Group Blasts Fed for Lack of Diversity in Leadership
Source:...
Source: Wall Street Journal
Federal Reserve leadership is overly male, almost entirely white and drawn too frequently from the banking community, according to a group critical of the central bank.
A new report from the Center for Popular Democracy’s Fed Up campaign analyzes the types of people populating the Fed’s Washington-based board of governors, the regional bank presidencies and the regional bank boards of directors.
The report notes that all voting members of the central bank’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee and nearly all the regional bank presidents are white. Just two of the 12 presidents and two of the five governors are women.
“These key decision-making bodies remain dramatically unbalanced and unrepresentative of the vast majority of people who participate in the economy,” said the group, which has called for more public input into the selection of regional bank presidents and their performance evaluations.
The center said the composition of the Fed’s leadership bodies violates the spirit of the law that created the central bank, which calls for membership drawn from many different industries and interests.
A Fed spokesman responded to the criticism about the regional bank boards by saying the central bank has “focused considerable attention” to finding directors “with diverse backgrounds and experiences” that represent agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor and consumers, as the law requires.
“We also are striving to increase ethnic and gender diversity,” the spokesman said, noting a rise in minority representation on the boards from 16% in 2010 to 24% today. Female representation has risen from 23% to 30% over the same period, and all told, 46% of regional directors now are either a woman or a member of a racial minority, the spokesman added.
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen is the central bank’s first female leader.
The Fed Up group, with a membership drawing heavily from labor unions and community organizations, is a regular critic of the central bank. It has argued in recent months that the Fed shouldn’t raise short-term interest rates and has pressed its case in private meetings with Fed officials. Several of its members appeared outside the central bank’s research conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last year to call attention to their views.
The group’s concern about a dearth of diversity at the Fed has been echoed by former Minneapolis Fed chief Narayana Kocherlakota. He argued in a blog post last month the central bank has appeared to give short shrift to racial concerns in part because there have been almost no African-Americans in its policy-making ranks. He wrote that the concerns of racial minorities have been “underemphasized” at the Fed.
The last African-American to serve on the Fed board was Roger W. Ferguson Jr., who served as a governor between 1997 and 2006 and as vice chairman from 1999 to 2006. The first African-American to serve as a Fed governor was Andrew Brimmer, from 1966 to 1974.
The report showed particular concern about the directors on the regional Fed bank boards, which are drawn from the private sector. It said 83% are white, compared with around two-thirds of the total U.S. population.
“The diversity of regional board members is meant to inform the bank presidents, who in turn, participate in discussions and vote at the FOMC,” the report said. “However, the boards, the presidents, and the FOMC fail to represent their region’s racial diversity.”
The report also said its analysis found that representatives of banking and what it calls commercial interests have increased their share of regional Fed board seats in recent years. Representatives of community groups and labor unions account for fewer than 5% of the available board seats, according to the center.
Among the regional Fed bank boards’ most high-profile roles is selecting their bank presidents. Recent regulatory changes now bar directors from participating in that process if their firms are regulated by the bank.
The directors also provide information to bank officials about local economic conditions and give advice on running the banks.
New York’s Progressive Experiment Tees Up
Politico - November 4, 2013, by Edward-Isaac Dovere - Even New York liberals weren’t expecting things to go this...
Politico - November 4, 2013, by Edward-Isaac Dovere -
Even New York liberals weren’t expecting things to go this well.
Tuesday, voters in America’s most prominent city are poised to elect Bill de Blasio mayor and turn over every major lever of municipal government to a new breed of politics that’s been on the rise but never close to this level of power: a mix of young progressives, reconstituted ’60s- and ’70s-era lefties, newly active minority voters and deep-pocketed unions that have transformed themselves into expert campaign organizers.
What that will mean as they try to translate that ideology into a governing philosophy is a question that even people who’ve been leading the charge are still asking. And in New York, where there are more than 8 million residents (plus close to a million more who come in daily for work), 300,000 city employees and a $70 billion-plus budget, there’s a lot riding on the answer.
These are the people who formed the labor-funded, liberal-favorite Working Families Party and sparked Occupy Wall Street. They say government shouldn’t just allow for change — it should force new change on the city and private sector. That means universal pre-K; closed tax loopholes; pensions divested from fossil fuel companies; family-friendlier work policies, including financial support for single parents; and paid sick leave requirements. And on the housing front: more market regulation, leveraging of privately owned real estate that’s in trouble and greater community power over developers’ plans.
The reaction of the city’s business, real estate, finance and high-tech industry leaders to its new governing class-in-waiting has ranged from panic to scoffing at the stuff they say pipe dreams are made of. The political establishment in the city is skeptical any of it can work, especially without igniting a budget disaster. And the progressives in charge are superstitious enough that, despite their candidates’ long and overwhelming lead in the polls, they’ve avoided doing too much planning before election night.
One thing all sides agree on: A new era has arrived. Barring major upsets, former political-labor strategist de Blasio will be the mayor, longtime Upper West Side official and political maven Scott Stringer will be the city comptroller, and Tish James, a product of Brooklyn African-American activism and politics, will be the public advocate, roughly the equivalent of the city council president.
The city council speaker most likely won’t be picked until January, but even the conservative choices are liberal Democrats. And whoever gets the job will face a newly empowered City Council, in which the rapidly multiplying Progressive Caucus members include many unconnected to the traditions of go-along legislators, and have made clear they’re going to push for their own changes.
That array of progressive victories is “a dream,” de Blasio said on his way out of a late September fundraiser for Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the godfather of this strain of progressivism in the city, that seconded as an advance celebration for the impending takeover.
“For a lot of progressives who’ve spent a whole lot of time on the steps of City Hall, this is the chance to get inside City Hall,” Stringer told POLITICO. “The challenge for all of us is to come together and govern and build our city for every New Yorker.”
Expectations are high, and made higher by the spirit of achieving what seemed impossible with unexpected election wins including de Blasio’s late surge and Stringer’s fending off Eliot Spitzer.
So what happens next, when these are the people confronted with a complicated and tight city budget, multiple costly labor contracts that are coming due for renewal, a crime rate that seems like it will statistically have to edge up at some point? How do they manage when they’re in charge, and not the outside instigators? And what happens when they’re heading into office promising major changes in rent costs and education, realignment of investments in city services and a detailed agenda of “broadly shared prosperity” — along with other liberal priorities like confronting climate change and improving senior care? When many competing interests are all going to be demanding attention from people who’ve never before been in positions of major power?
“There’s a lot you can do with really good leadership throughout the city that shares this agenda,” said Brad Lander, a city councilman who leads the progressive bloc and helped organize “Toward a 21st Century for All,” a collection of policy essays that’s become one of the main touchstones of progressive planning. “New York City is going to be an exciting laboratory.”
“What a pleasure it will be to have a city administration united with people who believe that you can increase the minimum wage, who believe that you can have paid sick leave, who believe that it doesn’t harm the city to treat workers and low-income people right, who believe that the purpose of an economy is not just to get the numbers on television but to help people live their lives, and who believe that the purpose of city government is to help all people — not just the 1 percent or the 5 percent or the 10 percent,” Nadler said, riling the crowd at an Upper West Side rally over the weekend.
At the rally, the talk was of how subway tokens cost only $1.25 and that Miley Cyrus wasn’t yet born the last time a Democrat was elected mayor. But that was a very different type of Democrat than what’s coming now — much more rooted in traditions of government spending and programs than the current strain’s emphasis on activist intervention, rethinking budget priorities and reeling in what they see as runaway wealthy interests.
“‘Liberal’s’ too soft,” actor-singer-activist Harry Belafonte declared at the rally to describe what he said was the most exciting political moment in his life in New York. “’Radicals.’ It’s time for radicals.”
There are limitations. Taxes — including the one on high-income earners that would pay for de Blasio’s signature expanded pre-kindergarten proposal — have to be approved by the state government, which also has the authority to take over city finances at any point if they begin to veer off track.
“It should be a comfort to people who are worried about the city going off the rails in a crazy far-left direction that Albany is not going to let that happen,” said Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which represents business and financial interests across the city.
“I don’t think the primary concern is whether the mayor’s a lefty,” she said, reflecting the private-sector leaders she’s talked to. “It’s whether we’re going to have a mayor who can effectively manage 300,000 city workers and an $80 billion budget and not allow the city to run off the rails.”
“We have to govern,” Stringer said. “We have to do things through the lens of what we can afford and also what we can’t afford.”
At a meeting of municipally elected progressives in Washington state in late October, the same “tale of two cities” line that’s dominated de Blasio’s campaign kept coming up as people talked about how they could build support for many of the ideas that de Blasio’s about to have the power to do.
“It’s happening all over the country,” de Blasio said in a taped message to the Local Progress conference. “This is a tremendous moment for progressive activism.”
The mayors of Richmond, Calif., and Fitchburg, Mass., both attended, but as people there acknowledged, the importance and size of New York make de Blasio and the incoming officials a much bigger deal for the movement, in both spotlight and potential.
“It’s easy to talk on the outside than to be on the inside, actually preparing the meal, so that means they’re going to be judged on what kind of meal they prepare,” said Nick Licata, a former Seattle City Council president who’s the chairman of Local Progress. “It’s going to be a challenge — it’s always a challenge for any advocate group, left or right, when you go from proposing something to actually implementing it.”
John Del Cecato, a political consultant who was one of the main architects of de Blasio’s campaign, said there’s a clear reason why the revolution started in New York.
“There aren’t just pockets of extreme wealth and pockets of poverty anymore. We’ve got close to 400,000 millionaires, while half the city lives at or near the poverty line,” Del Cecato said. De Blasio’s appeal, he said, is the fact that the current state of affairs “is deeply troubling not just to those who are living the struggle every day, but to those who’ve done quite well who fear that New York is losing what’s made it such a special place for generations.”
Recalibrating the enormous city government to focus on pre-K, after-school programs, community hospitals, better wages and affordable housing is going to be difficult, and certainly won’t be fast, Del Cecato said.
But this year’s elections, he argued, are an important start to “move New York in a direction that acknowledges where we’re slipping behind, puts us on a new path and establishes a mind-set that we’re a city that leaves nobody behind.”
Source:
If Amazon Wants New York, Make It Unionize
The Center for Popular Democracy awarded Walgreens its “worst employer” prize because of its treatment of the retail...
The Center for Popular Democracy awarded Walgreens its “worst employer” prize because of its treatment of the retail chain’s employees.
Read the full article here.
New York immigration activists criticize Schumer for deal to reopen government
New York immigration activists criticize Schumer for deal to reopen government
Before 81 senators, including 33 Democrats, voted on Monday to reopen the federal government, U.S. Senate Minority...
Before 81 senators, including 33 Democrats, voted on Monday to reopen the federal government, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer blamed President Donald Trump in a speech on the Senate floor for his refusal to compromise on an immigration deal.
For many liberals in his home state, however, Schumer is to blame for being too willing to compromise, since he agreed to reopen the government without a permanent solution for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Read the full article here.
The Week Ahead in New York Politics, May 21
On Monday at 11 a.m. at City Hall Park, “Representative Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), joined by New York State Assemblyman...
On Monday at 11 a.m. at City Hall Park, “Representative Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), joined by New York State Assemblyman Marco Crespo and community leaders, will hold a press conference calling for secure housing for residents of Puerto Rico in support of the Housing Victims of Major Disasters Act, introduced by Rep. Espaillat earlier this Congress.” Other participants will include former City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito, Frankie Miranda of Hispanic Federation, and Ana María Archila of Center for Popular Democracy, among others.
Read the full article here.
Why Diversity Matters at the Federal Reserve
There’s no question that race and gender matter in determining people’s economic fortunes. African Americans’...
There’s no question that race and gender matter in determining people’s economic fortunes. African Americans’ unemployment rate is typically twice as high as that of whites. The racial wealth gap has widened since the financial crisis, when African Americans and Hispanics—who had a disproportionate share of their wealth tied up in their homes—disproportionately suffered from subprime loans and foreclosures. The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances finds that the median wealth of a white family in 2013, the last year studied, was $134,008. For Hispanics, it was just $13,900. For African-Americans, $11,184. And as everyone knows, or should, women still make 79 cents for every dollar men make.
These deficiencies are more likely to be ignored when our most important economic policymakers don’t reflect the faces of all Americans. Yesterday, 127 Democratic members of Congress wrote to Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen about the lack of diversity at the central bank. “The leadership across the Federal Reserve System remains overwhelmingly and disproportionately white and male,” the letter notes. Led by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, this high-level challenge also castigates the Fed for being dominated by former and current executives of financial institutions and large corporations, rather than people with backgrounds in academia, labor, or consumer organizations.
The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the economic recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations.
Momentum to fix the Fed’s diversity problem grew on Thursday when Hillary Clinton endorsed the viewpoints expressed in the letter. Her spokesperson Jesse Ferguson told The Washington Post, “Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole and that commonsense reforms—like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks—are long overdue.”
The Fed’s lack of diversity might actually violate the law. Under the Federal Reserve Reform Act of 1977, regional Federal Reserve bank directors are required to “represent the public, without discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin, and with due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers.” The original Federal Reserve Act only mandated representation from agriculture, commerce, and industry.
It’s unclear what enforcement of that 1977 requirement would look like. But clearly the Fed isn’t living up to it. The members of Congress rely on a February report from the Center for Popular Democracy, organizers of the “Fed Up” coalition, which has pressured the central bank to adopt pro-worker policies. According to their figures, 83 percent of Federal Reserve board members are white, and 72 percent are male. Among the twelve regional Fed bank presidents, only Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed is non-white, and only Esther George (Kansas City) and Loretta Mester (Cleveland) are female. And among voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which makes monetary policy decisions, it’s even worse: All ten currently serving members are white.
The lack of occupational diversity is also pretty stark. The Center for Popular Democracy studied the regional feds’ boards of directors, finding that 39 percent represent financial institutions. The Fed’s role as a key supervisor of major banks makes this highly suspect—especially considering there is no mandate for financial interests to be represented on the Fed board.
Another 29 percent of the Fed regional directors represent commerce and industry. Only 11 percent come from community, labor, consumer, or academic organizations. Even representation from the service sector, which has an overly non-white workforce and has expanded in recent years, has shrunk as a percentage of Fed bank-board members relative to 2010, the last time the boards’ makeup was studied.
It’s unusual for members of Congress to take such a public stand on the Federal Reserve, given their mindfulness of central bank independence. But they are recognizing that the lack of diversity has an important effect on economic policy. A more diverse Fed might pay more attention to how far communities of color are from full employment when deciding whether or not to raise interest rates, which they are now deliberating. A more diverse Fed might not be as consumed with the concerns of finance and industry, and their desire to keep inflation and wages low. It might consider how banks have traditionally preyed on communities of color, and target its supervision activities to reflect that.
The voices of those left behind most egregiously in the recovery are simply not present in Fed deliberations. The members of Congress cited a recent blog post by former Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota, who said that “there is one key source of economic difference in American life that is likely underemphasized in FOMC deliberations: race.” Kocherlakota searched transcripts of FOMC meetings from 2010 (the most recent ones released). That entire year, African American unemployment stood at 15.5 percent or above. But, writes Kocherlakota, “Based on that search, my conclusion is that there was no reference in the meetings to labor market conditions among African Americans.”
Traditionally, public pressure on the central bank has come from the right, from the likes of Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” movement. Progressives were largely absent from the conversation, despite the Fed’s central economic role. No more: Thursday’s letter to Yellen is the biggest success yet for the Fed Up campaign, launched two years ago to amplify the voices of communities that didn’t benefit from the recovery. The campaign has brought together labor and community groups to demand that the Fed take its mandate to maximize employment seriously—taking into account all communities, not just affluent ones. And now Fed Up’s views have become dominant in the Democratic Party.
In addition to the hefty names of Sanders and Warren, co-signers include 116 House Democrats, more than half of the caucus, as well as the ranking members of the Financial Services Committee (Maxine Waters) and the Monetary Policy Subcommittee (Gwen Moore), the committees with oversight of the Fed. And Clinton’s endorsement of Fed Up’s sentiment puts most of the ideological spectrum of the party on the side of reform.
But what does reform look like? The Center for Popular Democracy’s February report recommends that each regional board contain at least one member from a labor group, a community organization, academia, and a community bank or credit union. A separate reform proposal from former Yellen advisor Andrew Levin includes a number of ideas, including banning anyone affiliated with a financial institution from serving as a Fed director.
These ideas can be congressionally mandated. That will take time, of course, but the movement has begun to get Democrats off the sidelines to pressure the Fed. When Yellen testified before the House and Senate in February, giving her semi-annual Monetary Policy Report, she received questions about the lack of diversity from 15 different members of Congress. Yellen expressed concern that, among other things, no African American has ever led a regional Federal Reserve bank in U.S. history.
The fact that political pressure can make a difference was again signified by the quick response of a Fed spokesman to Thursday’s letter. The Fed statement said the central bank has “focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experience.” Those aspirations have not yet translated into results, however, even after the Fed established an internal diversity office in 2011.
It’s hard for the traditionally cloistered Fed to ignore concerns when they come from high-level Democrats. And just having ordinary workers in the public debate already diversifies the Fed, in a sense. No longer can they simply be responsive to Wall Street without further discussion.
BY DAVID DAYEN
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Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage
Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage
Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage Voters at polling centers across Colorado will soon be deciding...
Homestretch: The fight to raise Colorado’s minimum wage
Voters at polling centers across Colorado will soon be deciding on Amendment 70, a measure that would alter the state constitution to increase the minimum wage from the current $8.31 per hour by yearly 90-cent increments to $12 in 2020. In 2020, it will be fixed at $12, except for yearly adjustments to account for inflation. Amendment 70 would further mandate that those inflation-tied adjustments only apply when they mean an increase in wages. In the past, when inflation was negative, minimum wage workers saw a pay cut.
Who’s behind it?
Supporters of the increase coalesced in mid-2016 into a group called Colorado Families for a Fair Wage, a coalition of unions, economic justice advocates and progressive policy analysts. Many of them had been part of an informal consortium of anti-poverty groups called The Everyone Economy that came together to strategize about raising the minimum wage back in February 2014. Partnering with Democratic legislators, they advocated for a pair of bills in the 2015 legislative session to help low-wage workers. One would have allowed municipalities to set their own minimums, and the other would have created a ballot measure to reach a $12.50 per hour minimum by 2020. Republicans killed both bills in the Senate.
Democrats floated another bill in 2016 to allow cities to set their own minimum wages, which met the same fate as its predecessors. After that, Everyone Economy members decided they had no recourse but to pursue a ballot measure themselves and formed Colorado Families for a Fair Wage.
Why $12 per hour and not $15?
The amendment’s proponents faced criticism for their decision to pursue $12 instead of $15 per hour in this week’s Westword cover story. According to the story, some former members of the coalition’s steering committee expressed deep dissatisfaction with its decision to pursue a $12 wage, arguing that, in doing so, the coalition shut out those whose voices were most pertinent to the effort — namely, dues-paying union members. They further take issue with the coalition’s failure to conduct focus groups composed of African-American working people, the demographic that would most benefit from a wage increase. CFFW spokesman Mike Kromrey now admits that was a mistake.
In its decision, the campaign relied on polling that showed that $12 per hour was more likely to pass. Campaign spokesman Timothy Markham dismissed any suggestion that the Westword story would affect the election outcome. “It might make for interesting gossip, but it doesn’t change the fundamental facts of the struggles Colorado workers are facing,” he said.
Interestingly, CFFW’s opponents on the right appropriated some of those far-left criticisms in the article and applied them to their own pitch. Keep Colorado Working, a conglomeration of chambers of commerce, industry groups and free-market business advocates that came together to oppose Amendment 70, sent a press release on Wednesday drawing attention to Westword’s report and castigating CFFW for deciding on their ballot language based on “polling, not policy impacts.”
The release does not mention the fact that those reports came from former CFFW members who wanted the minimum wage increase to be greater, not smaller, as Keep Colorado Working does.
How much firepower is against it?
Keep Colorado Working had a slower start raising funds, but has now raised $1.7 million. It has spent just under $1.4 million as of the most recent campaign finance filings, primarily on television advertising and consultants. About half of its funds ($650,000) come from the Alexandria, Virginia-based Workforce Fairness Institute. It has also gotten $525,000 from Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution, a committee that has donated hefty sums to pro-fracking campaigns and to a 2013 effort to recall legislators who had passed gun-control legislation.
For its part, CCFW has outraised its rivals almost 3 to 1, raising about $5.3 million in donations, much of which is from out-of-state groups like its largest donor, the Center for Popular Democracy, which has kicked in over $1 million. Its second-largest donor is the Palo Alto-based Fairness Project, which has contributed over $960,000 to CFFW and is also supporting minimum wage ballot measures in Maine, Arizona and Washington, D.C.
Keep Colorado Working wants to make sure you know that some of CFFW’s donors are not from Colorado. Virtually all of its communications use the terms “wealthy out of state special interests” liberally.
According to the most recent campaign finance filings, CFFW has spent $4.6 million on television and digital advertising, outreach efforts like canvassing and hosting events, mailers, polling and research.
Keep Colorado Working did not respond to requests for comment in time for this story’s deadline.
Will it pass?
Early polls indicate that it will.
An August Magellan Strategies poll of 500 likely Colorado voters showed that 55 percent of respondents supported the measure, 42 percent were opposed and three percent were undecided. A September joint project between Colorado Mesa University, Rocky Mountain PBS and Franklin & Marshall College showed that 58 percent of respondents favored Amendment 70, with 36 percent opposed and seven percent undecided.
CFFW is also conducting its own internal polls and told The Independent that it is consistently getting positive results. Colorado politics expert Eric Sondermann also predicted that it will narrowly pass in a comprehensive ballot prediction for Westword.
CFFW’s case was buoyed in the fall months, starting with the release of a University of Denver study that tied Amendment 70 to a $400 million increase in state GDP. The logic is straightforward: when low-wage workers get a raise, they are very likely to spend it in their local economies, rather than filing it away. Not long after, Governor Hickenlooper endorsed the amendment, tethering worker pay raises to a boost for the overall economy.
Keep Colorado Working countered with another study, commissioned by the Common Sense Policy Roundtable, which concludes that the increase would lead to a decline in income and massive layoffs. But critics say that CSPR’s ties to groups like EIS Solutions, a PR outfit with several oil and gas clients, and Americans for Prosperity, the oil and gas giant Koch brothers’ political arm, undermine the study’s integrity.
Proponents are feeling optimistic as they buckle down for the the pre-election weekend. Andy Jacob, political director for SEIU Local 105, which is CFFW member, said that the group will spend the weekend making phone calls, knocking on doors, communicating with members and “doing everything we can to get this passed.”
If it passes, will it really be a game-changer for workers?
Whether Amendment 70 passes or fails, the work is just beginning for Colorado labor unions and low-wage worker advocates. Most CFFW members acknowledge that $12 per hour is not in fact a living wage for workers with families in some parts of Colorado. Most estimates put a living wage for a single parent of two children in Denver at around $30 per hour. But advocates also believe that the current $8.31 per hour is inexcusable, and any more than $12 is not politically viable.
There’s a sense of immediacy among CFFW members. One hears the term “right now” a lot. They would rather take a safe bet than a real gamble when so many people’s livelihoods hang in the balance.
“Do we go with something that we know is going to be tough but that we know we can win on, or do we go with 15, which the Denver area might be ready for but the state isn’t, and we lose?” SEIU’s Jacob asked.
He works with low-wage union members every day and he believes he’s doing right by them. “‘12 by 2020’ will impact half a million people in Colorado,” Jacob said. “Don’t tell those people this isn’t going to help them. It is.”
By Eliza Carter
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How Trump’s Pick To Police Wall Street Endangers The Economy
How Trump’s Pick To Police Wall Street Endangers The Economy
As the country reeled from news that Donald Trump Jr. apparently tried to collude with Russia against former Democratic...
As the country reeled from news that Donald Trump Jr. apparently tried to collude with Russia against former Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, his father, President Donald Trump, announced a decision that will have ripple effects on the American economy for years to come.
Trump, distressing advocates of tough financial rules and pro-worker monetary policy, on Monday nominated veteran Wall Street lawyer Randal Quarles to serve as the Federal Reserve’s top finance regulator.
Read the full article here.
Bill Would Make Maryland Employers Set Work Schedules Earlier
As Labor Day approaches, advocates in Maryland are pushing for a change in how workers receive their schedules....
As Labor Day approaches, advocates in Maryland are pushing for a change in how workers receive their schedules.
Take Hilaria, who lives in Gaithersburg and works at a fast food restaurant. (That's all she'll say on the record, fearing potential reprisal from her employer.) Hilaria says she often doesn't receive her weekly work schedule until right before she has to start it.
"Sometimes it three to four days before the schedule [starts]," Hilaria says. "So we don't have enough time for activities — like for my daughter in school, or for my appointment with a doctor."
Advocates for workers argue Hilaria's story is not uncommon for those in the restaurant and hospitality industries. They're pushing the Maryland General Assembly to approve a measure next year that would make employers issue schedules three weeks in advance. It's called the Fair Work Week Act.
Del. David Moon of Montgomery County says it would provide protections for workers who don't have many.
"Schedules change. You're asked to fill in for people at the last second. It's a busy night and all of the sudden you have to jump in and completely alter your schedule. And if you can't, you're often made to find a replacement yourself," Del. Moon says.
A similar bill never received a vote during this year's session in Annapolis. Nationwide, Fair Work Week bills have been more successful at the city and county level. San Francisco approved a similar measure last year, and Albuqueque, New Mexico, is currently debating one.
Source: WAMU 88.5
D-FW activists travel to annual Fed summit in Jackson Hole, Wyo., to spread their message
Lemlem Berhe is one of a handful of activists from the Dallas-Fort Worth area visiting Jackson Hole, Wyo., in hopes of...
Lemlem Berhe is one of a handful of activists from the Dallas-Fort Worth area visiting Jackson Hole, Wyo., in hopes of getting their message heard. That message: Raising interest rates now would stunt wage growth and hurt working families and communities of color.
“Fed officials think the economy has recovered enough to raise interest rates, slowing down job and business growth, but working families like mine in Dallas know otherwise,” Berhe said. “That’s why we’re in Wyoming this week, to ask them to prioritize job growth and higher wages.”
As part of the national FedUp Coalition, local members of the Texas Organizing Project and the Workers Defense Project are in Wyoming for the Federal Reserve’s annual summit, where the world’s most powerful central bankers discuss economic policies that affect people everywhere. The top U.S. banker — Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen — is not attending the event, which began Thursday and ends Sunday.
This is the first time anyone from either group has traveled to the Fed’s annual summit in Jackson Hole.
This year’s Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium comes as the Fed faces a difficult decision on when to start raising interest rates, rising debates on income inequality and wages, and worries about slowing Asian economies, most notably in China.
With the U.S. unemployment rate at 5.3 percent in July, some say it’s time to raise interest rates, which have been near zero for nearly seven years. Recently, some economists and one Fed banker have called for a delay given concerns about slower global economies.
On Friday, the organizing groups in Jackson Hole held a public demonstration and teach-ins on topics such as full employment and the selection process for regional bank presidents, with renowned Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz. Today, he wrote an op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times about why the Fed should not raise interest rates.
In addition, the Texas Organizing Project also made a second request in a video posted to its Facebook page and in a tweet to meet with Robert Steven Kaplan, the newly named president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, soon after he starts his new job on Sept. 8. Kaplan is attending the summit.
Kaplan will replace Richard Fisher, who retired in March after a decade leading the Dallas Fed. Last week, immediately after the regional bank named Kaplan, the Texas Organizing Project suggested he meet with some of its members in Dallas once he arrives.
Earlier this year, the group and the FedUp Coalition asked to meet with Dallas Fed board members to seek more openness and participation in the search process for Fisher’s replacement. Their request was denied, but a meeting was arranged with two bank officials. I wrote about it.
FedUp claims that full employment is when the nation’s unemployment rate is 4 percent or lower. If that was the case this year, the Dallas economy would be $19.9 billion stronger at $476.8 billion, it would have 204,300 more workers employed, which would mean 162,500 fewer people would live in poverty.
In addition to Berhe, two other Texas Organizing Project representatives in Jackson Hole are from Dallas: member Nayeli Ruiz, 21, and community organizer Kenia Castro.
The Austin-based Workers Defense Project has two D-FW representatives in Jackson Hole: AdanArostegui andElliott Navarro.
“We believe that our members should be involved and learn what the Fed does,” said Diana Ramirez, a community organizer for the Workers Defense Project in Dallas. “No one really knows.”
Source: Dallas Morning News
7 days ago
7 days ago