Aboard flight, dad battling ALS pleads with Sen. Jeff Flake to vote no on tax bill
Aboard flight, dad battling ALS pleads with Sen. Jeff Flake to vote no on tax bill
A 33-year-old father battling ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was flying home last week after traveling to Washington, D.C., to protest the tax bill when he came face-to-face with one of...
A 33-year-old father battling ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, was flying home last week after traveling to Washington, D.C., to protest the tax bill when he came face-to-face with one of the lawmakers he most hoped to influence.
Ady Barkan and others had spent a week trying to get lawmakers' attention and giving speeches outside their offices.
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Did two women in an elevator just change everything?
Jeff Flake loves decorum, but it doesn't look like it was decorous behavior that moved him to reconsider a vote that could change the country's future. Was it two women in an elevator, yelling at...
Jeff Flake loves decorum, but it doesn't look like it was decorous behavior that moved him to reconsider a vote that could change the country's future. Was it two women in an elevator, yelling at him?
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Proposal Would Allow Immigrants in New York Illegally to Become Citizens
ABC 7 New York - June 16, 2014, by Dave Evans - It is a long shot, but a proposal by a New York State lawmaker would allow immigrants in the state illegally to become so-called "state citizens" if...
ABC 7 New York - June 16, 2014, by Dave Evans - It is a long shot, but a proposal by a New York State lawmaker would allow immigrants in the state illegally to become so-called "state citizens" if they've paid state taxes for at least three years.
It might sound a little strange for people to say 'I'm a citizen of New York State yet not an American citizen', but legal experts say it's doable.
And it's something many immigrants in New York desperately want, since the federal government hasn't budged on immigration reform.
"I could be deported tomorrow even though New York is my home. Brooklyn has been my home," said lawyer Cesar Vargas.
Vargas came to this country from Mexico when he was five. He's like almost 3 million other undocumented workers in New York State with few rights. He's a lawyer. He passed the bar but can't practice. He's not a citizen.
"I pay taxes, I created my own small business, I advocate for my community, I only want the opportunity, no special treatment, just the opportunity to be a lawyer for my community," he said.
In Battery Park Monday, a rally was held with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop.
"2.7 million people make their home in this state and we have a responsibility to them as a state," said State Senator Gustavo Rivera.
Rivera introduced a bill Monday that if someone has an ID, has lived in this country for three years and paid taxes, they could then become a citizen of New York State.
They would be allowed to vote and run in local and state elections. They could get a driver's license, and qualify for Medicaid coverage.
"Now all of these things will allow almost 3 million people to fully participate in the civic, political and economic life of the state of New York. They are already contributing," said Rivera.
The bill has almost no chance at becoming a law anytime soon in Albany. If it did, we would be American citizens and New York citizens as well, and conservatives call that absurd.
"It's a bad idea. It's not only bad, it's probably an insane idea to create a separate category of citizens in our country," said New York Conservative Party chairman Mike Long.
Conservatives say they're worred the idea is even being brought up in Albany, because that gets the discussion rolling, and eventually they fear something like this could pass.
Also, advocates agree, saying this bill won't pass anytime soon. But they want people to start thinking and talking about this issue.
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Our Fight for Health Care During Recess and Beyond
It’s time to ramp up our resistance to the Trump-Ryan agenda on health care. We scored our biggest legislative victory so far on March 24, when Speaker Paul Ryan called off his bid to repeal the...
It’s time to ramp up our resistance to the Trump-Ryan agenda on health care. We scored our biggest legislative victory so far on March 24, when Speaker Paul Ryan called off his bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), because he didn’t have the votes. This was an inspiring, hard-fought win for everyone who believes health care is for all...
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Bringing Black Voices to the Immigration Reform Debate
A Haitian American who grew up in Miami's Little Haiti community, Francesca Menes remembers the global cries for "Democracy for Haiti" following the 1991 coup. Amidst the current threats to...
A Haitian American who grew up in Miami's Little Haiti community, Francesca Menes remembers the global cries for "Democracy for Haiti" following the 1991 coup. Amidst the current threats to American democracy, she sees a reawakening of the political consciousness of American citizens and an opportunity to build real people power. As a longtime social justice activist and member of the Black Immigration Network'ssteering committee, Menes has learned to use her resources to lift up the voices of the most vulnerable.
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BERNANKE’S FORMER ADVISOR: “PEOPLE WOULD BE STUNNED TO KNOW THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE FED IS PRIVATELY OWNED”
BERNANKE’S FORMER ADVISOR: “PEOPLE WOULD BE STUNNED TO KNOW THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE FED IS PRIVATELY OWNED”
With every passing day, the Fed is slowly but surely losing the game.
Only it is not just former (and in some cases current) Fed presidents admitting central banks are increasingly...
With every passing day, the Fed is slowly but surely losing the game.
Only it is not just former (and in some cases current) Fed presidents admitting central banks are increasingly powerless to boost the global economy, even if they still have sway over capital markets. What is far more insidious to the Fed’s waning credibility is when former economists affiliated with the Fed start repeating mantras that until recently were only a prominent feature in the so-called fringe media.
This is precisely what happened today when former central bank staffer and Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin, special adviser to then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke between 2010 to 2012, joined with an activist group to argue for overhauls at the central bank that they say would distance it from Wall Street and make its activities more transparent and accountable to the public.
Levin is pressing for the overhaul with Fed Up coalition activists. Many of the proposed changes target the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which are quasi-private and technically owned by commercial banks in their respective districts.
All of that is not surprising. What he said to justify his new found cause, however, is.
“A lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned, Mr. Levin said. The Fed “should be a fully public institution just like every other central bank” in the developed world, he said in a conference call announcing the plan. He described his proposals as “sensible, pragmatic and nonpartisan.”
Why is that stunning? Because it has long been a bone of contention if only among the fringe media, that at its core the Fed is merely a private institution, beholden only to its de facto owners: not the people of the U.S. but to a small cabal of banks. Worse, the actual org chart of who owns what is not disclosed, even as the vast majority of the U.S. population remains deluded that the Fed is a publicly owned institution.
As the WSJ goes on to note, the former central bank staffer said he sees his ideas as designed to maintain the virtues the central bank already brings to the table. They aren’t targeted at changing how policy is conducted today. “What’s important here is that reform to the Federal Reserve can last for 100 years, not just the near term,” he said.
And this is coming from a former Fed employee and Ben Bernanke’s personal advisor! That in itself is a most striking development, because now that the insiders are finally speaking up, it will be a race among both current and prior Fed workers to reveal as much dirty laundry as possible ahead of what is increasingly being perceived by many as the Fed’s demise.
To be sure, Levin’s personal campaign for Fed transformation will not be easy, and as the WSJ writes, what is being sought by Mr. Levin and the activists is significant and would require congressional action. Ady Barkan, who leads the Fed Up campaign, said the Fed’s current structure “is an embarrassment to America” and Fed leaders haven’t been “willing or able” to make changes.
Specifically, Levin wants the 12 regional Fed banks to be brought fully into the government. He also wants the process of selecting new bank presidents—they are key regulators and contributors in setting interest-rate policy—opened up more fully to public input, as well as term limits for Fed officials.
This would represent a revolution to the internal staffing of the Fed, which will no longer be at the mercy of its now-defunct shareholders, America’s commercial banks; it would also mean that Goldman Sachs would lose all its leverage as the world’s biggest central bank incubator, a revolving door relationship which has allowed the Manhattan firm to dominate the world of finance for the decades.
Levin’s proposal was made in conjunction with the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up coalition, a group that has been pressuring the central bank for more accountability for some time. The left-leaning group has been critical of the structure of the regional banks, and has been pressing the Fed to hold off on raising rates in a bid to make sure the recovery is enjoyed not just by the wealthy, in their view.
The proposal was revealed on a conference call that also included a representative from Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, although all campaigns were invited to participate.
The WSJ adds that according to Levin, who knows the Fed’s operating structure intimately, says the members of the regional Fed bank boards of directors, the majority of whom are selected by the private banks with the approval of the Washington-based governors, should be chosen differently. The professor says director slots now reserved for financial professionals regulated by the Fed should be eliminated, and that directors who oversee and advise the regional banks should be selected in a public process involving the Washington governors and local elected officials. These directors also should better represent the diversity of the U.S.
Levin also wants formal public input into the selection of new bank presidents, with candidates’ names known publicly and a process that allows for public comment in a way that doesn’t now exist. The professor also wants all Fed officials to serve for single seven-year terms, which would give them the needed distance from the political process while eliminating situations where some policy makers stay at the bank for decades. Alan Greenspan, for example, was Fed chairman from 1987 to 2006.
As the WSJ conveniently adds, the selection of regional bank presidents has become a hot-button issue. Currently, the leaders of the New York, Philadelphia, Dallas and Minneapolis Fed banks are helmed by men who formerly worked for or had close connections to investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Levin called for watchdog agency the Government Accountability Office to annually review and report on Fed operations, including the regional Fed banks. He also wants the regional Fed banks to be covered under the Freedom of Information Act. A regular annual review hopefully would insulate the effort from perceptions of political interference, Mr. Levin said.
* * *
While ending the Fed may still seem like a pipe dream, at least until the market’s next major crash at which point the population may finally turn on the culprit behind America’s serial boom-bust culture, the U.S. central bank, Levin’s proposal would get to the heart of the most insidious conflict of interest in the US: the fact that the Federal Reserve works not for the people of America, but for its owners – the banks.
Which is also why, sadly, this proposal will be dead on arrival, as its passage would represent the biggest loss for Wall Street in the past 103 years, far more significant than anything Dodd-Frank could hope to accomplish.
By Zero Hedge
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Why the Federal Reserve is due for a radical reinvention
The Federal Reserve is a hot topic in the news these days. Usually, the stories revolve around the merits of its decisions: Was quantitative easing a good idea? Should it raise interest rates...
The Federal Reserve is a hot topic in the news these days. Usually, the stories revolve around the merits of its decisions: Was quantitative easing a good idea? Should it raise interest rates again in April? But Andrew Levin, a Dartmouth economist and former aide to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, thinks our questions need to go much deeper.
On Monday, Levin and the activist campaign Fed Up proposed four major reforms that would radically alter the structure of the Federal Reserve. The reason they cite is compellingly simple: How the Fed works is basically out of whack with what it does today.
The Federal Reserve began around a century ago as a decentralized and private institution aimed at avoiding financial panics and making sure the interactions between the nation's for-profit banks remained stable. Since then, it's basically become a kind of government agency, with a fundamental role in shaping the American economy and the supply of wages and jobs for everyday workers. But the design and governance of the Fed has not kept up with that shift in responsibilities.
To understand why, let's start at the very beginning. Western economies began creating central banks several centuries ago as modern capitalism was first coming into focus, to serve as a "lender of last resort." Private banks could go and borrow from the central bank when times were tight — even if was just for a few days — and that would quell potential financial panics and bank runs. As a result, central banks were generally created by government charters, but as private corporations whose shares were owned by the banks that borrowed from them. "When the Bank of England and some other major central banks were founded, they were viewed as mostly providing services to commercial banks," as Levin explained to The Week.
America's Federal Reserve was created in 1913 under very similar circumstances. A potential financial crisis in 1907 was averted only when J.P. Morgan stepped in to backstop the country's private banks with his own personal fortune. No one wanted a repeat of that, so the Fed was created. It's actually a system of 12 regions, each overseen by a Fed branch bank — there's one in Dallas, in Richmond, in New York City, and so forth — with the private banks owning the shares of whatever Fed bank oversees their region.
More importantly, each regional Fed bank is run by a board of nine directors, six of whom are appointed by the private banking industry. The other three are appointed by the Federal Reserve system's national Board of Governors — a seven-member group appointed by the U.S. president and confirmed by the Senate. Together, the directors appoint a president to run their particular regional bank, rather like a CEO and a corporate board: They set the president's salary, review his or her performance, etc. All nine used to do that, but Dodd-Frank reformed the system in 2010 so that three of the six governors appointed by the private banks no longer play a role in selecting the president.
Over the course of the 20th Century, various developments like the end of the gold standard and the creation of federal deposit insurance diluted the importance of the regional banks as lenders of last resort. At the same time, however, the regional banks found themselves owning large amounts of financial instruments as a result of serving that role. So they created a joint national group to manage all those holdings called the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), and over time it grew in importance. Its decisions are determined by 12 votes: the seven members of the Board of Governors, plus five of the 12 regional presidents. (The 12 presidents rotate through the voting positions, while the other seven sit in on the FOMC but don't vote.)
Today, when we talk about the Fed setting interest rates or meeting to decide monetary policy — which in turn decides the rate of wage growth and the supply of jobs throughout the entire national economy — we're talking about the FOMC. "For all practical purposes, the Federal Reserve today is a public enterprise," Levin said. "It's serving the public. It's making nationally critical decisions."
The problem is the Federal Reserve system was originally conceived of and designed as an add-on to the private banking industry, and that design has remained even as the nature and responsibilities of the Fed have change enormously: "This whole rationale that made perfect sense in 1913 doesn't make sense anymore," Levin said. The result is an institution that, while of enormous import to the public good, is incredibly complex, opaque, and governed with comparatively little input from everyday Americans.
"The Fed, in order to be effective, has to have the confidence of the public," Levin said. But allowing the banks to hold such enormous sway over the decision-making of the institution tasked with both setting national interest rates and regulating the financial system undermines that confidence. Economist Dean Baker analogized it to "reserving seats on the Federal Communications Commission’s board for the cable television industry." Levin himself likened it to allowing criminal attorneys or defense lawyers to select the director of the FBI and set his or her salary and performance review.
So Levin has put forward four major reforms. They're broad, and the details for how they could play out are negotiable, but they're aimed at starting a conversation around the topic.
One is to eliminate private ownership of shares in the Federal Reserve system and make it fully public, but more importantly to completely reform how the nine directors of each regional bank are appointed. This could involve reducing the number of directors, but mostly it would involve selecting them all via the same process, one that brings in all aspects of the community — small businesses, community groups, unions, non-profits, etc. In particular, directors should not come from institutions — i.e. private banks and financial entities — that the Fed system is tasked with overseeing.
The next step would be to make the process by which the nine directors for each region select their president public and transparent. As Ady Barkan, the campaign director for Fed Up, pointed out in a press call, when all 12 regional president slots were up for replacement in February, all 12 were quietly and opaquely re-appointed — even after the Fed Up campaign pressed Fed officials to lay out a system by which the public could participate. The ones for Dallas, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia were all previously associated with Goldman Sachs. St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard once told Barkan that, "To call the reappointment process pro forma would be an understatement."
Third would be to set term limits for Fed officials. Make them long enough to insulate those officials from political pressure. But don't allow them to serve multiple terms one after the other as they can now.
And finally, apply the same transparency standards to the Fed that are applied to other government agencies: Allow the Government Accountability Office to publish an annual review of all the Fed's operations and policies, and make sure both the Fed's Inspector General and the Freedom of Information Act apply to the 12 regional banks as well as the national Board of Governors.
"What I've proposed is something that seems incremental, workable, and helpful," Levin concluded. And despite arguments over whether the Fed is making the right choices in the here and now about things like interest rates, Levin's goal is much bigger: to make the Fed a healthy functioning member of our democracy long after the current economic situation — and whatever particular monetary policy stance it calls for — has passed.
"These reforms are to improve governance, accountability and transparency," Levin said. "We live in a democracy — and the government is supposed to serve the public."
By Jeff Spross
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With few other takers, the government has to sell its distressed mortgages to Wall Street
With few other takers, the government has to sell its distressed mortgages to Wall Street
Nearly a decade after the housing bubble burst, one grim legacy endures.
Far too many homeowners are still struggling to make mortgage payments, or have quit paying altogether. But one of...
Nearly a decade after the housing bubble burst, one grim legacy endures.
Far too many homeowners are still struggling to make mortgage payments, or have quit paying altogether. But one of the most robust attempts to address the overhang of delinquent loans is bumping up against an uncomfortable reality.
Since 2010, government entities like the Department for Housing and Urban Development, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have auctioned off thousands of delinquent mortgages. The auctions should be a win-win: they take those problem loans off the government’s books so taxpayer dollars aren’t strained. They also offer homeowners the possibility of a fresh start: investors who pay far less than the loan is worth are able to cut the borrowers a better deal than the government can.
But there’s been some pushback. Groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and progressives like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized the government for enabling what they called a “land grab” by the same Wall Street investors whom many saw as responsible for faulty lending in the first place.
The government responded by encouraging nonprofit organizations to compete alongside financial institutions. Groups focused on helping homeowners, rather than realizing a bottom line, would do good and do well, the agencies reasoned.
But there’s a catch.
The scale of the auctions is so big — some are measured in the billions of dollars — and the scope of what’s being asked so vast that only two nonprofits have successfully purchased mortgages. What’s more, that doesn’t seem likely to change soon.
There are plenty of nonprofits with ample experience in community development and helping homeowners, said Julia Gordon, executive vice president of the National Community Stabilization Trust, a nonprofit focused on the blight left behind by vacant properties.
What nonprofits lack is access to capital, particularly equity funding, Gordon told MarketWatch. While there are plenty of investors interested in the distressed mortgage space, the yields such investors want may not be compatible with the mission focus of a nonprofit.
“Some nonprofits are realizing that the returns private investors are demanding can’t be achieved if you also want to achieve good neighborhood outcomes,” Gordon said.
Of the two nonprofits that have successfully bid in the government auctions, one, New Jersey Community Capital, dominates. They’ve won about $290 million of loans so far. The sole other nonprofit, Hogar Hispano, has won $16 million. Hogar did not respond to a request for comment.
NJCC is a community development organization whose mission is helping New Jersey cities and towns. But as one of the best-established nonprofits in the country in this space, they’ve been asked to work more broadly than that since the early days of the government auctions.
From the beginning, NJCC understood the tension between returns for investors and results for communities, said Peter Grof, deputy to the president of the organization. But NJCC believed that it was not only possible to strike that balance, but also that it could chart a course that other nonprofits could follow.
NJCC funds its purchases with a ratio of about 50% to 60% debt to equity, Grof said. The equity investors are often private-equity firms, while the debt piece comes from what Grof calls “socially-motivated investors” or major financial institutions like Prudential Financial PRU, +3.94% and MetLife MET, +3.81% .
Grof says NJCC is uncomfortable with the “Wall Street vs. Main Street” concept that surrounds discussions about how to handle the delinquency overhang. “We understand and appreciate housing advocates. We couldn’t do a lot of our work if not for them,” he said. “They make it simple, beat up on the banks and Wall Street. That’s fine, there has been some bad behavior. But we don’t see it as us vs. them, ‘property investors are evil.’”
Instead, Grof said, NJCC focuses on achieving appropriate outcomes for troubled homeowners and for their neighborhoods. Sometimes that means fighting the natural urge to want to keep borrowers in their homes, and realizing it’s best to let them walk away.
“We’re about trying to bring back normal real estate market dynamics to these communities,” he said. “We understand communities have a normal ebb and flow. It’s not just about creating opportunities for people to stay, it’s about creating opportunities for people to leave, if that’s appropriate.”
To some extent, some of those advocates would agree. “What’s most important is outcomes not ownership,” Julia Gordon said. “The government agencies have a responsibility to have an idea of what they want to have happen with these notes once they sell them. It’s their responsibility to communities and the housing market. Bad outcomes weaken housing markets.”
Amy Schur, a campaign coordinator for the Center for Popular Democracy, agrees. “We believe that both HUD and FHFA should set much higher standards for all notes sales around the commitment to and quality of modifications, and around affordable housing and meeting community needs,” she said.
Schur and her group believe that if the government set more stringent requirements, it would prompt for-profit investors to partner with local community organizations. She believes such partnerships would produce the yields institutional investors are seeking while enabling the mission-driven groups to do their work. Schur also believes that while many smaller nonprofits would prefer to buy smaller tranches of mortgages, many of the investors who provide equity to more established organizations would like bigger pools.
NJCC is “on course” to achieve more than the government’s “neighborhood stabilization outcome” goals, Grof said. He stresses that it’s still too early to total up the final outcomes for all loans. In New Jersey, where NJCC focuses on principal reduction mortgage modifications and developing affordable rentals out of homes where modifications aren’t possible, the NSO rate should be about 85%. In Florida, he estimates it will be about 65% to 70%.
Government agency spokesmen speak carefully about the note sales. “We believe the program is doing what it was designed to do,” said a spokesman for HUD. He answered a question about how the nonprofit portion of the sales were going by ticking off a list of ways the government has tried to improve the program to benefit nonprofits: lengthening the amount of time between a sale announcement and when it takes place, making smaller pools of loans, and concentrating them by geography.
A spokesman for Freddie Mac said it’s “certainly an objective” to encourage more nonprofit participation. Asked about whether the type of investor is as important as making sure good outcomes are achieved, he said only that “the winning bidder is determined on the basis of economics.”
Fannie Mae did not respond to a request for comment.
As of January, in all of HUD’s sales, foreclosure had been avoided in 27.9% of the homes, 34.3% had been foreclosed on, and 35.5% had no resolution. Fannie and Freddie have not yet reported on the outcomes of their sales, although such a report was expected by the end of the first quarter, as previously reported.
Despite the government’s efforts, “the appetite isn’t there,” Grof said. “The risks and the challenges turn off our competitors.”
By Andrea Riquier
Source
“These Disasters Aren’t Natural Anymore”: A Dispatch from Puerto Rico After Maria
“These Disasters Aren’t Natural Anymore”: A Dispatch from Puerto Rico After Maria
Several weeks ago, Puerto Rico avoided a direct hit from Hurricane Irma, which shifted north at the last minute. But Hurricane Maria hit head on, and has left a humanitarian crisis in its wake....
Several weeks ago, Puerto Rico avoided a direct hit from Hurricane Irma, which shifted north at the last minute. But Hurricane Maria hit head on, and has left a humanitarian crisis in its wake. Power on the island could be out for as long as six months, and many parts of the island have yet to be contacted.
Read the full article here.
"Give Them Hell": Exposing the Corporate Backers of Anti-Immigrant Hate
"Give Them Hell": Exposing the Corporate Backers of Anti-Immigrant Hate
Since election night 2016, the streets of the US have rung with resistance. People all over the country have woken up with the conviction that they must do something to fight inequality in all its...
Since election night 2016, the streets of the US have rung with resistance. People all over the country have woken up with the conviction that they must do something to fight inequality in all its forms. But many are wondering what it is they can do. In this ongoing "Interviews for Resistance" series, experienced organizers, troublemakers and thinkers share their insights on what works, what doesn't, what has changed and what is still the same. Today's interview is the 61st in the series.
Today we bring you a conversation with José Lopez, one of the co-organizing directors at Make the Road New York, and Daniel Altschuler, the director of civic engagement and research at Make the Road New York.
Read the full article here.
2 months ago
2 months ago