Wall Street.
Most people don’t pay much attention to what the Fed does and how it does it, but the reality is that the decisions the Fed makes affect us all, every day.
There are two important ways the Federal Reserve can help:
▪ Ensure a monetary policy that delivers genuine full employment and rising wages for all working families. Raising interest rates in 2015 would be a catastrophic mistake. The American economy needs to see significantly more wage growth, not less.
▪ Provide a more transparent and inclusive approach to policymaking and governance. The Fed needs to listen to the voices of working families, not just banks and mega corporations.
Rampant and uneven unemployment can be measured in numbers, but it means that real-life opportunities fall further out of reach for working parents and that doors close on our children. It means that families are feeling the strain, and disenfranchisement is getting worse.
Permitting the economy to speed up significantly offers only upsides. A new report by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute finds that until nominal wages are rising by 3.5 to 4 percent, there is no threat that price inflation will meaningfully exceed the Fed’s low 2 percent inflation target. And such wage growth is necessary for workers to begin to reap the benefits of economic growth and to achieve a genuine recovery from the Great Recession.
Indeed, during the past three decades, it was only in the late 1990s, when the Federal Reserve permitted economic growth to speed up and the labor market to tighten, that workers across the economic spectrum, and in communities of color, saw genuine wage improvements.
As was true then, the Fed is not an innocent bystander in our economy, but an active participant. And yet, despite the clear economic disparities among our communities, voices inside the Fed are now saying that the economy is healthy and that the Fed should tamp down growth so that wages stop rising so quickly.
Although the board members that govern the regional Federal Reserve banks are legally required to represent the broad interests of the public, they mostly represent the financial sector or large corporations – they live very different lives from us, and they don’t take our experiences to the boardroom.
The Fed’s decisions are distant from communities that struggle the most in this economy and simply do not reflect the full diversity of the public it is supposed to represent. This explains why board members have produced an economy that works for them. Millions of working families are left with little hope of a better life.
It is no wonder that supporters of higher wages and fuller employment from across the country are turning up the heat on out-of-touch policies and practices coming from the Fed. Regular families should not be shut out the Fed policymaking process. Instead, they should be at the very core of it.
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Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article12716264.html#storylink...Chicago Group Pushing For $15 Minimum Wage
Huffington Post - May 28, 2014, by Joseph Erbentraut - A coalition of Chicago aldermen on Wednesday introduced an ordinance that would increase the minimum wage for many workers in the third-...
Huffington Post - May 28, 2014, by Joseph Erbentraut - A coalition of Chicago aldermen on Wednesday introduced an ordinance that would increase the minimum wage for many workers in the third-largest U.S. city to $15 an hour.
The ordinance calls for corporations with more than $50 million in annual sales to increase worker pay to at least $15 an hour with a year of the law's effective date. Smaller businesses would be allowed more than five years to raise pay. Twenty-one of the council's 50 members have signed on as cosponsors, Crain's Chicago Business reports.
The current minimum wage in Chicago is $8.25 an hour, a dollar more than the federal minimum wage.
Several aldermen joined low-wage workers at a press conference at City Hall on Wednesday, before the meeting where the ordinance was filed. Home care worker Darlene Pruitt, a 55-year-old mother of three and grandmother of 22, said she earns $10.65 an hour after five annual raises of a dime an hour working for the Help at Home agency. It's not enough, the West Side resident told The Huffington Post.
Pruitt said she has sometimes turned to a food pantry to make sure her family has enough to eat. "It's hard out there," Pruitt said. "The cost to live in Chicago and meet your basic needs -- rent, utilities, food, medication, clothes -- is high."
Pruitt said she is not afraid of retribution from her employer from speaking out because she is optimistic her efforts will help other workers like her who are in a similar position. If she earned more money, much of it would go right back into her community, she said.
The Center for Popular Democracy, in partnership with Raise Chicago, an advocacy group pushing for the higher wage, released a study Wednesday claiming the higher wage would decrease worker turnover and stimulate the local economy.
The study said the higher minimum wage would be responsible for $616 million in new economic activity and would help create 5,350 new jobs in its first phase. The higher wage also would add $45 million in sales tax revenues, but would raise consumer prices about 2 percent, according to the study.
Voters overwhelmingly backed the $15 minimum wage in a non-binding ballot question on about 5 percent of the city's ballots in the March primary election.
Business groups, however, have yet to be swayed.
Doug Whitley of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce told DNAinfo Chicago the proposed ordinance is "a ridiculously excessive reach on the part of a local government to try to instruct private-sector employers how to manage their businesses." The chamber said in a previous statement with other business groups that employers "cannot afford another minimum-wage increase" of any amount.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced his support of a higher minimum wage, but for less than $15 an hour. Emanuel last week trumpeted the creation of a minimum wage "working group" tasked with creating a plan for increasing worker wages in the city and previously said he backed President Barack Obama's push for a $10.10 federal minimum wage.
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Chris Hemsworth suits up on the Midtown set of Marvel’s “Avengers”
Chris Hemsworth suits up on the Midtown set of Marvel’s “Avengers”
Proceeds benefit the Hurricane Maria Community Relief & Recovery Fund at the Center for Popular Democracy.“I want those audience members to know this is not just doing a star-studded event...
Proceeds benefit the Hurricane Maria Community Relief & Recovery Fund at the Center for Popular Democracy.“I want those audience members to know this is not just doing a star-studded event. This is coming together to do something that matters,” Leon said. “As artists we’re always looking in the mirror. It’s incumbent upon us to make our world the way we want to make it.”
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Contractors and Workers at Odds Over Scaffold Law
New York Times - December 17, 2013, by Kirk Semple - In 1885, as new engineering inventions were ushering in the era of the skyscraper, lawmakers in New York State...
New York Times - December 17, 2013, by Kirk Semple - In 1885, as new engineering inventions were ushering in the era of the skyscraper, lawmakers in New York State enacted a law intended to safeguard construction workers who were finding themselves facing increasing dangers while working at ever-greater heights.
That measure, which became known as the Scaffold Law, required employers on building sites to ensure the safety of laborers working above the ground. Since then, some form of the legislation has remained on the books despite repeated attempts to repeal it.
But a lobby of contractors, property owners and insurers has in recent months renewed a campaign against the law, arguing that no less than the future of the state’s construction industry is at stake.
They argue that the law is antiquated and prejudicial against contractors and property owners, and essentially absolves employees of responsibility for their own accidents, leading to huge settlements. The payouts, they contend, have in turn led to skyrocketing insurance premiums that are hampering construction and the state’s economic growth.
On Tuesday, a coalition of contractors, including a newly formed alliance of firms owned by women and minorities, announced the start of an advertising and lobbying blitz in Albany and New York City. But a counter-lobby of unions, workers’ advocates and trial lawyers is pushing back just as fiercely. The law, they argue, is essential to ensuring the safety of workers in some of the world’s most dangerous jobs, particularly those employed by shoddy contracting firms that cut corners to save money. The law, they say, holds developers and contractors accountable for keeping job sites safe.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo this week acknowledged the politically loaded atmosphere surrounding the Scaffold Law, but suggested that he was open to the possibility of modifying the law.
The law states that contractors and property owners are responsible for ensuring that scaffolds, hoists and other devices that enable aboveground building construction and repair “shall be constructed, placed and operated as to give proper protection to a person so employed.”
When injuries result from a violation of those terms, the law says, contractors and owners are liable. There is no mention of worker responsibility. Under the law, however, the plaintiff still must show that a violation of the law’s standards occurred and that the violation caused the injury.
But those seeking to change the law want to incorporate a standard of “comparative negligence.” This amendment — described in a state bill submitted earlier this year — would require a jury or arbiter to consider whether the liability of the defendants, and thus the amount of damages, should be reduced for cases in which the worker’s negligence or failure to follow safety procedures contributed to the accident.
Opponents argue that the amendment would reduce the incentive for the property owner and contractors to take necessary safety precautions.
“This law protects both union and nonunion workers and creates a sense of accountability on these job sites,” said Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, an umbrella group for unionized construction workers. “If the law was modified, the workers would lose their voice.”
But those seeking to alter the law say the amendment would not eliminate the owners’ and contractors’ motivation to keep their workplaces safe because they would still face the possibility of shouldering large payouts, even if they were found only partly responsible for an accident.
“The notion that a contractor or owner would want to do anything to undermine the safety of the worker on the job doesn’t make sense,” said Pamela Young, associate general counsel of the American Insurance Association.
Workers’ advocates argue that erosion of the Scaffold Law would have a disproportionate impact on minority and immigrant laborers, who, the advocates say, are more likely to work for nonunion companies that may not provide proper safety training and equipment.
Immigrants, the advocates said, are less likely to speak the same language as their bosses on a job site and more likely to fear being fired if they demand a safer workplace.
From 2003 to 2011, federal safety regulators investigated 136 falls “from elevation” that killed workers on construction sites in New York, according to a recent report by Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group. Of those workers, about 60 percent were Latino, foreign-born or both. That rate rose to 88 percent among fatal falls in New York City.
Some trial lawyers have been effective at using the law to secure large settlements. Of the 30 largest settlements in 2012, at least 14 were in cases brought under state labor laws and most of those involved falls from ladders or scaffolding, according to The New York Law Journal. The awards ranged from $3 million to $15 million.
Weislaw, a Polish immigrant, was the plaintiff in a liability case that was settled last month. (He spoke on the condition that his surname not be used in this article, out of concern for his privacy.) He had been part of a crew repairing the roof of a one-story public school building in Long Beach, on Long Island. While he was working on the roof one spring day in 2010, he was concentrating so hard on his task that he lost track of the edge of the roof and fell, he said, suffering multiple fractures.
“I will most likely never be able to return to work,” he said.
Weislaw filed a lawsuit under the Scaffold Law arguing that he had not been provided with proper protection, such as a safety line or a spotter.
The case settled for $2.7 million, said David Scher, a lawyer from the firm that represented him.
Critics of the Scaffold Law say the way it is written makes these sorts of cases easy to win.
“It’s a gold mine for the plaintiffs’ bar,” said Mike Elmendorf, president and chief executive of Associated General Contractors of New York State. “When you get one of these cases, it’s largely about how much it’s going to cost.”
These high payouts, he and others contend, have driven up insurance rates, knocking smaller contractors, particularly those run by minorities and women, out of business and forcing others to suspend work, costing thousands of jobs.
They argue that the impact is as high on government projects as it is on private ones, and that the soaring cost of liability insurance is forestalling the repair and construction of public works projects, such as schools, bridges and roads. The New York City School Construction Authority said in a statement on Monday that its liability insurance costs for 2014 would be nearly as much as those for the three-year period from 2011 to 2013.
But in recent weeks, the law’s defenders have employed a new gambit, demanding that the insurance companies open their accounting ledgers to prove whether the Scaffold Law is, in fact, responsible for the rate increases. Insurance executives have vowed to fight any demands to disclose proprietary information that might somehow undermine their competitive advantages.
State Assemblyman Francisco P. Moya, a Democrat who represents a heavily immigrant and Latino area of Queens, said he planned to submit a bill that would expand reporting requirements for insurance companies and help lawmakers assess whether the Scaffold Law needed to be changed.
“Show us how much the payouts are,” Mr. Moya said. “Once we see that, we’ll have a better understanding.”
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Why Diversity Matters at the Federal Reserve
Why Diversity Matters at the Federal Reserve
There’s no question that race and gender matter in determining people’s economic fortunes. African Americans’ unemployment rate is typically twice as high as that of whites. The racial wealth gap...
There’s no question that race and gender matter in determining people’s economic fortunes. African Americans’ unemployment rate is typically twice as high as that of whites. The racial wealth gap has widened since the financial crisis, when African Americans and Hispanics—who had a disproportionate share of their wealth tied up in their homes—disproportionately suffered from subprime loans and foreclosures. The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances finds that the median wealth of a white family in 2013, the last year studied, was $134,008. For Hispanics, it was just $13,900. For African-Americans, $11,184. And as everyone knows, or should, women still make 79 cents for every dollar men make.
These deficiencies are more likely to be ignored when our most important economic policymakers don’t reflect the faces of all Americans. Yesterday, 127 Democratic members of Congress wrote to Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen about the lack of diversity at the central bank. “The leadership across the Federal Reserve System remains overwhelmingly and disproportionately white and male,” the letter notes. Led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, this high-level challenge also castigates the Fed for being dominated by former and current executives of financial institutions and large corporations, rather than people with backgrounds in academia, labor, or consumer organizations.
The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the economic recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations.
Momentum to fix the Fed’s diversity problem grew on Thursday when Hillary Clinton endorsed the viewpoints expressed in the letter. Her spokesperson Jesse Ferguson told The Washington Post, “Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms—like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks—are long overdue.”
The Fed’s lack of diversity might actually violate the law. Under the Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977, regional Federal Reserve bank directors are required to “represent the public, without discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin, and with due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers.” The original Federal Reserve Act only mandated representation from agriculture, commerce, and industry.
It’s unclear what enforcement of that 1977 requirement would look like. But clearly the Fed isn’t living up to it. The members of Congress rely on a February report from the Center for Popular Democracy, organizers of the “Fed Up” coalition, which has pressured the central bank to adopt pro-worker policies. According to their figures, 83 percent of Federal Reserve board members are white, and 72 percent are male. Among the twelve regional Fed bank presidents, only Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed is non-white, and only Esther George (Kansas City) and Loretta Mester (Cleveland) are female. And among voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which makes monetary policy decisions, it’s even worse: All ten currently serving members are white.
The lack of occupational diversity is also pretty stark. The Center for Popular Democracy studied the regional feds’ boards of directors, finding that 39 percent represent financial institutions. The Fed’s role as a key supervisor of major banks makes this highly suspect—especially considering there is no mandate for financial interests to be represented on the Fed board.
Another 29 percent of the Fed regional directors represent commerce and industry. Only 11 percent come from community, labor, consumer, or academic organizations. Even representation from the service sector, which has an overly non-white workforce and has expanded in recent years, has shrunk as a percentage of Fed bank-board members relative to 2010, the last time the boards’ makeup was studied.
It’s unusual for members of Congress to take such a public stand on the Federal Reserve, given their mindfulness of central bank independence. But they are recognizing that the lack of diversity has an important effect on economic policy. A more diverse Fed might pay more attention to how far communities of color are from full employment when deciding whether or not to raise interest rates, which they are now deliberating. A more diverse Fed might not be as consumed with the concerns of finance and industry, and their desire to keep inflation and wages low. It might consider how banks have traditionally preyed on communities of color, and target its supervision activities to reflect that.
The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations. The members of Congress cited a recent blog post by former Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota, who said that “there is one key source of economic difference in American life that is likely underemphasized in FOMC deliberations: race.” Kocherlakota searched transcripts of FOMC meetings from 2010 (the most recent ones released). That entire year, African American unemployment stood at 15.5 percent or above. But, writes Kocherlakota, “Based on that search, my conclusion is that there was no reference in the meetings to labor market conditions among African Americans.”
Traditionally, public pressure on the central bank has come from the right, from the likes of Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” movement. Progressives were largely absent from the conversation, despite the Fed’s central economic role. No more: Thursday’s letter to Yellen is the biggest success yet for the Fed Up campaign, launched two years ago to amplify the voices of communities that didn’t benefit from the recovery. The campaign has brought together labor and community groups to demand that the Fed take its mandate to maximize employment seriously—taking into account all communities, not just affluent ones. And now Fed Up’s views have become dominant in the Democratic Party.
In addition to the hefty names of Sanders and Warren, co-signers include 116 House Democrats, more than half of the caucus, as well as the ranking members of the Financial Services Committee (Maxine Waters) and the Monetary Policy Subcommittee (Gwen Moore), the committees with oversight of the Fed. And Clinton’s endorsement of Fed Up’s sentiment puts most of the ideological spectrum of the party on the side of reform.
But what does reform look like? The Center for Popular Democracy’s February report recommends that each regional board contain at least one member from a labor group, a community organization, academia, and a community bank or credit union. A separate reform proposal from former Yellen advisor Andrew Levin includes a number of ideas, including banning anyone affiliated with a financial institution from serving as a Fed director.
These ideas can be congressionally mandated. That will take time, of course, but the movement has begun to get Democrats off the sidelines to pressure the Fed. When Yellen testified before the House and Senate in February, giving her semi-annual Monetary Policy Report, she received questions about the lack of diversity from 15 different members of Congress. Yellen expressed concern that, among other things, no African American has ever led a regional Federal Reserve bank in U.S. history.
The fact that political pressure can make a difference was again signified by the quick response of a Fed spokesman to Thursday’s letter. The Fed statement said the central bank has “focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experience.” Those aspirations have not yet translated into results, however, even after the Fed established an internal diversity office in 2011.
It’s hard for the traditionally cloistered Fed to ignore concerns when they come from high-level Democrats. And just having ordinary workers in the public debate already diversifies the Fed, in a sense. No longer can they simply be responsive to Wall Street without further discussion.
BY DAVID DAYEN
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Progressive campaigners say they have no remorse over Yellen era
Progressive campaigners say they have no remorse over Yellen era
Progressives played a key role in paving the way for Janet Yellen to become the first chairwoman of the Federal Reserve in 2014. And they don’t regret it.
Left-leaning Democrats in the...
Progressives played a key role in paving the way for Janet Yellen to become the first chairwoman of the Federal Reserve in 2014. And they don’t regret it.
Left-leaning Democrats in the Senate and their allies in Washington told President Barack Obama that they would not support Lawrence Summers, his first choice for the Fed job, clearing the way for Yellen to take the helm of the central bank.
Read the full article here.
7 days ago
7 days ago