Want to combat inequality? Look to the Fed.
Want to combat inequality? Look to the Fed.
Undermining the central bank's responsibility to promote maximum employment would be a mistake....
Undermining the central bank's responsibility to promote maximum employment would be a mistake.
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Fed Chair Janet Yellen: Slowdown in job market likely ‘transitory’
Fed Chair Janet Yellen: Slowdown in job market likely ‘transitory’
Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet L. Yellen expressed hope Tuesday morning that the slowdown in the U.S. job market...
Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet L. Yellen expressed hope Tuesday morning that the slowdown in the U.S. job market would prove temporary, but she emphasized that the central bank would be cautious in raising interest rates again.
Yellen, testifying before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, acknowledged that hiring has dropped off sharply in recent months, but she also pointed to early signs that wages are beginning to rise after years of stagnation. She said she is "optimistic" that the progress in employment will continue.
"We believe that will turn around, expect it to turn around, but we are taking a cautious approach … to make sure that expectation is borne out," Yellen told lawmakers.
The Fed is responsible for charting the course for the nation’s economy, with the dual mission to keep prices stable and strengthen employment. It does that by adjusting the influential federal funds rate. A higher rate helps curb inflation by making borrowing money more expensive, which discourages spending and investment and reins in economic growth. A lower rate means that money is cheap, stimulating purchases by households and businesses. That helps boost employment and speeds up the economy.
The Fed chief's assessment comes less than a week after the Fed unanimously voted to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged. The central bank raised rates in December for the first time since the Great Recession but has not done so again amid persistent concerns about the health of the global economy.
Yellen said Tuesday that there is still "considerable uncertainty" over her outlook, with such risks as slow growth at home, turbulence in China and volatility in financial markets.
The most immediate threat comes from across the Atlantic Ocean, where Britain will vote Thursday on whether to remain in the European Union. A decision to exit — popularly known as Brexit — would upend Britain's four-decade partnership with the continent and throw the future of Europe’s open market into doubt.
Already, the British pound has been on a roller coaster as the probability of departure shifts with each poll. International policymakers have warned that a decision to leave would lower economic growth in the country by more than 5 percent over the next three years and potentially ripple across the rest of the world.
"A U.K. vote to exit the European Union could have significant economic repercussions," Yellen said Tuesday.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed slashed its target rate all the way to zero and pumped trillions of dollars into the economy in a bid to bolster the American recovery. More than seven years later, it is finally in the process of withdrawing that support.
The first move was in December, when the Fed nudged its target rate up to a range of 0.25 to 0.5 percent. At the time, officials anticipated raising rates four times this year, but the uncertainty in the global economy has forced them to downgrade that projection. Most Fed officials now think only two rate hikes are warranted this year, and a growing number think only one will be necessary.
That shift in thinking at the central bank is evident in Yellen’s own statements. Just last month, she had signaled that the central bank could raise rates "probably in the coming months." But Yellen dropped the reference in a speech early this month, after disappointing government data showed employers added just 38,000 jobs in May. And last week, she told reporters that she is "not comfortable to say it's in the next meeting or two."
On Tuesday, Yellen made the case for caution. Because rates are already so low, the Fed has limited room to reduce them further if the economy were to weaken, she said. Moving gradually also gives the central bank time to assess whether its forecast of continued economic improvement will come true.
"Our cautious approach to adjusting monetary policy remains appropriate," she said.
The Fed has faced criticism from both the left and the right recently over its governance. Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Banking Committee, opened the hearing Tuesday by calling on the Fed to follow more stringent rules for setting policy and to explain when it deviates.
"The desire to preserve the Fed’s independence, however, should not preclude consideration of additional measures to increase the transparency of the board’s actions," he said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) focused on diversity within the Fed’s top ranks. Last month, more than 100 lawmakers sent a letter to Yellen arguing for more minority representation among its leadership.
The central bank is led by a board of governors based in Washington and 12 regional bank presidents scattered throughout the country. The governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but regional bank leaders are chosen by local boards of directors.
Those officials tend to be white men. Yellen is the first woman to serve as chair in the central bank’s 101-year history. Only three Fed governors have been African American, and there have been no black regional bank presidents. No one now in the top brass is Hispanic.
By Ylan Q. Mui
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Fed Up Says It Unjustly Lost Rooms at Jackson Hole Meeting
Fed Up Says It Unjustly Lost Rooms at Jackson Hole Meeting
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the...
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the Federal Reserve’s prestigious annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were unfairly singled out when their 13 room reservations were canceled.
The group, which is pressing the U.S. central bank to appoint more minorities and women to its leadership, said most of its attendees would have been black and Latino. It has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice and other government officials. The group believes it lost the rooms because of “specific targeting of the Fed Up coalition.”
Fed Chair Janet Yellen is the first woman to lead the U.S. central bank and it remains under pressure to become more diverse. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined calls for reform in May and the central bank has taken fire from Republicans, who warn its low interest rate policies risk inflating another asset bubble.
The Fed Up coalition, which wants rates to stay low to boost hiring and lift wages, has discussed its concerns with Fed officials, including Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, which hosts the annual Jackson Hole monetary-policy conference in late August.
Faced with criticism that it doesn’t look out for the interests of poorer Americans, the Fed has been making efforts to change. The Kansas City Fed said on Thursday that it will hold a conference on the challenges low- to moderate-income communities face on Sept. 7-8 at its headquarters.
Booking Error
Alex Klein, vice president and general manager of Grand Teton Lodge Company and Flagg Ranch, said the reservations were canceled because “an error in the booking system” resulted in the Jackson Lake Lodge being oversold by 18 rooms. “We worked proactively and diligently with guests to relocate them to our nearby Flagg Ranch property,” he said in a statement.
The Kansas City Fed has a contract to provide rooms for guests at the symposium and “has no input regarding any decisions that the Lodge makes outside of its contract with us,” said bank spokesman Bill Medley.
The symposium, which gathers policy makers and economic-thought leaders for a three-day retreat in the heart of the Grand Teton mountains, is probably the most important event of its kind on the central-banking calendar. Yellen will attend and plans to address the conference on Aug. 26. This year’s meeting, which is invitation only, is focused on the topic “Designing Resilient Monetary Policy Frameworks for the Future.”
The hotel, while remote, is open to the public and Fed Up representatives have made the trip for the past two years. In 2015, Fed Up held an alternative conference at the Lodge which was addressed by Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
By Steve Matthews & Jeanna Smialek
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No sanctuary cities in Florida? That’s not as settled as Andrew Gillum claims
No sanctuary cities in Florida? That’s not as settled as Andrew Gillum claims
It’s difficult to speak in absolutes when discussing sanctuary cities, because as Gillum said, there is no formal...
It’s difficult to speak in absolutes when discussing sanctuary cities, because as Gillum said, there is no formal definition. The term can be used to make either negative or positive arguments about local policies, said Francesca Menes, Florida state coordinator for Local Progress, a national network of local elected officials working on social issues, including immigration protection.
Read the full article here.
ABQ call center workers get more family-friendly workplace rules
More than workers at Albuquerque’s T-Mobile call center began working under new workplace rules this week. The company...
More than workers at Albuquerque’s T-Mobile call center began working under new workplace rules this week. The company has been under increasing pressure to modify work rules to give workers greater flexibility to balance family and work requirements.
The company operates a nationwide call center near Jefferson and Menaul in Albuquerque and recently announced plans to add more employees top the more than 1,500 local workers already employed at the site.
News of the new workplace rules came from the Communications Workers of America which has been leading efforts with local organizations for these changes:
For Immediate Release July 2, 2015
Public Pressure Pushes T-Mobile US to Provide Fairer Paid Parental Leave Policy
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Responding to growing public pressure and local government initiatives, T-Mobile US announced this week that it would be adopt a paid parental leave program. The company also said it would end an oppressive policy that required call center workers to be on the phone 96.5% of their work time, leaving them with virtually no time for follow up on customer issues or to make changes in customers’ accounts as needed.
This is great news for workers who often must struggle to balance family and career. It comes as workers at T-Mobile US and a coalition of community supporters in cities like Albuquerque, N.M., step up efforts to restore a fair workweek and achieve other improvements for workers.
Members of TU, the union of T-Mobile workers, the Communications Workers of America and many organizations, including the Center for Popular Democracy, OLÉ and other coalition partners, have been raising concerns about unfair scheduling and other issues for workers at T-Mobile US and other employers. Workers want a voice in the decisions that affect them in their workplace — not just the ones that the company selectively picks and chooses. That’s why T-Mobile US workers are joining TU.
T-Mobile US’s initial scheduling changes were made just as the Albuquerque City Council was moving forward to consider a proposal to implement paid sick leave and scheduling improvements. The Albuquerque coalition hosted a town hall meeting on irregular scheduling, where Albuquerque City Council members pledged to support their fight for a fair workweek including the right to take sick leave without retaliation.
A recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision found T-Mobile guilty of engaging in illegal employment policies that prevented workers from even talking to each other about problems on the job. The judge ordered the company to rescind those policies and inform all 46,000 employees about the verdict.
Parental leave is a good first step toward helping workers balance their career and family responsibilities. But workers want real bargaining rights and the right to fairly choose union representation. That’s what T-Mobile must realize.
Source: The New Mexico Political Report
New York dedicates millions of dollars to help immigrants fight deportations
New York dedicates millions of dollars to help immigrants fight deportations
New York will soon offer free legal services for poor immigrants facing deportations, thanks to a new budget provision...
New York will soon offer free legal services for poor immigrants facing deportations, thanks to a new budget provision announced this week by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The state’s 2017-2018 budget sets aside $10 million for expanding immigrant legal defense services, $4 million of which will go to the Vera Institute of Justice’s New York Immigrant Family Unity Project — a coalition of groups that seek to ensure that all undocumented immigrants have public defenders...
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Report: Hedge funds that ‘killed’ Toys ‘R’ Us ‘prey’ on Puerto Rico
Report: Hedge funds that ‘killed’ Toys ‘R’ Us ‘prey’ on Puerto Rico
Some of the hedge funds that are speculating on Puerto Rico debt also forced Toys R Us to shut down, according to a...
Some of the hedge funds that are speculating on Puerto Rico debt also forced Toys R Us to shut down, according to a report released by Hedge Clippers, which advocates for income equality by targeting hedge and private equity funds, in partnership with the Center for Popular Democracy, a nonprofit that advocates for workers rights.
Read the full article here.
Community Organizing Can Deliver Jobs and More Jobs
Huffington Post - December 22, 2014, by Ana Garcia-Ashley - It was heartening to see Missouri's Attorney General...
Huffington Post - December 22, 2014, by Ana Garcia-Ashley - It was heartening to see Missouri's Attorney General finally take action by suing at least 13 municipalities due to their excessive court fees last week.
As the ACLU and the NAACP target the Ferguson Florissant school district to get more diverse representation on their school board, which is heavily white, we see progress on that front as well.
Gamaliel affiliate MCU and its allies are working to get County Executive-elect Steve Stenger to hold a county-wide summit of law enforcement officials and local mayors to promote community policing and an end to racial profiling and excessive court fees. So far, Stenger has agreed in principle to the summit, but a date has not been secured.
We believe it is essential to take a long hard look at what works in the long term in communities of color. In our more than 20 years of organizing, we have found that nothing works better than jobs at getting people off the street and putting money into low-income neighborhoods.
We must put in place criminal justice reforms, but we must put equal attention toward creating more and better jobs as a key long term solution. For that, we must continue our advocacy and organizing efforts.
What we found in our new study, "Jobs and More Jobs" was that in 2012 and 2013, among our 43 affiliates and across 16 states, the Gamaliel network won public policy campaign victories worth more than $13 billion, creating more than 450,000 jobs and generating more than a $17 billion increase in the gross domestic product. The victories ranged from transit access to criminal justice and even included food justice wins. The key takeaway of Jobs and More Jobs is this: organizing creates jobs.
Organizing creates the public space in which real people come together around a shared set of values to build powerful coalitions that improve the civil, social and economic conditions of their communities and it develops leaders who effectively wage and sustain long-term campaigns around the issues they face.
All community organizers have a similar impact -- not just Gamaliel. We urge our colleagues to assess their own impact. Center for Popular Democracy, DART, Casa de Maryland and others could post similar results.
In the end, we know what works post-Ferguson - jobs. We also know how to get there -- organizing. As Margaret Mead said; "Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have."
The 25 page study, called "Jobs and More Jobs," is available for download.
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Why the Federal Reserve is due for a radical reinvention
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...
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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Press Release New Report Reveals Unscrupulous Employers Involved With Wage Theft in New York
Press Release New Report Reveals Unscrupulous Employers Involved With Wage Theft in New York
Today, Center for Popular Democracy Action releases the first major report on New York wage theft since 2009. The...
Today, Center for Popular Democracy Action releases the first major report on New York wage theft since 2009. The report, By a Thousand Cuts: The Complex Face of Wage Theft in New York, identifies 11 ‘bad actors’, which are employers with a history of wage theft that is either particularly egregious or that exemplifies a broader trend in key New York sectors.
The companies highlighted in the report have a history of committing various wage theft violations, such as denying benefits, failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, making illegal deductions from pay checks, telling workers to work off the clock, and misclassifying workers as freelancers or independent contractors to avoid paying benefits.
Despite passage of the Wage Theft Prevention Act of 2010, which gives New York the strongest laws in the nation, an estimated 2.1 million New Yorkers are still victims of wage theft annually, cheated out of a cumulative $3.2 billion in wages and benefits they are owed. The report contains never-before-released testimonies from impacted workers.
Protesters from The New York Coalition against Wage Theft gathered at 11 a.m. in front of a worksite run by asbestos removal company New York Insulation Inc., one of the bad actors identified in the report.
“New Yorkers are being cheated out of their hard earned wages, and it has to stop now,” said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer. “The bottom line is that an honest day’s work deserves an honest day’s pay –and if a company cheats workers out of their wages, we will catch them and they will pay. I commend Make the Road New York and the Center for Popular Democracy for issuing this new report and continuing the fight against wage theft.”
“Despite good laws on the books, wage theft continues at epidemic proportions impacting millions of workers each year. It is, in effect, a massive crime wave that costs New Yorkers billions and exacerbates poverty and inequity in our state,” says Meg Fosque, low-wage organizing director at Make the Road.
“Wage theft is a pervasive crime, rather than the practice of a few unscrupulous employers. And, companies build business strategies on the bet that they will never be called to account for stealing their employees’ wages and undercutting high-road businesses. We need robust and resourced enforcement efforts to protect workers’livelihoods and the ability of fair employers to do business,” says Connie Razza, Director of Strategic Research at the Center for Popular Democracy.
"The depth and breadth of the wage theft problem is crippling our economy. The construction industry, tax payers, and workers all equally feel the pain of wage theft. This is not a victimless crime. When responsible contractors operating within the laws of New York State are put at a disadvantage against those ignoring these same laws, we must all unite to fix this problem," says Patrick J. Purcell, Executive Director with Greater New York LECET.
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www.populardemocracy.org The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
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