CPD IN THE NEWS

New York Times - November 14, 2014, by Binyamin Appelbaum - Jean Andre traveled from Queens to the Federal Reserve Board’s stately headquarters here on Friday to tell the people who make monetary policy that he needs their help. He cannot find regular work on film and photo shoots. The jobs he does find pay less.

The Fed’s chairwoman, Janet L. Yellen, agreed to meet with about 30 workers and activists, including Mr. Andre, in a gesture of concern for the plight of Americans searching for work and struggling to make a living.

For one hour on Friday, the workers sat in the Fed’s ornate conference room and told their stories to Ms. Yellen and other Fed officials, including three other members of the Fed’s board of governors — Stanley Fischer, the vice chairman; Lael Brainard; and Jerome H. Powell — who listened and asked questions.

“The Federal Reserve is too important of an institution to be insulated from the voices and perspectives of working families,” said Ady Barkan, a lawyer with the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group based in Brooklyn that orchestrated the meeting. “We think that the Fed needs to listen more and be more responsive, and we’re very grateful for this first opportunity.”

The meeting was closed to the media. The workers described what they said, and the Fed declined to comment, citing a policy of silence about private meetings.

Mr. Barkan’s group is campaigning for the Fed to continue its stimulus campaign, citing the high level of unemployment, particularly in minority communities, and the slow pace of wage growth as evidence the economy still needs help. The group argued the Fed could help to drive up wages by keeping interest rates low.

Mr. Andre, 48, said two jobs were canceled this week. And instead of $400 a day for a print shoot, he said he now made $250 or $300.

“They tell me if I don’t take the job there’s lots of other people willing to work,” he said. “So what can I do? I have a family. I have to take it.”

Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group, said monetary policy would be “the single most important determinant of wage growth,” and that he was glad to see workers recognize the Fed’s importance.

A conservative group, American Principles in Action, criticized the meeting as “highly political” and inappropriate. It said it would seek a similar meeting to share its view that the Fed’s stimulus campaign is damaging the economy.

The labor and community groups at the meeting wore green T-shirts that said “What Recovery?” on the front, with a chart illustrating meager wage gains on the back. They are also pressing Ms. Yellen to change the way the Fed chooses the presidents of its regional banks.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said Thursday that its president, Richard W. Fisher, would step down March 19. Charles I. Plosser, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, plans to retire at the beginning of March.

The Philadelphia Fed said shortly before the meeting on Friday that it had created an email address for inquiries about its presidential search process. It described the account, which will be maintained by the company conducting the search, Korn Ferry, as part of its commitment to conduct a “broad search.”

“I expect the same thing from Dallas,” said Connie Paredes, 42, who traveled to the meeting as a representative of the Texas Organizing Project, speaking at a rally outside the Fed before the group went inside. “We expect to be included in the process.”

Organizers from Dallas and Philadelphia said they would press for similar meetings with the presidents and board of the local Fed banks.

Source

The Federal Reserve has received a lot of criticism recently for its lack of diversity. The leaders of the central banking system are almost all white men.

But now that the president of one of the Fed’s 12 regional banks in Atlanta is stepping down, some see an opportunity for change.

Several congressional lawmakers and the activist group Fed Up are calling on the agency to appoint the system’s first black president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

“The fed is the nerve center of our entire economic system, and nobody is suffering from an economic depression as the African-American community,” Congressman David Scott said.

The Georgia Democrat co-wrote a letter, along with Reps. John Lewis, Maxine Waters and John Conyers, to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on the issue.

Black workers still struggle, Scott said, even as the overall economy has recovered. The jobless rate for African Americans, for example, is more than double their white neighbors.

Outside an unemployment office on the west side of Atlanta, Formosa Williams is at her wit’s end.

“At this point, I don’t know what to do,” Williams said.

For years, Williams said she has struggled to find stable work.

“The only jobs that really seem to be hiring are like fast food,” Williams said. “And it’s no way I’m going to go back to that.”

Scott and the activists hope stories of minority workers, like Williams, will take a more prominent place in the central banking system’s discussions once it has a black regional president.

“Unless you have a voice at that table that has gone through the experience of being an African American, you’re missing so much,” said Scott.

The congressman and activists argue the appointment also makes sense, given the region the bank covers -- the South -- and that region’s history with civil rights.

But while many economists might agree that diversity is good, they aren’t all sure how it translates into policy.

“I think you have to start out with the recognition that our Federal Reserve officials have really one tool, and that’s interest rates,” said Tim Duy, an economics professor at the University of Oregon. “That tool is a very blunt instrument.”

That tool affects the broader economy at a macro-level, said Duy, who also authors a blog called Fed Watch. Meanwhile, he said, many of the problems facing African-American workers are at the micro-economic level.

“The Federal Reserve is not going to be a silver bullet to these issues,” Duy said.

The search for the next Atlanta Fed president is being led by a committee of business leaders from around the South.

The chair, Thomas Fanning, who is president of Southern Company, said they’re looking for the best person most of all.

And if he or she happens to make history, as the first African American?

“That would be a great thing,” Fanning said.

By STEPHANNIE STOKES

Source

A former top Federal Reserve policy advisor said on Monday that bank executives should be barred from serving on the boards of the Fed's 12 regional outposts, Fed policymakers should serve just seven years, and monetary policy should be subject to an official annual review.

The proposals from Dartmouth College Professor Andrew Levin represent substantial change for the Federal Reserve.

Banks currently appoint six of the nine members of regional Fed bank boards, policymakers often serve a decade or more before retiring, and the details of monetary policymaking have always been a closely guarded secret, with transcripts of meetings released only after a five-year interval.

Levin, who advised Fed Chair Janet Yellen when she was Fed vice chair, released the proposals via the Fed Up Coalition, a network of community organizations and labor unions calling for change to the U.S. central bank. It is unclear how they will be received by other Fed critics who have called for even more sweeping changes, or the 101-year-old institution itself, which has largely resisted reform proposals.

The Fed has come under increasing fire in recent months from both Democrats and Republicans for what they say is a lack of accountability and transparency, with lawmakers and presidential candidates calling for a wide range of limits on the Fed's powers.

In response, some current and former Fed officials have begun to call for steps to placate the U.S. central bank's harshest critics.

Levin on Monday also called for the process of appointing Fed bank presidents to be more transparent and to involve the public. Currently Fed bank presidents are chosen in a closed-door process run by each bank's board and approved by the Washington-based Fed Board. 

Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli

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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.