Housing advocates: FHFA won’t reduce principal, offers discounted NPLs
Two liberal advocacy groups have published a provocative study accusing the Department of Housing & Urban...
Two liberal advocacy groups have published a provocative study accusing the Department of Housing & Urban Development and the Federal Housing Finance Agencyof helping Wall Street at the expense of low-income communities by selling non-performing loans to investors.
The Center for Popular Democracy and the ACCE Institute’s report “Do Hedge Funds Make Good Neighbors?: How Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and HUD are Selling Off Our Neighborhoods to Wall Street” is lengthy and accusatory.
The study looks at how HUD has since 2012 auctioned off, at a discount, some 120,000 Non-Performing Loans that they want to get off their books.
They also take into account similar actions by the FHFA through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have sold over 10,000 mortgages already this year.
The study, which can be read here, notes that nearly all of the roughly 130,000 mortgages have been sold to Wall Street hedge funds and private equities firms, leading to what they call the rise of a new phenomenon in this country – Wall Street as major landlord and neighbor in communities across the country.
“An initial examination into four of the largest purchasers of HUD and FHFA loans has unearthed an array of disturbing business practices, ranging from those that clearly run counter to the goals of homeownership preservation and neighborhood stability to those that break laws, deceive homeowners, and harm taxpayers more generally,” the study claims.
The authors argue that HUD and FHFA should sell these troubled mortgages to entities working to preserve homeownership and create affordable housing, not to Wall Street speculators with a history of defrauding taxpayers and harming homeowners, tenants and neighborhoods.
“Nearly eight years after the start of the global financial crisis, hedge funds and private equity firms have found yet another way to make big profits: distressed housing assets. Often, the very same corporate actors that precipitated the housing crash in the first place are buying and selling off delinquent mortgages and vacant houses that are a product of the crash,” the study says. “Together, these Wall Street entities have raised over $20 billion to buy the notes for as many as 200,000 homes in the United States. The newly consolidated single-family rental market is a lucrative business. A 2014 study estimated that the four largest holders of these assets have seen as much as a 23% rate of return on the properties they purchased in the last three years.”
However, HUD has been making changes to how it deals with distressed assets and NPL sales.
Just two months ago, HUD announced significant changes to its Distressed Asset Stabilization Program. HUD also announced additional improvements to the Neighborhood Stabilization Outcome sales portion of DASP which are aimed at increasing non-profit participation.
Updates include giving non-profits a first look at vacant properties, allowing purchasers to re-sell notes to non-profits, and offering a non-profit only pool.
Previously, loan servicers could foreclose 6 months after they received the loan and were encouraged, though not required to assess a borrower’s qualifications for loss mitigation programs. Purchasers of the geographically targeted neighborhood stabilization pools have always been required to ensure that at least 50% of the loans in a pool achieve outcomes that help areas hardest hit by foreclosure avoid the neighborhood decline associated with numerous vacant properties.
“These changes reflect our desire to make improvements that encourage investors to work with delinquent borrowers to find the right solutions for dealing with the potential loss of their home and encourage greater non-profit participation in our sales,” said Genger Charles, Acting General Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Housing, when it was announced. “The improvements not only strengthen the program but help to ensure it continues to serve its intended purposes of supporting the MMI Fund and offering borrowers a second chance at avoiding foreclosure.”
The groups are calling on HUD and FHFA to “establish much higher standards and criteria for the kind of companies that are eligible to purchase delinquent mortgages” and to “prioritize companies that have a clearly defined program to offer permanent modifications with principal reduction and to create affordable housing with vacant properties.” ?
They also want FHFA to “immediately begin to offer principal reduction in their own modification process.”
“Two distinct paths forward are available: the abuses of the biggest purchasers to date of the HUD and FHFA non-performing loans; or, the approach of community development financial institutions with both the ability and the commitment to create affordable housing to better local communities. The status quo benefits the very actors that hastened the financial crisis and actively created the conditions that sucked over half the wealth from millions of American families. These companies profit from new predatory practices and speculative business models that once again take advantage of ordinary people,” the study concludes.
Source: HousingWire
Council Moves to Enhance Voter Registration Through City Agencies
Gotham Gazette - November 24, 2014, by Samar Khurshid - At a hearing Monday, the New York City Council's Committee on...
Gotham Gazette - November 24, 2014, by Samar Khurshid - At a hearing Monday, the New York City Council's Committee on Governmental Operations approved the latest drafts of two bills that enhance the responsibility of city agencies to conduct voter registration and a resolution calling for the State Legislature to pass similar legislation.
These measures are an attempt by the Council to improve the compliance of City agencies with Local Law 29, also known as the Pro-Voter Law, which was passed in 2000. The law requires 19 city agencies to handle voter registration applications for customers.
The new legislation is headed to the full Council for a vote on Tuesday and then, if passed as expected, to the desk of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The bills expand the mandate of the Pro-Voter law to seven additional agencies and create a standard for enforcing the law, including required semi-annual reports from participating agencies. Implementation of the existing law has proven to be a problem, with city agencies failing to uphold their responsibilities to offer registration forms to New Yorkers doing other business with the City.
The accompanying resolution calls upon the State Legislature to augment existing agency-assisted registration laws to include codes on registration forms that would help track agency performance and registration statistics.
Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of what he called the "good government committee," introduced Intro 493 A which expands scope of the Pro-Voter law and sets a deadline of December 1, 2015 for agencies to integrate their forms with voter registration.
The second bill, Intro 356 A, which establishes reporting requirements for the agencies, and the accompanying resolution, were introduced by Council Member Jumaane Williams.
"The last election was abysmal," Williams said of voter turnout in response to questions from Gotham Gazette. Stating that the city and state are falling behind in civic participation, he said, "This should be an issue that all parties - Republicans, Democrats, third parties - every party should be working to increase participation."
The push for increased voter registration began in July with Mayor de Blasio's Directive 1, which ordered agencies under the Pro-Voter law mandate to create plans for implementing the law. Then, in October, the City Council introduced the two new bills in response to a report released by a coalition of good government groups which showed the City's lax compliance with Local Law 29.
According to the report, 84 percent of clients at 14 of these agencies were not provided registration applications when they should have been. Additionally, only 2 out of 5 applicants with limited English proficiency were given translated applications, and agents were not trained in the application process.The report was compiled by the Pro-Voter Law Coalition, comprised of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, Citizens Union of the City of New York, and the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). Their investigation was aided by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The report's importance is highlighted by the fact that over 30 percent of New Yorkers who were interviewed at the agencies were not registered to vote.
The de Blasio administration initially rejected the two bills over privacy concerns and on the grounds that they came too close on the heels of Directive 1 and wishing to see agencies given more time to comply. Taking those concerns into consideration, changes were made to Williams' bill on reporting mandates. Williams disagreed with the administration but eventually came around to ensure changes were made in the proposal which will protect applicants' information while still allowing the Board of Elections to track registration data from agencies.
"I'm expecting (the) resolution to have a serious impact in Albany," said Council Member Kallos to Gotham Gazette. "Whether it's the Assembly or the Senate, we can all agree that government works better when we measure what its doing and this will take a step towards that."
Representatives of the good government groups that authored the report also testified at the hearing. Steven Carbo, director of Voting Rights and Democracy Initiatives at CPD praised the proposals, asserting, "Likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of eligible voters were never given the opportunity to register to vote over the years, perpetuating regrettably low rates of voter registration in New York particularly among lower income, of color and immigrant citizens," he said.
Peggy Farber, legislative counsel for Citizens Union, called the proposals "meaningful steps to improve the pro-voter law, to codify the important work of the administration."
On Tuesday, the bills and the resolution will head to the full Council for a vote at the Stated Meeting, where they are very likely to pass.
Source
Reporte revela robo de salario sistemático en NY
NUEVA YORK — Un estimado de 2.1 millones de neoyorquinos son víctimas de robo de salario al año, lo que implica una...
NUEVA YORK — Un estimado de 2.1 millones de neoyorquinos son víctimas de robo de salario al año, lo que implica una suma de $3.2 mil millones en pagos y beneficios, según el reporte “By a Thousand Cuts: The Complex Face of Wage Theft in New York” delCenter for Popular Democracy Action (CPDA).
El estudio, calificado como el más completo desde 2009 por organizaciones defensoras de los derechos de los trabajadores, se fundamenta en entrevistas a expertos, quejas de víctimas de robo de salario, resultados de investigaciones recientes y estadísticas de los sindicatos más representativos.
Los hallazgos del CPDA sugieren que los empleadores recurren a métodos difíciles de detectar, probar y erradicar, como minutos no registrados en los relojes del lugar de trabajo, una deducción del 5% por cada propina y salarios por debajo del mínimo.
Un análisis de las estadísticas más recientes –diciembre de 2014- del Departamento de Trabajo de Estados Unidos (USDOL) encontró que en 2013, unos 12.700 trabajadores del estado de Nueva York recibieron un total de $23 millones en reembolsos por salarios robados, lo que representasólo el 2% del total de $1 mil millones en salarios robados para ese año.
Los autores del reporte, que estudiaron 11 casos específicos de trabajadores, encontraron que el estado de Nueva York pierde hasta $20 millones por semana en violaciones cometidas por empleadores que no pagan el sueldo mínimo.
Los trabajadores más vulnerables son aquellos que trabajan frecuentemente jornadas de más de 40 horas a la semana. Según la ley, los empleadores deben pagar una hora y media por cada hora extra luego de las 40 horas a la semana, pero en 2010 el 77% de los trabajadores de bajos ingresos no recibieron esta compensación, según un estudio del National Employment Law Project (NELP) citado por los autores.
El mexicano Ángel Rebollero (53), quien en octubre de 2014 alzó la voz por mejores condiciones de trabajo en Vegas Auto Spa, en Park Slope, contó que por casi una década no recibió el pago mandatario por las horas extras trabajadas.
“Los trabajadores inmigrantes somos los más expuestos a empleadores inescrupulosos, pero nuestras victorias laborales demuestran que unidos podemos cambiar las condiciones indignas en el lugar de trabajo”, comentó. “Muchos fuimos amenazados con la deportación. El miedo puede hacernos callar, pero no siempre estaremos en las sombras sufriendo el abuso”.
El reporte de la CPDA encontró que los empleadores comúnmente recurren a la intimidación, acoso, represalias y falsificación de récords de pago para perpetrar un robo de salario sistemático. Otro método común es la clasificación errónea de sus empleados como contratistas independientes, a fin de evitar el pago de impuestos sobre la nómina de sus empleados.
El Servicio de Impuestos Internos (IRS) estima que los empleadores clasifican erróneamente a millones de empleados cada año en el país, evitando en promedio cerca de $4.000 en impuestos federales por cada trabajador.
El CPDA advirtió de la reincidencia en las violaciones de las leyes laborales como un factor difícil de erradicar en la lucha por los derechos de los trabajadores. En los últimos cinco años, el USDOL ha registrado cerca de 400 casos de robo de salarios en el estado de Nueva York, en los cuales el empleador reincidió en las infracciones de las leyes que protegen a los empleados más vulnerables.
Entre los casos que analiza el reporte destaca el de los “carwasheros” de Vegas Auto Spa, quienes estuvieron expuestos a condiciones inseguras de trabajo y robo de salario.
Source: El Diario
What is a Good Job?
What is a Good Job?
Today marks the 78th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law that gave us the minimum wage and a host of...
Today marks the 78th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law that gave us the minimum wage and a host of other protections to protect workers from the most cutthroat tendencies of capitalism.
While the law is still on the books, its power is fading. The federal minimum wage today – unchanged since 2009 – doesn’t let workers afford the most basic essentials, from a mortgage to monthly groceries.
In Detroit, federal inaction has hit workers especially hard. Detroit is already one of the most marginalized cities in the country. Last year, we faced the largest number of tax foreclosures in U.S. history. Our schools are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. And a recent Brookings study found Detroit has the highest concentration of poverty of the largest metro areas in the country.
While parts of Detroit have risen like a phoenix in recent years, with growing signs of life in the auto industry and a shiny new hockey arena, the reality is progress hasn’t reached the majority of the city and people of color have largely been left out of Detroit’s revival.
To give all workers in Detroit a chance to share in the city’s recovery, we must start with wages. The current federal standard of $7.25 an hour is pitiful – and Michigan’s state rate of $8.15 is hardly an improvement.
Meanwhile, a recent study from the National Low Income Housing Coalition found it takes $15.62 to afford a two bedroom apartment in Michigan. A single parent with two children in Michigan needs an income of $21.23 per hour year to meet basic expenses. In Wayne County, an individual must earn $14.40 to support a family of four.
Two years ago, a ballot initiative was launched to raise the state wage to $10.10 per hour by 2017 with the support of hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents. Through a series of legislative maneuvers, the measure was defeated and the current rate was put in place. A year later, lawmakers voted to ban municipalities from raising wages at the local level.
As Detroit stagnates, around the country, minimum wages are on the march. From California to New York, workers have won raises as high as $15 an hour. And the same workers have been demanding progress here.
But we should go even further than higher wages. We need jobs that give workers access to a better life, with full benefits, stable hours, and a commute that doesn’t take hours on the bus each way. To that end, we have been working to ensure Detroiters have a seat at the table with developers to ensure that jobs are going to Detroiters.
Growing up, my parents struggled with chronic unemployment and homelessness. We moved constantly, often living in houses without running water, electricity or heat. In high school, my mom began working at General Motors and was finally able to meet our most basic needs. I could finally attend school every day of the week. That job didn’t just lift our family out of poverty. It gave us back our dignity.
For far too long we have encouraged people to just take any job, no matter the pay or working conditions. That is not the American Dream. Nearly a century ago, the Fair Labor Standards Act tried to put that dream within reach of every American. It is now up to us to continue the fight to ensure the promise.
We know it will take a lot of resources, but with the community driving this effort, we will reach our destination – good jobs for every Detroiter. That’s how we’ll truly rebuild Detroit.
By eclectablog
Source
Part-Time Workers Struggle With Full-Time Juggling Act
NPR - March 6, 2015, by Yuki Noguchi - The cold weather did not hamper hiring last month. Employers...
NPR - March 6, 2015, by Yuki Noguchi - The cold weather did not hamper hiring last month. Employers added nearly 300,000 jobs to payrolls, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent.
Despite another strong report, there is little evidence that all the hiring is putting upward pressures on wages.
And there are more than 6.5 million people working part time who would like to have more hours.
Randa Jama pushes airline passengers on wheelchairs to their gates at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. This had been a full-time job when she took it last fall, but then a couple of months later, that changed.
"They told me that you're working only Saturday and Sunday from now," she says.
That cut her hours to 12 a week. Sometimes, her supervisors ask her at the last minute to stay late or do an extra shift. Since she cut back on babysitters, she can't accommodate.
"I let them go because they can't just wait for me to get full time. Now that I want to work full time, no I can't because obviously I changed everything," Jama says.
Higher wages are just one issue workers like Jama care about. They say getting enough hours — and a predictable schedule — are equally important in order to enable them to find additional work or deal with the other obligations in their lives.
"Nowadays you have to say you have open availability and that you're free to work whenever," says Aditi Sen, a researcher for the Center for Popular Democracy, a worker advocacy group.
But pledging open availability limits a worker's ability to plan or get other work.
So far, the law has little to say when it comes to scheduling.
Some states, including Minnesota, Connecticut, Maryland and Massachusetts, are considering legislation that would require several weeks advance notice of schedule changes and institute minimum time off between shifts.
Shannon Henderson says she needs more control over her constantly shifting work schedule. The single mom of two says she asks for more than the 33 hours a week she typically gets working at the Wal-Mart in Sacramento, Calif. But that's also stressful.
"In order to get hours, you have to have open availability," she says. "For instance, last week I worked all late shifts, which was 2 to 11. And then this week I had all early shifts, which was 6:30 to 2."
Wal-Mart last month promised to raise its base wage and give workers more control over their schedules.
Henderson worries the store won't give her more control without cutting back on her hours. She looks for more steady work when she can.
"I do look. But the thing is, with the scheduling being all over the place, it makes it hard for me to actually set time to go look," she says.
Neil Trautwein, vice president of health care policy at the National Retail Federation, says, "Unquestionably those are some difficult hours."
Trautwein says retailers are balancing the consumer demand for 24/7 service, with employees' scheduling concerns. Wal-Mart, he says, is responding to workers' demands.
"That's the way the market self-adjusts and self-regulates," he says.
Jason Diaz, a server at a restaurant in New Haven, Conn., says in order to work 40 hours a week, he's constantly looking for extra gigs.
"Finding the place is the first problem," he says. "And then finding out how to manage that, and travel cost expenses and still being to my next job on time is pretty difficult."
He spends his remaining time trying to find a full-time job and taking care of his son.
"Just in the last two weeks, I got an email from my boss saying, 'Hey, you have to work on Tuesday, so figure out what you're going to do with your son,' " he says.
So Diaz canceled his son's drum lesson and found babysitting, only to discover his boss had made a mistake and he didn't have to work, after all.
Source
Feds Accused of Selling Out Neighborhoods to Wall St. Firms
Aljazeera America Fault Lines Blog - September 9, 2014, by Mark Kurlyandchik - In September 2010, the federal...
Aljazeera America Fault Lines Blog - September 9, 2014, by Mark Kurlyandchik - In September 2010, the federal government got into the business of selling delinquent home mortgage loans, which are at least 90 days past due, to the highest bidder. The program was instituted to help the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) rebuild its cash reserves, which were wiped out by a wave of loan defaults.
In the first two years of the program, the FHA sold 2,000 loans in six national auctions. In September 2012, it expanded its loan pools under the newly named Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, or DASP, selling more than 3,000 loans in the first auction. The FHA also introduced a second stated objective of the program to help stabilize neighborhoods by creating a new category of loans tied to geographic areas hit hardest by foreclosures with mandates that purchasers service them in a manner that stabilizes surrounding communities.
Two critical new reports on DASP admit that the program is helping the FHA avoid having to hit up taxpayers for more money. But they question the sincerity of any efforts to protect neighborhoods plagued by foreclosures, pointing out that a whopping 97 percent of the loans have gone to private, for-profit investors, including hedge funds, mutual funds and private equity firms. And approximately just one out of 10 of the loans sold have achieved a neighborhood stabilization outcome.
“These are companies that put the financial gains of their shareholders first and community stabilization second—or I would say it's not even necessarily a priority for them,” says Connie Razza, co-author of a report by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Right To The City Alliance, which came out today.
Razza’s group sent a petition to Julian Castro, who recently took over the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the cabinet agency that houses the FHA, asking him to stop selling loans under the DASP until the program’s implementation could be strengthened and refocused on communities.
When the FHA was created in 1934 to stimulate a lifeless housing market buried in the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S. was a nation of renters—with only 40 percent of Americans owning their homes. The FHA was able to help boost that percentage by offering affordable mortgage insurance to approved lenders who made loans to high-risk borrowers with relatively low down payments. By 2004, nearly 70 percent of Americans were homeowners.
During the recent housing crash, with private lending drying up, the share of FHA-backed loans skyrocketed, rising from a reported 2 percent of all mortgages in 2006 to nearly a third in 2009. Those loans kept housing prices from going into free fall, but a wave of defaults plundered the FHA’s mortgage insurance fund. So, in 2013, it took a $1.7 billion taxpayer bailout to stay afloat.
So far, nearly 100,000 non-performing loans have been sold through DASP, netting the FHA $8.8 billion.
According to a report released last week by the Center for American Progress, only about 11 percent of the loans sold through DASP are now considered “re-performing.” Another 22 percent were either allowed to do a short sale or the home was surrendered in exchange for loan forgiveness. A third of the loans were turned around and sold to other buyers. The final third went into foreclosure.
Bidders who want to acquire neighborhood stabilization loans are required to achieve one of several outcomes that help homeowners and surrounding communities on at least half of the loans they purchase: getting the loans to re-perform, renting the home to the borrower, gifting the property to a land bank or paying off the loans in full. Through May of this year fewer than 18,000 of the FHA loans have been sold through neighborhood stabilization pools, compared to more than 73,000 that have no strings attached.
"In its current form, the DASP is unnecessarily undermining the very mission of HUD by selling loans to some of the same reckless actors who caused the financial crisis."
Connie Razza, Center for Popular Democracy
Instead of getting loans to re-perform, many of the companies buying up the loans may be looking to convert the distressed assets into rental properties. Since the housing crash, Wall Street-backed groups have bought up an estimated 200,000 single-family homes across the country to convert to rentals. As housing prices rise and foreclosures become less common, housing advocates worry that these firms have turned to non-performing loans as a way to increase their housing stock.
For instance, the private equity firm Blackstone, which has recently become the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the country, is a 46-percent owner of Bayview, the company that has won the second-highest number of DASP loans. According to one report, the delinquent notes are sold to the highest bidder without considering past performance metrics at getting the loans to reperform.
Further, allowing the vast majority of the loans to fall into the hands of high-bidding corporate investors—rather than defaulting—keeps many of the properties they’re tied to from going through the typical foreclosure process. As a result, the FHA might actually be diverting housing stock from first-time homebuyers, the very group it was formed to serve 80 years ago, said John Husing, chief economist at the Inland Empire Economic Partnership in San Bernardino, California.
Aljazeera America Fault Lines Blog - September 9, 2014, by Mark Kurlyandchik - "In its current form, the DASP is unnecessarily undermining the very mission of HUD by selling loans to some of the same reckless actors who caused the financial crisis," Razza and her co-authors write in their report.
The reports contend that HUD should be tracking bidders' track record for good outcomes and taking that performance into consideration. They also criticize HUD for a lack of transparency when it comes to making information about what happens to these loans available to the public. Further, they call for boosting the size and ratio of loans sold through the Neighborhood Stabilization Outcome pools and increasing access for non-profits in the bidding process.
“Community development financial institutions and other non-profits have been trying to participate,” Razza said. “They've only won 2.5 percent of the loans and are really shut out because HUD is running the program as a straight auction.”
Representatives for HUD did not respond to specific questions about the program, but offered this statement: “For purchasers, the program is an opportunity to acquire assets at competitive prices with the flexibility to service the assets while providing borrowers an opportunity to avoid costly foreclosures. The program is meeting financial goals as the amounts offered for these assets are steadily rising as volume has increased in recent years.”
Where investors used to pick up non-performing loans in the program for an average of 40 to 50 cents on the dollar, the most recent sale in June had an average of more than 77 cents. The bidding war was reportedly the most contested yet, with the entire pool going to one investor, private equity firm Lone Star Funds.
“I think that as demand for these loans grow, it builds a stronger case for FHA to ask buyers to do more for the communities they’re buying in,” said CAP report co-author Sarah Edelman. “We want to see loss-mitigation requirements on all of the loans sold.”
Source
Fed Should Study Higher Inflation Target, Liberal Economists Say
Fed Should Study Higher Inflation Target, Liberal Economists Say
A group of 22 progressive economists including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz urged the Federal Reserve to appoint...
A group of 22 progressive economists including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz urged the Federal Reserve to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to consider raising its 2 percent inflation target.
In a letter to Chair Janet Yellen and the rest of the Fed board released on Friday, the economists argued that a higher objective would give the central bank more room to combat downturns in the economy without unduly hurting Americans’ living standards.
Read the full article here.
Yet Another Subsidy for the Big Banks
But there’s a bigger risk-free payout the Fed makes to big banks, one set to rise exponentially as the economy improves...
But there’s a bigger risk-free payout the Fed makes to big banks, one set to rise exponentially as the economy improves. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, hundreds of billions of dollars that would otherwise go into the federal Treasury will leak out to banks, including branches of foreign banks, in the coming years. If Congress needs to find money to pay for new programs, they could cancel the Fed’s recent practice of paying interest on bank reserves.
For nearly 100 years, the Federal Reserve managed the nation’s monetary policy without paying interest on reserves, including the 10 percent of the value of loanswhich banks are required by law to park at the Fed. But in 2006, Congress passed the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act, authorizing interest payments. It was actually an old idea first promoted by conservative economist Milton Friedman.
Friedman thought that required reserves without compensation constituted a hidden tax on the financial industry. He also believed the strategy would make it easier for central banks to engage in monetary policy. If the Fed offered an interest rate on excess reserves just above the federal-funds rate (a.k.a. the rate banks use to lend to each other), then it makes more financial sense for banks to leave their money there. It sets a floor for the federal-funds rate, in other words, giving the Fed more control over its range. It also helps the Fed expand its balance sheet, critical to engaging in monetary interventions like quantitative easing.
Under the 2006 law, interest on reserves wasn’t supposed to kick in until 2011, but Congress moved up the date three years when it passed the law authorizing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Fed set the interest rate on all reserves at a skinny 0.25 percent, which produces a small payout on required reserves. But excess reserves above the 10 percent requirement, which banks never left at the Fed until 2008, exploded as the Fed’s balance sheet expanded. From virtually nothing seven years ago, excess reserves hover around $3 trillion today.
Who owns these excess reserves? As the Cleveland Fed noted in a report last week, more than 80 percent come from the top 100 largest banks. U.S. branches of foreign banks, primarily from the European Union, have about $1 trillion in excess reserves parked at the Fed.
The Fed’s audited financial statement indicates that they have paid banks $25.2 billion in interest on reserves from 2008 to 2014. That number jumped from $2.1 billion in 2009 to $6.7 billion in 2014, a three-fold increase. The entire time, the interest rate has been the same: 0.25 percent. But that’s subject to change.
As the economy improves, the Fed is clearly angling to raise the federal-funds rate, which has been stuck around zero since 2008. Fed officials have already indicated they will accomplish this mostly through recalibrating interest on reserves. At theirSeptember 2014 policy meeting, Fed Chair Janet Yellen said the central bank would “move the federal-funds rate into the target range … primarily by adjusting the interest rate it pays on excess reserve balances.” While the interest rate on required reserves may stay constant, the Fed would raise the interest rate on excess reserves, allowing interbank lending only to rise so far.
In effect, interest on excess reserves is equivalent to the federal-funds rate. And the higher the interest rate goes, the more money banks make from the Fed. You can see this most clearly in Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections of Fed remittances.
Any money the Fed makes on investments gets returned to the federal Treasury. And business has been good for the Fed of late. They remitted $99 billion in 2014 and a projected $102 billion this year. But CBO’s latest update predicts that number will fall drastically, to $76 billion in 2016, $40 billion in 2017, and just $17 billion in 2018. The lion’s share of the difference comes from the Fed paying out their earnings to banks, with higher interest on reserves as they hike rates.
While it’s hard to pinpoint the totals because the CBO doesn’t separate out interest on reserves, by marking the difference between 2015 and subsequent years we can estimate that the Fed could deliver anywhere from $20 billion to $50 billion a year to banks, risk-free. That’s an enormous amount of money, based on the claim that interest on reserves is somehow an indispensible strategy for monetary policy, even though the Fed thrived for 91 years without such a tool.
This shift in how monetary policy is conducted occurred with practically no debate. Fed officials are reportedly worried about the “optics” of their exit plan, with its unjust enrichment of the largest banks. But outside of a few libertarians, nobody has raised alarms yet.
One progressive group that’s challenged the Fed from the left was stunned to learn that, in addition to depressing the economy, an interest-rate hike would have a secondary effect as a silent bank bailout. “Clearly this is under-covered, because I haven’t heard about it,” said Ady Barkan with the Center for Popular Democracy, director of Fed Up, a grassroots organization pushing the central bank to adopt pro-worker policies. “But we shouldn’t be shocked. It is the rule that the Fed prioritizes helping banks, and has over the last seven years.”
There are other ways to control monetary policy besides interest on excess reserves, unless you believe that the Fed was impotent from 1917 to 2008. For instance, the Fed could reduce their balance sheet, rather than letting it contract through attrition, the current strategy. That would reduce the money supply, which shows what a pickle the Fed has gotten itself into with its expanded balance sheet. But the Minneapolis Fed, at least, downplayed the risks of gradual asset sales into a global market.
Another option is to hold off on raising rates, allowing the balance sheet to slowly contract and encouraging banks to recirculate excess reserves into the economy by creating favorable conditions for more profitable investments. “It’s incomprehensible to us to think that the economy is getting too healthy too quickly,” said Barkan of Fed Up.
Members of Congress, who created this mess by authorizing interest on reserves, could take it away too, and in so doing could create a large pay-for that could be transferred into productive projects. You could potentially fund an entire six-year highway bill simply by eliminating interest on reserves.
We don’t even know if the Fed’s rate-raising strategy will work without drawbacks, as it’s never been tested. But if “working” equals paying the largest banks hundreds of billions in unearned money, the Fed should figure out something else.
White House: Obama won’t discuss interest rates with Yellen
White House: Obama won’t discuss interest rates with Yellen
President Obama met with Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Monday, but one of the most pressing topics for the...
President Obama met with Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Monday, but one of the most pressing topics for the central banker was not on the agenda.
Obama did not plan to discuss interest rates with Yellen, according to White House press secretary Josh Earnest. He argued such a conversation could undercut the chair’s independence in setting monetary policy.
“I would not anticipate that, even in the confidential setting, that the president would have a conversation with the chair of the Fed that would undermine her ability to make these kinds of critical monetary policy decisions independently,” Earnest told reporters ahead of the meeting.
The closed-door discussion is instead an opportunity to “trade notes” on broader economic trends in the U.S. and abroad, as well as on a new set of regulations on Wall Street financial firms.
Obama and Yellen talked about the growth outlook, “the state of the labor market, inequality and potential risks to the economy,” the White House said after the meeting.
Vice President Biden also attended the meeting with Yellen in the Oval Office.
The meeting comes at time when Yellen is grappling with whether to raise interest rates further amid conflicting signs about the health of the global economy.
Yellen hiked the benchmark rate to 0.25 percent last December, the first such increase since the 2008 recession.
But since then, the central bank has taken a cautious approach to further hikes.
Reserve officials left the rate unchanged last month and reduced their estimate of the number of increases that could take place this year from four to two.
Yellen said late last month the economic recovery remains on track in the U.S. despite signs of weakness abroad, such as low oil prices and anemic growth in China. Inflation has also yet to hit the Fed’s 2 percent target.
She indicated she would take a wait-and-see approach on rate hikes until the economy shows more signs of improvement.
“I consider it appropriate for the committee to proceed cautiously in adjusting policy,” she said in a speech at the Economic Club of New York.
Election-year politics could complicate the Reserve’s decision-making process.
Progressive groups are wary of further rate hikes, worried that upping the cost of borrowing could slow the pace of hiring and economic growth.
The left-leaning “Fed Up” campaign circulated a questionnaire to presidential candidates Monday asking whether the Fed “should be intentionally slowing down the economy in 2016” by raising rates.
Republican leaders have frequently accused Obama of being too reliant on Fed policy to drive the recovery, which they say hasn’t spread to large segments of the economy.
Obama hasn’t publicly commented on interest rates. But he has sounded a more optimistic tone than Yellen on the economy, trumpeting a string of positive employment reports and rising wages.
Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist for Biden, expressed confidence Yellen would be able to insulate her decision-making from the political debate.
“The Yellen Fed, and particularly Chair Yellen herself, has been extremely data-driven, and I expect that to continue,” he said.
“What will be motivating her is less electoral politics and more the actual state of the real economy,” he added. “People worried about the fed loosening in an election year to help the incumbent party. I don’t think that is in play this year.”
Did you know 67% of all job growth comes from small businesses? Read More
Obama does not meet frequently with the Fed chair to discuss the economy. Yellen’s last one-on-one sit-down with the president occurred in early November 2014.
“I think the president has been pleased with the way that she has fulfilled what is a critically important job,” Earnest said.
Even while he offered praise for Yellen, the spokesman said Obama “cares deeply about preserving both the appearance of and the fact of the independence of the Federal Reserve and the chair.”
By Jordan Fabian
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Chicago Group Pushing For $15 Minimum Wage
Huffington Post - May 28, 2014, by Joseph Erbentraut - A coalition of Chicago aldermen on Wednesday introduced an...
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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