CPD IN THE NEWS

The Federal Reserve‘s looming attempt to shrink its mammoth portfolio of bonds comes with an ugly track record: Virtually every time the central bank has tried it in the past, recessions have followed.

Over the past several months, the Fed has prepared markets for the upcoming effort to reduce the $4.5 trillion it currently holds of mostly Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. The balance sheet ballooned as the Fed sought to stimulate the economy out of its financial crisis morass.

Read the full article here.

Dive Brief:

Attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia sent letters to 15 retailers asking them to explain their policies regarding “on-call” scheduling, seeking information and documents related to their use of on-call shifts. 

Letters were sent to American Eagle, Aeropostale, Payless, Disney, Coach, PacSun, Forever 21, Vans, Justice Just for Girls, BCBG Maxazria, Tilly’s, Inc., David’s Tea, Zumiez, Uniqlo, and Carter’s, with signatures from any attorney general involved in the state where the retailer has operations.

The coordinated move follows a similar one last year from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office, an effort that prompted six retail brands, including Urban Outfitters, Gap Inc., L. Brands, J. Crew, Pier 1, and Abercrombie & Fitch to end on-call scheduling.

Dive Insight:

Algorithms in software have helped retailers lower costs through efficient staffing, cutting workers loose in slow times, having them wait "on call" in case things get busy, and leaving little room for flexibility. The practice makes it difficult for retail employees to juggle the realities of their those jobs while also trying to manage their households and earn enough money to get by.

“On-call shifts are unfair to workers who must keep the day free, arrange for child care, and give up the chance to get another job or attend a class–often all for nothing,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “On-call shifts are not a business necessity, as we see from the many retailers that no longer use this unjust method of scheduling work hours.”

Schneiderman’s office has been keen on cracking down on the practice for a while now, which in most cases violates his state’s laws, and there’s been rising sentiment among lawmakers in several states—and possibly even in Congress—to pull back on the practice.

But even with this pressure, and despite its dubious legality in some areas, on-call scheduling is still fairly widespread, according to the Fair WorkWeek Initiative.

“Over the past year, workers have been speaking out about the struggles caused by increasingly unpredictable hours,” Fair Workweek Initiative director Carrie Gleason said in an email to Retail Dive. “Workers should not have to choose between living with dignity and getting enough hours to put food on the table. It is heartening to see more and more policymakers and regulators take action to address a crisis affecting millions of Americans.”

Retailers should be prepared to see more such concerns, warnings, and even legislation as just-in time scheduling gets more scrutiny, Gail Gottehrer, a labor & employment litigator at Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider in New York who works on behalf of employers, told Retail Dive last year. The practice was a major concern when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last year unanimously passed its Worker Bill of Rights law.

“This can be especially difficult for multi-state employers,” Gottehrer said. “If you’re in a lot of jurisdictions it can be complicated to get things right.”

Not all the retailers that received letters use the practice. Forever 21 emailed Retail Dive to say, "Contrary to published reports, Forever 21 does not permit on-call scheduling nor do we have a company policy around doing so." On Friday, American Eagle Outfitters also released a press release reiterating that it has banned the practice nationwide. "We decided in November 2015 to cease the use of “on-call shifts” and advised our stores," the company states. "We are taking steps to reinforce and assure adherence to this policy across our store fleet."

Spokespeople for Coach and Payless told Reuters that they don’t use on-call scheduling, and a Zumiez spokesperson told Reuters that it’s cooperating, and a spokesperson for Carter's said that company is reviewing the letter. Other retailers receiving the new letters did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to Reuters.

Recommended Reading

Reuters: US regulators probe retailers' on-call scheduling

By Daphne Howland

Source

KIM BROWN, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Kim Brown in Baltimore.

Interests rates will remain unchanged. That coming out of this week’s meeting of the Federal Reserve in DC. The official word from the feds, per their own statement, was that job gains have been “solid”, that household spending has been growing strongly, and inflation is running below expectations. But does this mean that the economy is actually doing well or are we still in a recession dressed up to appear better than what it actually is?

Joining us today from New York City is Jerald Epstein. Jerald is the co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute. He’s also professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Jerald welcome back.

JERALD EPSTEIN: Thanks a lot Kim.

BROWN: Jerald let’s start with the basics and then we can delve a little bit deeper. If the economy is showing the signs of strength as the Fed has indicated, then why didn’t they raise interest rates now and do you think that they are likely to do so at all this year?

EPSTEIN: Well I think Janet Yellen who’s the chair of the Fed, is aware that even though it’s been showing strength and the economy has been growing moderately for several years now, that there’s still much more room to go. That is that wage growth has gone up a tiny bit more than inflation recently, it’s still pretty stagnant, pretty flat line and she knows there’s still a number of workers out that who are so discouraged that they haven’t joined the labor force. So Janet Yellen is concerned about the labor force and the growth of wages but the problem is twofold. First of all, it’s always dangerous to raise interest rates around election time. So traditionally the federal reserve, they’ll try not to do that, move interest rates right around an election. So that’s one factor leading them not to do anything.

The second factor leading them not to do anything is that keeping inflation under control is one of their main mandates. They have two. Maintaining inflation at a low rate and they have a 2% target, and reaching high employment. Inflation is still below 2%. There’s really no signs of inflation going up. So there’s no compelling reason from the point of view of the macro economy to raise interest rates.

BROWN: It’s funny that you mention that the Fed is less likely to raise interest rates or even mess with the interest rate around election time because the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump has already accused Chairwoman Yellen of keeping the interest rates unchanged in order to appease the Obama administration. She of course has denied this. What are your thoughts?

EPSTEIN: Well I don’t think she did it for Clinton or Obama. But it is I think a tradition and it’s common for Federal Reserves not to raise and certainly change interest rates right before an election. So she is in sort of a tradition of what the Federal Reserve typically does. And it’s also typical especially recently for politicians to make the Federal Reserve the whipping boy or girl for political reasons. Sometimes there’s good reasons. For that.

But there was something kind of unusual for this meeting. In the recent meetings it’s been unanimous to keep interest rates the same or to mostly do what the Federal Reserve has done. But this time it was quite contentious. There were actually 3 people on the federal open market committee, the ones who make this decision who voted to raise interest rates.

This is kind of challenge to Janet Yellen’s leadership in this regard and it also shows what kind of pressure the Federal Reserve is under, particularly from the banks and the mutual fund industry, the insurance industry because with interest rates being so low, it’s very difficult for them to eek out much of a profit. And is typically the case when interest rates are very low for a very long period of time. Some sectors and very powerful important sectors of the financial industry push very hard for interest rates to be raised and they usually get a pretty good hearing at the Federal Reserve [be]cause the Federal Reserve has traditionally done pretty much what the banks have wanted them to do.

BROWN: Jerald it seems as if there’s not enough agreement between the Federal Reserve and among every day Americans on how well this economic recovery is going. So let’s unpack some of the elements of this. Starting with Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s comments on labor markets.

JANET YELLEN: We’re generally pleased with the progress of the economy and the decision not to raise rates today and to wait for some further evidence that we’re continuing on this course is largely based on the judgement that we’re not seeing evidence that the economy is overheating and that we are seeing evidence that people are being drawn in in larger numbers than what I would’ve expected into the labor market and that that’s healthy to continue.

BROWN: So the unemployment rate was under 5% in August and the caveat to that is more Americans are working part-time jobs. Plus, the gig economy is one way that people are surviving and supplementing their income. So is unemployment published monthly by the Bureau of Labor statistics, giving us an accurate figure on the number of Americans who are out of the labor force?

EPSTEIN: They don’t have an accurate number. They have estimates and I think it’s true that there’s still quite a few so called discouraged workers who are out of the labor force. It’s also the case like we said in the beginning that wage growth has been stagnant. Look, the Federal Reserve has a real dilemma here. On the one hand and this is typically the case with Janet Yellen who I think does want to indicate that their policies have had some effect, otherwise nobody will want them to continue these policies. And she thinks that they have had some positive effect on employment and I think they have.

But on the other hand their policies cannot turn around the long run decline of our economy. We need much different kinds, much bigger, much more radical policies in terms of public investment to generate jobs, hiking the minimum wage to a living wage, providing much more in a way of a safety net for workers, protecting pensions and other investments. So the list is very, very broad and very deep. And the Federal Reserve has been pretty reluctant to go further down that list.

The Federal Reserve could do more. They could use different tools to invest directly in the economy. There’s a group called Fed Up which has proposed that they do this. But Janet Yellen and her committee want to stay pretty close to their broader toolkit that they’ve developed and are really afraid to, I think take more radical action which they plausibly could take.

But in the end it really raises questions of the Federal Reserve’s legitimacy. Can they take some kind of really radical action without the broader government saying go ahead and do it? And until the political stalemate we have is resolved, I’m afraid the Federal Reserve can’t do much more and that means this kind of stagnation in wages and so forth is going to continue.

BROWN: Jerald you raise an excellent point about wage stagnation and how wages have largely remained flat going back 20, 30, and even 40 years depending on who you ask. But new census data this month says that household income jumped over 5% which is the largest such gain in decades but that top 1% of Americans saw an increase of around 7% rise in their income. If most of the economic recovery gained since the great recession of 2007, 2008--if most of these gains have gone to the top1%, does it still count as a recovery if it’s not being felt by the majority of Americans?

EPSTEIN: No it does and this has been a very lopsided so called recovery and yes there have been some modest gains for the middle class and some working class people. So the Federal Reserve actions have had some positive effect. But until you really change the structure, change the tax policies so that the wealthy have to pay more of their taxes so the multinational corporations can’t park their earnings overseas and not pay any taxes like Apple and other corporations have been doing until you have much more aggressive jobs programs to bring about a Green transition and many other things. We’re not going to have a real recovery. These kind of very small sorts of gains which are gains but aren’t enough are going to be the best we’re going to see.

BROWN: Jerald what’s keeping inflation in check right now? Is it cheap oil prices?

EPSTEIN: It’s several things. First of all, cheap oil prices and other commodity prices are one thing. But they’re also partially related to the headwinds in the global economy against economic growth. China’s not growing as much so they’re not demanding as much oil and other commodities. Many other developing countries aren’t growing so fast. Europe isn’t growing hardly at all.

So this really dampens the demand for all of these commodities and with these prices going down that does keep inflation in check. The other thing is, all of the forces that are keeping wages in check. That is, imports from China, the union busting that’s been going on, the threat of multinational corporations to move abroad. All of these factors plus more are making it very difficult for workers to have their wages go up. Wages are a cost so that to some extent keep inflation in check as well.

And finally you have the retail industry that’s subject to loss of competition that just keeps squeezing and squeezing and squeezing workers more and more. Until we get big increase in the minimum wage, until we get policies to put workers back to work at well-paying jobs, we’re not going to see real wages go up and we’re also not going to see prices go up very much at all.

BROWN: And lastly Jerald, the wealthiest Americans, the top 1% of Americans are fairing very well and we are experiencing income inequality probably at the largest gap since the Gilded Age. We have seen so many sickle economic bubble burst over the past 20 years with the tech bubble bursting in the late 90’s and the housing bubble bursting in the mid 00’s. Are we at risk of another such economic bubble burst on the horizon any time soon.

EPSTEIN: Yes, we’re always at that kind of risk. It’s hard to see where exactly the bubble would come from. There are little bubblets going on all over the place that don’t seem so broad and connected up with debt and the financial system that it seems as so we’re going to have a kind of bubble burst the way we saw in 2007, 2008 but we might have bubblets burst in the high tech industry and so forth. What’s more likely is this slow burn of stagnation and increases in distress effecting so many people in the United States except for the wealthy who will continue to do very well. Not only income inequality at all-time highs, wealth inequality, how much assets people own has grown and grow and grow and grown. If you look for example, if the net wealth, that is assets minus liabilities, minus debt of African Americans in this country. A report recently came out that said, the median net wealth of African Americans is zero. There’s no net wealth. So this system cannot continue to go in this form. It helps to explain a lot of the political disorder that we’re seeing. The political fighting up we’re seeing and it’s just going to keep going unless we have some fundamental changes in the economy.

BROWN: Indeed. We’ve been speaking with Jerald Epstein. Jerald is a co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute. He’s also professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Jerald as always, we appreciate you joining us here on the Real News.

EPSTEIN: Thank you very much Kim.

BROWN: And thank you for tuning in to the Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a

recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Source

Left-leaning groups and lawmakers are taking their populist economic fight to the Federal Reserve, as they seek to exert new influence over key monetary decisions and a pair of vacancies at the central bank.

The Fed has faced heavy criticism from the right for years, but the other side of the aisle is now beginning to publicly push the institution for preferred policies. With Congress and the White House seemingly set to butt heads for the next two years, left-leaning community and labor groups are turning to the Fed in an attempt to get an economic policy boost for middle- and working-class Americans.

“In the face of the fiscal side not being really a realistic option to promote an economic recovery, the most important economic policymaker in the United States is the Federal Reserve,” said Shawn Sebastian, policy advocate for the Center for Popular Democracy.

And after successfully driving President Obama to nominate Janet Yellen to lead the Fed, some Senate Democrats are again pressing the administration about openings at the central bank. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are vocally calling on Obama to nominate tough-nosed Wall Street watchdogs to fill out two board spots that often are filled by academics or economists.

The resurgence of left-leaning interest in the Fed’s operations further complicates the bank’s efforts to remain above the political fray. The Fed has weathered years of criticism from the right, which argues its unprecedented foray into monetary stimulus after the recession was a recipe for disaster.

But now, with the Fed preparing to finally dial back years’ worth of quantitative easing, it’s the other side that is airing concerns. This time, the worry is that the Fed could tighten policy too quickly, even as millions of Americans still are looking for work or grappling with stagnant paychecks.

“I have been concerned for some time that when the Federal Reserve began to tighten policy that they would be subject to considerable pressure from people who don’t want them to do that,” said Donald Kohn, a former Fed vice chairman now with the Brookings Institution.

A host of left-leaning groups, including the AFL-CIO and the Economic Policy Institute, have joined forces to take a populist message directly to the Fed. The groups have protested a central bank powwow in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and have held public protests outside the institution’s headquarters in Washington.

The leftward push on the Fed follows those groups notching a major victory at the central bank in 2013. With Obama reportedly favoring economic adviser Lawrence Summers to replace the outgoing Ben Bernanke as head of the Fed, Democrats on and off Capitol Hill embarked on a concerted campaign to get Yellen nominated for the top job instead.

Democratic lawmakers took the rare step of publicly advocating for Yellen, then the Fed’s vice chairwoman, before a nomination was made, effectively announcing opposition to Summers in the process. Though Obama defended Summers in public, he ultimately deferred to that pressure and nominated Yellen for the job.

Now, Warren and Manchin are hoping to exert more influence, calling on Obama to fill two openings at the seven-member board with tough supervisors who “have a demonstrated commitment to not backing down when they find problems.”

Fed governors are given a 14-year term, so if those two find success on that front, the end result could be a considerable shift in how the central bank operates as a financial regulator. And any new voices would likely receive an open hearing from Yellen, whose background is as an economist, not a regulator.

“My impression is that Chair Yellen is running the system by consensus in a considerable way, she consults widely,” said Kohn.

Since taking the job, Yellen has made a concerted effort to place the Fed’s deliberations within the context of the working class. One of her first acts as the Fed’s new leader was to address at a Chicago event how the central bank hoped to boost jobs, and she has agreed to meet with left-leaning protestors to hear their concerns.

But Yellen’s openness to those new voices is leaving some unsettled.

“There’s a trend here that’s pretty clear and pretty concerning,” said Steven Lonegan, director of monetary policy at American Principles in Action, which advocates for tighter Fed policy, including a return to the gold standard.

“You can’t start manipulating the value of our money because you have a specific political agenda,” he added.

But these new advocates argue the Fed has always been subject to politics. Sebastian argued that Fed officials and those that track Fed policy skew heavily from corporate and banking interests, leaving a “Main Street” voice out of the picture.

“Every person carries political baggage,” he said. “All we’re trying to do is have that conversation reflect reality.”

But even the people behind the new leftward push on the Fed acknowledge advocacy of the publicly mysterious institution is somewhat novel. Conservative criticism of the Fed has been around for years, first helmed by former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), but a more liberal effort for influence has not been seen in decades.

“This is a new space for us,” said Sebastian. “We don’t know what the effect of this type of engagement will be.”

Source: The Hill