Fed Officials to Meet With Activists Ahead of Jackson Hole Conference
Fed Officials to Meet With Activists Ahead of Jackson Hole Conference
When Federal Reserve officials gather for the Kansas City Fed’s high-profile policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. this week, some of them will start with an unprecedented event.
On...
When Federal Reserve officials gather for the Kansas City Fed’s high-profile policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. this week, some of them will start with an unprecedented event.
On Thursday, eight central bankers, among them Fed governor Lael Brainard and New York Fed President William Dudley, will meet with and answer questions from about 120 activists from the Campaign for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up Campaign, a left-leaning group working to change the way the powerful central bank works.
The meeting marks a turn for the invitation-only Jackson Hole symposium, which draws top central bankers and economists from around the world to discuss monetary policy issues behind closed doors. Though journalists cover the proceedings and Fed officials give press interviews on the sidelines, this is the first time the Kansas City Fed, which hosts the event, has organized a public forum for policy makers to meet with their critics beforehand.
“My sense is that we are starting to see real changes, ”said Ady Barkan, leader of the Fed Up campaign. He said he was prompted to launch the effort after realizing how little public attention was focused on the U.S. central bank, which directly affects the lives of U.S. workers, consumers, home buyers, business owners and investors.
Formally launched in 2014, the coalition of policy activists, labor and community groups has lobbied the Fed to keep interest rates very low to ensure the economic recovery benefits all Americans and not just the well off. The group has called for more diversity among the central bank’s predominantly white, male leadership; more openness about how regional Fed bank presidents are chosen and changes in the Fed’s century-old structure to reduce the influence of the banking industry.
Mr. Barkan, a 32-year-old lawyer, recalled wondering how to get the public to care about “the absurdly opaque issue” of Fed policy. He found more interest that he expected. Speaking with community groups, he found “everybody is fascinated, everybody gets the importance of it.”
The group has gained a notable amount of high-level access. Its members met in November 2014 with Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen and several Fed governors, and later with Fed staff. Fed Up members have met with all 12 regional Fed bank presidents, even conducting public events with some, as it did with the Minneapolis Fed’s Neel Kashkari in early August.
The regional Fed bank leaders have largely welcomed their meetings with Fed Up. “I’ve been at the Fed 22 years. When you’ve been at an institution that long it is hard to know how other people view you” and how your policies play out in the real world, San Francisco Fed President John Williams told reporters in July.
“Understanding the perspectives of people outside of financial markets, outside of our own circles—that’s healthy,” Mr. Williams said. “Hearing what I think is supposed to be constructive criticism is healthy.”
Over the past year, Fed Up also has met regularly with lawmakers and their staff on Capitol Hill, held press briefings in front of the central bank’s Washington, D.C., offices and stacked congressional hearings with activists wearing their trademark green shirts.
Among the results: A large number of congressional Democrats and the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton have echoed Fed Up’s call for barring bankers from the boards that oversee the regional Fed banks and urged the central bank to focus more on promoting job growth. The Democratic legislators have recently expressed concerns over a lack of diversity among Fed leaders.
In congressional hearings in February, House and Senate Democrats peppered Ms. Yellen with more questions than in the past on issues such as inequality, stagnant wages and jobless rates for low-income Americans.
“For black Americans, we’re still in the midst of a very serious depression or recession,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who had met with Fed Up, told Ms. Yellen in February.
When she returned to Capitol Hill in June, Ms. Yellen came armed with data and talking points addressing the diverging economic circumstances between white and black and Hispanic households.
“It’s important for us to be aware of those differences and to focus on them as we think about monetary policy and work that the Federal Reserve does in the area of community development,” she said.
That contrasted with Ms. Yellen’s previous comments that the Fed’s options for addressing the economic troubles of minority groups were limited. Some Fed watchers said her shift in tone suggests policy makers are paying closer attention to such concerns.
The gestures may not seem like much to outsiders, but to people familiar with the Fed—an institution that is slow to change and resistant to criticism—they are viewed as a significant shift.
“It’s kind of monumental to get the Fed to change,” said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, noting the creation last year of an advisory council at the Fed focused on the concerns of low-income communities.
That said, a number of the Fed bank presidents have argued against the structural reforms Fed Up is advocating. In May, Mr. Dudley said “the current arrangements are actually working quite well, both in terms of preserving the Federal Reserve’s independence with respect to the conduct of monetary policy and actually leading to pretty, you know, successful outcomes.”
Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart expressed skepticism about the call for more openness about the selection of regional reserve bank chiefs.
“When it comes to picking new bank presidents, are you going to get that with a completely open process much like an election? I don’t think these are roles that should be filled by public election,” he said.
Fed Up’s funding comes primarily from the Open Philanthropy Project, which provides grants and funds to projects on justice reform, immigration and economics. Open Philanthropy committed $1 million toward Fed Up’s 2016 budget. In 2015 Open Philanthropy donated $750,000 toward Fed Up’s $1.1 million annual budget. Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder who left that firm in 2008, is one of the primary sources of Open Philanthropy’s funds.
Some former central bankers worry Fed Up has unreasonable expectations in a world in which central bank policy can’t change economic fundamentals such as long-run growth in productivity, output or wages. They also fret it was the Fed itself, via its response to the financial crisis, that created the perception it has the tools to affect more than short-term fluctuations in inflation and hiring.
Charles Plosser, former president of the Philadelphia Fed, said the Fed officials, through word and deed, “continually raised expectations about what they can do.” And having made the public believe it was more powerful that it actually is, officials “are setting themselves up for exactly this sort of attack” by those who want more out of the Fed.
Former Dallas Fed leader Richard Fisher said he had long warned that ultra-aggressive Fed stimulus policies that he said primarily benefited the rich would end up “stoking the fires of populism.”
The Fed has faced populist critics before. What is different about Fed Up, Ms. Binder said, is it seems to be well-funded and well-organized and have a constructive agenda, as opposed to some groups who have called for abolishing the Fed or limiting its powers.
“They’re kind of working through the system in a way, which is to say, ‘Look, [Congress has told the Fed] to care equally about inflation and jobs—it’s not time to give up on jobs,’” she said.
Corrections & Amplifications:
Rep. Keith Ellison is a Democratic congressman from Minnesota. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he is a Republican. (Aug. 25)
By Michael S. Derby and Kate Davidson
Source
We, The People, Defeated Republican Attempts To Repeal The Affordable Care Act
We, The People, Defeated Republican Attempts To Repeal The Affordable Care Act
After months of grandstanding and cloak-and-dagger meetings by Republican leaders, we dealt a final blow to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Who are we? We are the thousands of people who...
After months of grandstanding and cloak-and-dagger meetings by Republican leaders, we dealt a final blow to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Who are we? We are the thousands of people who attended town hall meetings around the country to confront our elected officials, marched on the streets, and occupied the offices of our senators until we got arrested.
Early Friday morning, dozens of us who have been active in the fight against the ACA repeal stood outside the Capitol, bleary-eyed from exhaustion and tears and holding on to each other for moral support. We were stunned and elated when the ‘skinny’ repeal vote failed.
Read the full article here.
"You can save my life - remember this conversation": Father with ALS confronts Senator Jeff Flake on flight from DC to Arizona over tax bill*
"You can save my life - remember this conversation": Father with ALS confronts Senator Jeff Flake on flight from DC to Arizona over tax bill*
A terminally-ill father suffering Lou Gehrig's disease shared his personal story with Sen. Jeff Flake with the ambition to make an influence on his stance of the GOP tax reform bill.
Ady...
A terminally-ill father suffering Lou Gehrig's disease shared his personal story with Sen. Jeff Flake with the ambition to make an influence on his stance of the GOP tax reform bill.
Ady Barkan, 33, approached the Republican lawmaker during his flight home from Washington D.C. - where the ill Barkan had spent days protesting the bill.
Read the full article here.
“Shamelessness Is All The Rage”
Trump’s own lawyer compares him to a mob boss, McConnell helps open the door for Trump to fire Mueller, Beto O’Rourke closes in on Ted Cruz, and Mike Pompeo meets Kim Jong Un. Then activist Ady...
Trump’s own lawyer compares him to a mob boss, McConnell helps open the door for Trump to fire Mueller, Beto O’Rourke closes in on Ted Cruz, and Mike Pompeo meets Kim Jong Un. Then activist Ady Barkan joins Jon and Dan to talk about the special election in Arizona and his new project, beaherofund.com.
Listen to the conversation here.
Progressive Activists Keep Up Campaign to Thwart Rate Rises
NEW YORK—A group of activists lobbying the Federal Reserve to hold off on raising interest rates is pressing its campaign amid signs from the central bank that it is moving closer to lifting...
NEW YORK—A group of activists lobbying the Federal Reserve to hold off on raising interest rates is pressing its campaign amid signs from the central bank that it is moving closer to lifting borrowing costs.
Members of the Fed Up Coalition, a left-leaning organization affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy and connected with labor unions and community groups, met with Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen and other central bank governors late last year.
They recently have met with the leaders of the Boston, Kansas City and San Francisco Fed banks, and are scheduled to meet next with Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockharton Aug. 12 and with New York Fed President William Dudley on Aug. 14.
Most Fed officials, including Ms. Yellen, have indicated they expect to start raising short-term interest rates this year if the economy keeps improving. They have held their benchmark rate near zero since December 2008 to bolster the economy.
The activists say they want the Fed to hold off a bit longer to ensure the expansion benefits all Americans, not just the wealthiest.
They also want the Fed to become more open about its actions and how it selects the presidents of the 12 regional reserve banks.
And they want the Fed to engage with banks to promote affordable housing.
“Over the last few weeks we’ve had a lot of success engaging with Fed officials,” said Ady Barkan, who leads the Center for Popular Democracy Fed campaign. His group is “seeing that [Fed officials] are really being responsive” to the case they are making, he said.
Mr. Barkan said a recent meeting with St. Louis Fed President James Bullard was particularly fruitful. Mr. Bullard said in an interview with the Journal Friday the Fed has a balancing act when it comes to setting interest rate policy.
He favors raising interest rates this year and says the central bank’s September meeting is likely a good time to start.
“I think I have the better policy for the type of people they want to help,” Mr. Bullard said. “If you go for too much in monetary policy you can get some sort of financial bubbles and imbalances that fall apart and cause a recession,” and modest rate rises soon will help reduce those risks.
The activist group also is calling for greater representation on regional banks’ boards of directors for noncorporate interests. By law, the regional Fed directors are drawn from a mix of financial industry professionals, community and business leaders. Each board oversees individual reserve bank operations, and the directors from outside the financial sector manage the selection of new reserve bank presidents.
Mr. Barkan said Fed boards are dominated by the perspectives of leaders from large institutions. While he welcomes union and nonprofit representation on the boards, Mr. Barkan said the diversity should extend further and include a more ground-level perspective on how the economy is functioning.
Jean-Andre Sassine, age 48, of New York City, plans to attend the group’s meeting with Mr. Dudley. Mr. Sassine, who said he works on television and advertising productions, became interested in the Fed when his family ran into difficulties during the recession. He said that led him to ask questions about the role the central bank was playing to help everyday people.
When he went with the group to the meeting with Ms. Yellen, Mr. Sassine said he walked away with “the sense they aren’t used to dealing with people. It seems like they just get reports” and work off that data, and little else, to make their decisions, Mr. Sassine said.
“We are supposed to have input and recognition and we don’t have it,” Mr. Sassine said. “It can’t all be corporate heads and bankers…We’ve got to have real people who buy groceries” on the Fed’s various advisory boards, he said.
The Fed has tried to broaden its public outreach in recent years. The central bank this year has been recruiting people to serve on a new Community Advisory Council, which will meet twice a year with Washington-based Fed governors. Ms. Yellen last year visited a job-training program in Chicago and a nonprofit in Chelsea, Mass., that helps unemployed people find work.
Mr. Dudley has conducted a number of public tours of the New York Fed’s district, in which he has met with business leaders, academics, community groups and others. In a Wall Street Journal interview in March 2014 he explained he had been using the tours to make the Fed seem less abstract. And he also said the visits had in particular deepened his understanding of the housing crisis and sharpened his response to those troubles.
Staff at the regional Fed banks who have met with the activists say their meetings are part of regular efforts to engage with their communities, and can offer valuable insight into the state of the economy.
In a statement, the Atlanta Fed said it regularly meets with community based interest groups “through its various outreach programs including community and economic development, economic education, and supervision and regulation.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Poor Immigrants Get Free Legal Defense in New York City Program
NBC News - June 25, 2014, by Kat Aaron and Seth Freed Wessler - Leroy Samuels walked into the Varick Street immigration court in lower Manhattan, his wrists handcuffed and attached to a chain...
NBC News - June 25, 2014, by Kat Aaron and Seth Freed Wessler - Leroy Samuels walked into the Varick Street immigration court in lower Manhattan, his wrists handcuffed and attached to a chain around his waist. “My heart is beating,” Samuels’ older sister Anneisha said from a courtroom bench as her father beside her, his head in his hands to hide tears. Samuels, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, nodded at his family and lowered his eyes.
Three days earlier, the 24-year-old had been in a New Jersey detention center preparing to appear at his first hearing alone. Immigrants facing deportation, like Samuels, aren’t eligible for court-appointed attorneys. And like most immigrants in his position, he couldn’t afford one on his own
“I found some lawyers online, but they asked for $4,000,” Anneisha said. “I just hung up.”
Without legal defense, Samuels was sure he’d be deported to Jamaica, the country where he was born but has not been for nearly 15 years since his father brought him to the U.S.
But Samuels arrived in court that December morning with an attorney anyway. He is one of 190 people facing deportation from New York City who have been provided a free lawyer through the Family Unity Program, a city council-funded pilot initiative that provides for two public defenders’ offices to hire lawyers to represent poor immigrants in detention. It's the first program of its kind in the country. Now city lawmakers are poised to expand it almost ten-fold, making New York City the first municipality to provide legal defense to all detained indigent residents facing deportation.
“Justice shouldn't depend on the income level of anyone,” says Judge Robert Katzmann, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who convened a multi-year study group from which the pilot emerged. “I think that the project will create momentum for greater support for providing counsel for people facing deportation.”
A number of other cities, including Boston and Chicago, are exploring similar programs. And this year, Alameda County, California, which includes the cities of Oakland, Fremont and Berkeley, started a program that approaches New York’s.
“This is part of a trend,” says Raha Jorjani, the immigration attorney hired by Alameda County. “Public defenders are saying that until Congress acts to provide legal defense for immigrants in deportation proceedings, we at the county level have to do our part to mitigate harm to clients.
In recent years, more immigrants have found themselves in court as the U.S. government has deported and detained nearly 400,000 each year. Though not all people facing deportation are detained, those who get locked up, either because they were previously charged with a crime or entered the country without papers, are less likely to have an attorney to represent them and more likely to be deported. The two biggest factors in successfully resolving a case are having a lawyer and being free during the trial, according to a report by Katzmann’s group.
Preliminary data on the New York City pilot, which comes to a close on June 30th, shows that of 190 detainees, almost half have been released or have a legal case to argue for release. Some may still be deported but can now fight from outside prison.
Providing these immigrants with legal defense, Katzmann says, creates both fairness and efficiency, saving county and federal governments money they’d otherwise spend locking people up. “It's a benefit to the judge, it’s a benefit to the government and to the non-citizen. It's really an example of how the government process can be made better.”
For Samuels, the road to immigration court started with legal trouble in 2010. He’d been without a place to stay and was sleeping on a friend’s couch. The friend, Samuels says, asked him to hold onto a package of drugs. Samuels says police officers arrived at the apartment and arrested him. He pleaded guilty and was convicted of criminal possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to time-served, six days in jail.
Samuels and his family say he quickly straightened his life. He found a steady job at a pharmacy, stopped hanging with friends who sold drugs and made sure to see his son, who lived with his ex-girlfriend, at least twice a week. A year passed and then two. He thought the criminal case was behind him.
Then at around 8:30 one morning last December, as he walked home to his Brooklyn apartment after working the night shift, he was stopped on the street and arrested by federal immigration agents. He was placed in detention in New Jersey, facing deportation. Immigration attorneys say it’s not uncommon for officials to detain immigrants long after an arrest.
“I never really thought about being deported,” Samuels said this winter from behind glass in the visitation room at the Hudson County, New Jersey, detention center. “I had a good job. I had visits with my son. I was on my way,” Samuels said. He’d hoped to enroll in culinary school, but from detention, he saw his plans evaporating. And his live-in girlfriend was pregnant and due in May. “What if I’m not there?” he said.
“The first time that I visited my brother at Hudson,” Anneisha Samuels says, “I didn’t know what to do. It’s not like when people are arrested, regular arrested, and they get a lawyer.”
Anneisha had recently lost her job as a home health aide. Their father was between jobs, too.
The next day, Anneisha received a call from Talia Peleg of Brooklyn Defenders Services, one of three attorneys from her office working on the immigrant defense pilot program. (The Bronx Defenders office employs three others.) Peleg bore good news: She would represent Leroy in court free of charge.
“An attorney knows how to talk the talk and walk the walk,” Peleg explained recently. “And to translate these complex immigration issues into a narrative that makes sense to the court,” without a lawyer, “I don’t know if that would be possible.”
The program attorneys say their representation by no means guarantees that their clients will stay in the U.S. For people with many criminal convictions, there’s no viable legal argument to stay. Many of these people are subject to what's known as mandatory detention. For them, fighting to remain in America can mean months or even years in detention while their case winds through the system. Some opt to leave.
Diego Garcia, originally from Guerrero, Mexico, picked up several misdemeanor and disorderly conduct charges in New York. He was fired from a catering job and was drinking heavily.
Eventually, those arrests led to deportation proceedings. He landed in the Hudson County detention center, and then at the Varick Street Immigration Court, where he, too, met Peleg. He was so eager to get out of prison that he told her he just wanted to be deported, but she encouraged him to sit through a 35-minute intake questionnaire to see what his options might be.
It turned out Garcia was eligible for a U visa, a special visa for victims of crime–in his case, witness tampering. The catering company he’d worked for had paid him and others far less than minimum wage, according to the Department of Labor. Garcia’s lawyers say his employer then pressured him to lie to federal investigators who were at the time looking into workplace violations.
Garcia was thrilled to hear there was a possible path to staying in America.
Peleg explained that the visa—if it came through—would take months, and he'd have to stay at Hudson while they fought. Rather than wait in jail, Garcia accepted the removal order, and went back to Mexico. “I wanted to be free,” he said recently by phone from Mexico City, “and fight from there.”
“It's very hard to be incarcerated, waiting,” Garcia said “When you're there, you feel confused, fearful.”
Peleg and Garcia are in regular contact as she pursues his U visa. And he has some money to help him get through the wait. When Peleg contacted the Department of Labor, which had repeatedly fined the catering company, officials said they had more than $3,000 in back wages for Garcia.
According to New York City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, who represents several heavily immigrant communities in Queens, before the pilot project, she heard from families who spent thousands of dollars on immigration lawyers. “Often times it was money that these families didn't have,” she said. But no one was beating down her door demanding publicly-funded lawyers, she said. “My constituency didn't even know that that's what they needed to cry out for.”
Now, that’s changed. The families she talks to are getting help from attorneys whose sole focus is on immigration defense. “We're raising the level of justice,” Ferreras said.
The final draft of the budget, released by the city council Tuesday night, allocates $4.9 million to expand the program. Now, all poor New Yorkers facing deportation, both at Varick Street and nearby immigration courts in New Jersey, will be appointed an attorney.
Ultimately, the goal of the project’s advocates is to provide counsel for all migrants facing deportation in New York State, which would cost $7.4 million, said Peter Markowitz, who runs the immigration legal clinic at Cardozo School of Law, which has helped lead advocacy for the pilot program.
That price tag would be offset by savings for the state, which would spend less on health care and foster care for children whose parents are deported, according to a study by the Center for Popular Democracy, another group supporting the program. The private sector would benefit, too; New York State employers now lose an estimated $9.1 million dollars in turnover costs to replace detained and deported workers, the study found.
Nationally, it would cost just over $200 million to give a lawyer to every indigent immigrant facing deportation, according to one recent study. The federal government would save close to $175 million in detention costs, the study found.
In April, Leroy Samuels appeared in in the Varick Street court again. He walked through the doors in cuffs, and his sister and father sat in the same spot. His attorney had already made a deal with the federal government’s lawyer: Samuels would be granted release. After a short hearing, the judge warned Leroy not to get into any more trouble, and then told the now-25-year old that he could leave. In the courthouse cafeteria Samuels embraced his father and sister and thanked his attorneys.
Samuels’ return has been difficult. He says that he hasn’t been able to get his job back—his former boss told him the company isn’t hiring.
But weeks ago, his girlfriend gave birth to their son. The day he was released, Samuels said, “I feel like I got a fresh start because of these lawyers.”
Source.
The Fed's lack of diversity is hurting its judgment
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen found herself in the hot seat at the recent bi-annual Humphrey Hawkins testimony as members of Congress challenged her over the lack of diversity among the Fed's...
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen found herself in the hot seat at the recent bi-annual Humphrey Hawkins testimony as members of Congress challenged her over the lack of diversity among the Fed's ranks.
Asked by Senator Elizabeth Warren whether she was concerned that 10 of the 12 Fed's regional presidents are men, Yellen answered that she did believe it was "important to have a diverse group of policymakers who can bring different perspectives to bear."
The nation's central bank has recently come under intense scrutiny for appointing predominantly white men from the banking and corporate sectors to leadership positions. Last month, 127 members of Congress sent a widely publicized letter to Yellen calling for her to commit to leadership that better reflects the diversity of the United States.
For the last two years, the Fed Up coalition – comprised of community organizations and labor groups in each of the 12 Federal Reserve districts – has sat down with Yellen and other Fed policymakers to ask that more diverse candidates are considered for directorships at the Federal Reserve Banks, and that the process for selecting Federal Reserve Bank presidents be opened up to greater transparency and public input.
The call for a Fed membership that reflects America's diversity was enshrined in a law passed by Congress 40 years ago, an important thing to keep in mind when considering the modest recent progress touted by Yellen. The law requires the Federal Reserve 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."
While we are encouraged that Yellen became the first woman ever to hold the position of Fed Chair in 2014, the reality of the Federal Reserve is far from representative of the public. Currently, 11 of the 12 regional Reserve Bank presidents are white and 10 of the 12 are men. Not a single Reserve Bank president is Black or Latino, which means there is no representation from the communities hardest hit by the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, there has never been an African American president of a Reserve Bank in the history of the Federal Reserve System.
Moreover, all voting members of the Fed's powerful interest rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) are white.
This is a problem. The power for ensuring the country reaches full employment rests solely with people who do not share the lived experiences of those most affected by their policies. The voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labor are being shut out of key discussions over our economic future.
The impact of the economic crisis was not experienced uniformly across different communities, with the vaunted recovery never reaching some segments. The unemployment rate for African-Americans currently stands at 9 percent, more than double the unemployment rate for white Americans of 4.3 percent. The Latino unemployment rate of 5.6 percent is also worse than what it is for white Americans.
In a marked shift from her stance a year ago, Yellen noted racial disparities in economic outcomes in her opening remarks to Congress and stressed the importance of monitoring "different groups in the labor market to see if what we perceived as broad-based labor market improvement is being widely shared."
"Elizabeth Warren told Janet Yellen that the current process for appointing regional bank presidents 'is broken.'"
Compare this with her testimony last year, when Yellen dismissed the impact full employment can have on reducing racial disparities in unemployment and wages, claiming the Fed's tools were limited.
Yellen separately acknowledged racial disparities and the need for greater diversity among Fed leadership, but stopped short of linking the two. We believe the two are inextricably linked – a Fed filled with white male bankers will never be able to fully relate to impoverished communities of color.
That is why we have offered Yellen a slate of 39 candidates from which she can appoint directors to sit on the boards of the regional Banks. Drawn from all 12 Fed regions, the candidates are racially diverse, gender balanced and come from a range of backgrounds in labor, academia, and community-based organizations.
Elizabeth Warren told Janet Yellen that the current process for appointing regional Bank presidents "is broken." Yellen can demonstrate her commitment to diversity by appointing any of these 39 candidates to open board director positions.
Warren and other members of Congress in both houses are standing with low-wage workers to shine a light on our nation's opaque but vitally important economic policymaking institution. It's time for the Fed to heed the call on behalf of the millions of Americans around the country who are still suffering from the devastating impact of the 2008 crisis. It's time for the Fed to truly represent the public.
By Dushaw Hockett
Source
Former Yellen Adviser Proposes Sweeping Reform of Fed System
A former aide to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has broken ranks with his former employer and issued a blueprint for a sweeping reform of the U.S. central bank, including regular government...
A former aide to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has broken ranks with his former employer and issued a blueprint for a sweeping reform of the U.S. central bank, including regular government audits and shorter term limits for policy makers.
Dartmouth College professor Andrew Levin targeted four areas of change for the Federal Reserve system: make the Fed a fully public institution; ensure the process of picking regional Fed presidents is transparent; set seven-year term limits for regional presidents and Board governors; and make the entire Fed subject to external review.
The proposals were taken up by the union-backed activist group Fed Up, which promoted them Monday in a conference call with journalists, and come during an election year where the central bank has been a campaign topic.
“There is one key principle in this document which is the Fed needs to become a public institution,” Levin said. “Pragmatic, reasonable Fed reform should be able to be passed by the Congress, by both parties. That is my hope.”
The Dartmouth professor worked two decades at the Fed, and was a special adviser from 2010 to 2012 to former chairman Ben S. Bernanke, and Yellen when she was vice chair, according to his biography page at the university.
Legislative Plans
Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives last year proposed legislation that included reforms of the central bank, though none has become law. Fed spokeswoman Michelle Smith declined to comment.
As recently as February, Yellen said that while the Fed might be structured differently if it were created today, she believed it still worked well and wasn’t “broken.”
“Of course the structure could be something different and it’s up to Congress to decide that -- I certainly respect that,” she said at a Senate hearing. “I simply mean to say I don’t think it’s broken the way it is.”
The Fed system, which sets interest rates for the U.S. economy, is made up of a Board of Governors in Washington and 12 regional Fed banks. It was created by an act of Congress, yet private banks hold stock in the regional Fed institutions as a result of the way the capital structure was set up when the Fed was born more than a century ago.
“The Federal Reserve is the only central bank that I know of that isn’t a fully public central bank,” Levin said in an interview.
Levin said the 12 regional banks should become fully public entities, meaning they have to somehow eliminate or repurchase the stock they have issued to private member banks. He also proposed banning anyone affiliated with financial institutions overseen by the Fed from serving as a regional Fed director.
Three Classes
Each regional Fed has a nine-member board of directors which includes three Class A directors who represent private member banks, three Class B directors picked by the private banks to represent the public -- typically local business people -- and three Class C directors chosen to represent the public by the Fed board in Washington.
The presence of financial interests on Fed boards has been a long-standing source of criticism. Currently, for example, James Gorman, chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, sits on the New York Fed Board as a Class A director.
Prior the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act in 2010, Class A directors also helped pick the 12 regional Fed bank presidents, subject to the approval of the board in Washington. That potential conflict of interest, with bankers appointing their own supervisors, was limited by Dodd-Frank, which restricted the selection process to Class B and Class C directors.
Levin said the current system of picking Fed presidents, which is led by regional board directors, is too secretive. He recommended the reserve bank boards accept nominations from the public, publish a list of eligible nominees, and then engage in a “selection process that involves genuine public participation.”
The Dartmouth professor also said that the entire Fed system should be subject to “external reviews” and disclosure requirements “just like every other key public agency.”
“The Government Accountability Office should produce a regular annual review of all aspects of the Fed’s policies, procedures, management, and operations,” Levin wrote in his proposal. The Fed has strenuously objected to calls by Republican lawmakers that monetary policy decisions be subject to GAO audit. In the interview, Levin said the GAO should focus on the management and operations of the Fed system, “not so much on monetary policy.”
“Part of the financial crisis was due to mismanagement in the division of supervision at the Fed,” Levin said in an interview. GAO reviews would provide assurance to the public and Congress that the “Fed is a well-managed organization,” he said.
By Craig Torres
Source
Falciani celebra que siete directivos del Santander declaren en la Audiencia Nacional por blanqueo
Falciani celebra que siete directivos del Santander declaren en la Audiencia Nacional por blanqueo
El ex informático del banco suizo HSBC, Hervé Falciani, que destapó los nombres de presuntos evasores fiscales en bancos helvéticos, ha celebrado que siete directivos del Banco Santander estén...
El ex informático del banco suizo HSBC, Hervé Falciani, que destapó los nombres de presuntos evasores fiscales en bancos helvéticos, ha celebrado que siete directivos del Banco Santander estén citados a declarar en la Audiencia Nacional por un delito de blanqueo de capitales, ya que, según ha dicho, "cada día hay ejemplos similares en otros países".
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Letter: No point putting faith in GOP lawmakers
Anyone who buys the GOP story that they are going to give us better health care is a sucker. We will get hosed by the lying GOP. Anyone who votes for this garbage of a health care proposal should...
Anyone who buys the GOP story that they are going to give us better health care is a sucker. We will get hosed by the lying GOP. Anyone who votes for this garbage of a health care proposal should be voted out of office. If this becomes law, every working man and woman should change their dependents, then let us see how these leeches get by with no salary. We do that and the federal government has no income.
Read the full letter here.
5 days ago
5 days ago