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
Source
The New York Times Comes Out Against Fed Interest Rate Hike
Progressive activists opposed to a Federal Reserve interest...
Progressive activists opposed to a Federal Reserve interest rate hike gained an influential new ally on Labor Day: The New York Times editorial board.
In a Monday editorial, entitled “You Deserve a Raise Today. Interest Rates Don’t,” the Times argued that if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in the near term, it could slow job creation at a time when there are still too few jobs to generate substantial wage growth.
“Wage stagnation is a clear sign that the economy is not at full employment, which means it needs loose monetary policy, not tightening,” the Times wrote.
The Times called the Fed a “crucial player” in efforts to undo the decades-long trend of worker wages not growing in sync with the broader economy. The paper noted that from 1973 to 2014, median worker pay rose 7.8 percent while overall productivity increased by 72 percent, a finding published Wednesday in a report from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
An interest rate hike would exacerbate, rather than reverse, this trend by slowing wage growth, the Times editorial suggested. The paper also said that an interest rate hike would send “the wrong signal of economic health,” undermining efforts by advocacy groups to raise workers’ wages through measures like increasing the minimum wage.
It is unclear what impact the Times’ editorial will have on the Fed’s decision-making, but it is a high-profile boost for progressive activists and economists, who have long argued that a Fed interest rate hike should be tied to wage growth that is about twice as high as it is currently.
These activists, led by the Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign, note that even as the official unemployment rate declined to 5.1 percent in August -- its lowest level since April 2008 -- wages have grown 2.2 percent in the past 12 months, only marginally outpacing increases in living costs. Since wages rise when demand for workers is high enough that businesses must compete for labor, many economists attribute ongoing sluggish wage growth to the number of people who are underemployed or have given up looking for work -- figures masked by the low official jobless rate.
The Fed Up campaign sent a memo to newspaper editorial boards across the country on Sept. 1, asking them to oppose an interest rate hike in 2015. The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post, employs arguments that resemble those used by The New York Times. The memo warned that an interest rate hike in 2015 would "leave millions in considerable andunnecessary economic distress and would exacerbate troubling longer-term trends in wages and incomes for the vast majority of American workers and their families."
Fed Up campaign director Ady Barkan celebrated the editorial, but stopped short of claiming credit for it.
"The New York Times Editorial Board is right," Barkan said in a statement. "Workers do deserve a raise! The data is crystal clear – stagnant wages and the lack of inflation mean that the Fed shouldn’t raise rates anytime soon. The Fed Up campaign is of course glad that the Times and other leading voices are speaking up about this issue."
Fed officials have signaled for months that they plan to raise the current near-zero interest rates before the year’s end, but William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, recently indicated that a September increase may be too soon in light of market fluctuations. The Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank body charged with adjusting key interest rates, will report on whether it plans to raise rates on September 17.
Supporters of an interest rate hike argue that it is necessary to head off excessive price inflation, which, along with maintaining full employment, is part of the Fed’s dual mandate.
Source: Huffington Post
38 Triangle area leaders now urge ‘No’ vote on all 6 constitutional amendments
38 Triangle area leaders now urge ‘No’ vote on all 6 constitutional amendments
More than three dozen Triangle area mayors and council members now publicly oppose six constitutional amendments on the...
More than three dozen Triangle area mayors and council members now publicly oppose six constitutional amendments on the ballot Nov. 6. Thirty-eight leaders from Apex, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Hillsborough, Holly Springs, Morrisville, Raleigh, Chatham County, Orange County and Wake County governments have signed a letter criticizing the amendments’ “potentially damaging impact.” The letter was released Thursday by Local Progress and Common Cause NC.”
Read the full article here.
School Voucher Opponents Ready for Fight as Bill Advances
The Tennessean - March 3, 2015, bt Jason Gonzales - Anti-voucher groups are digging in for a fight as the second of two...
The Tennessean - March 3, 2015, bt Jason Gonzales - Anti-voucher groups are digging in for a fight as the second of two almost identical voucher bills easily passed the House Education and Planning Subcommittee by a 7-1 vote. State Rep. Kevin Dunlap, D-Rock Hill, was the lone dissenter.
The proposed legislation that passed Tuesday is sponsored in the House by state Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, and has considerable backing from pro-voucher groups and legislators alike. A separate bill sponsored by state Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, narrowly passed the Senate Education Committee.
The legislators hope to provide low-income students a voucher program to pay for private school tuition with a state-funded scholarship. The program targets students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch who attend a public school ranked in the bottom 5 percent of the state in academic achievement.
Several groups have publicly voiced opposition to the bills, including the Tennessee Education Association. The teacher's union has been against proposed voucher legislation for years. In past years, opponents have been successful in their fight, as bills have continually struggled in the House and Senate finance committees.
Between the two bills, Haslam said the administration agreed to fund the measure from Dunn and state Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga. On supporting the Dunn-Gardenhire bill versus Kelsey's, Haslam said Tuesday morning the bill most resembles the one he supported last year.
Kelsey is a sponsor of both bills, and House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga, recently told The Associated Press the plan could survive in the House this year.
Volunteers with Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence were the visible face Tuesday of the anti-voucher group at Legislative Plaza. They were there to pass out brochures and stickers that said, "No School Vouchers."
Anne Marie Farmer, a volunteer with the public education advocacy group, said the group argues vouchers don't have the desired effect in a time when schools need more resources. The group also contends vouchers only give private schools a choice, not parents.
"We don't believe it is an effective way to raise student achievement," she said
Americans United for Separation of Church and State and Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition have also voiced opposition to the bill.
A recent poll by the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy, however, says Tennesseans are not concerned with school choice. The TEA sent out a Tuesday media release weighing in on the poll.
"When Tennesseans were asked to rank important issues facing the state's public schools, school choice came in dead last," said Barbara Gray, Arlington Community Schools administrator and TEA president, in the release. "This poll shows that legislators need to redirect their attention to the issues that really matter to Tennesseans, like parental involvement, over-emphasis on standardized testing and cuts to programs like physical education and music."
Source
America's employment problem isn't in manufacturing
President Donald Trump has vowed to bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S., but there's another major industry that'...
President Donald Trump has vowed to bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S., but there's another major industry that's not only already larger but creating more economic problems for its workers: retail.
Read the full article here.
Why the Fed should target underemployment, not unemployment, as it sets interest rates
Why the Fed should target underemployment, not unemployment, as it sets interest rates
Members of the Fed Up Coalition protest during the Jackson Hole economic symposium in 2015....
Members of the Fed Up Coalition protest during the Jackson Hole economic symposium in 2015.
See the photo here.
Report: Emanuel's $13 Minimum Wage Plan Would 'Shortchange' Women, Minority Workers
Progress Illinois - October 29, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to lift the city's...
Progress Illinois - October 29, 2014, by Ellyn Fortino - Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to lift the city's hourly minimum wage to $13 would leave out approximately 65,000 low-wage workers who are mostly women and people of color.
That's according to a new Center for Popular Democracy report, which compared the potential impacts of the mayor's $13 minimum wage plan with a competing $15 minimum wage ordinance introduced in late May by a group of aldermen, including members of the council's Progressive Reform Caucus.
The proposed $13 ordinance specifically "shortchanges" domestic and tipped workers, the majority of whom are women of color, according to the report.
The Raise Chicago coalition, which supports the $15 plan, released the report's findings at a City Hall press conference Wednesday morning. More low-wage Chicago workers would be covered by the $15 plan, which would also almost double the economic impact for the city compared to the $13 measure, the report found.
"With the opportunity to nearly double the economic growth of people across the city, our Raise Chicago ordinance would help propel people towards financial stability, help this city and state with tax revenues, and its effects would ripple through every community in Chicago," said Action Now Executive Director Katelyn Johnson, a Raise Chicago leader. "The mayor's proposal does not do enough to address the needs of Chicagoans and, in fact, will keep people living paycheck to paycheck."
In July, Emanuel, along with 25 other aldermen, introduced an ordinance to bump the city's hourly minimum wage from the current $8.25 to $13 by 2018.
The measure models the recommendations of the mayor-appointed Minimum Wage Working Group, which was tasked with researching and gathering public comment about increasing the city's minimum wage. The mayor formed the commission the same month the ordinance seeking to hike Chicago's base wage to $15 an hour by 2018 was introduced.
Under the mayor-backed ordinance, the city's minimum wage for non-tipped employees would increase by $1.25 in each of the next three years and $1 in 2018 to hit the $13 level. The city's minimum wage would be adjusted each year after 2018 to keep pace with inflation. The tipped minimum wage, which is currently $4.95 at the state level, would be lifted by $1 to $5.95 over two years and indexed to inflation after that.
The $15 plan, on the other hand, would require large employers in Chicago making at least $50 million annually to raise their employees' wages to $12.50 an hour within 90 days. Those companies would then have to raise workers' hourly wages to the $15 level within one year of the measure taking effect.
Businesses with less than $50 million in annual revenue would have a different minimum wage phase-in period. Small and mid-sized businesses would have to increase their base hourly wage to $12 within 15 months. After that, the smaller employers would have to increase their minimum wage by $1 each year until they hit the $15 level by 2018.
Johnson said the mayoral working group's measure "burdens small businesses," because it provides "no separate phase-in period for large corporations and small businesses."
The city's minimum wage under the $15 proposal would be adjusted each year after 2018 to keep pace with inflation. If that plan were adopted, the base hourly wage for tipped workers would be 70 percent of the overall minimum wage.
Tipped workers under the $15 ordinance would earn a $10.50 hourly wage once the phase-in process is completed. That wage would be 63 percent greater than what the $13 plan proposes.
Domestic workers, meanwhile, are covered by the Raise Chicago minimum wage ordinance, but they're excluded from the $13 proposal.
"This exclusion would have a disparate impact on women of color, who make up the majority of domestic workers in Chicago," the report reads.
Ovadhwah "O.J." McGee, a Chicago home care aid and SEIU* Healthcare Illinois member, said workers who provide supports to seniors and those with disabilities, for example, deserve a living wage. McGee, a single father who is also a certified nursing assistant, said he earns less than $13 an hour and struggles to make ends meet. He said "$15 would make such a great difference for me."
"The mayor's proposal will leave domestic workers behind. They wouldn't even get the $13 an hour, and that's an injustice," McGee said, adding that the $13 ordinance also "shortchanges tipped workers, providing them with only a $1.50 wage increase."
"That's a shame," he stressed. "The reality is by leaving domestic and tipped workers behind, the mayor is leaving workers of color behind. The majority of these jobs are ... held by African Americans and Latino workers."
Nearly 40 percent of the city's more than 1.3 million workers living in Chicago make less than $15 an hour, according to the report, which also estimated the total number of workers who would see their wages lifted, either directly or indirectly, by the two proposals.
"Under the $15 proposal, we project that 444,000 workers earning up to $17.30 will receive wage increases related to raising the wage floor," the report states. "Under the $13 proposal, only those workers currently earning up to $15.60, or about 379,000 workers, would receive higher wages."
The $13 measure would leave out 65,000 low-wage workers, including 42,000 Chicago residents, according to the report. Of the 65,000 low-wage workers who would be excluded from the $13 plan, approximately 13,000 are African American and 20,000 are Latino.
Additionally, the mayor's $13 measure "fails to secure the truly robust economic recovery that the $15 Raise Chicago ordinance would achieve," the report reads.
After full implementation, the $15 proposal would generate $2.9 billion in new gross wages; $1.04 billion in new economic activity and 6,920 new jobs; more than $80 million in new sales tax revenues; and $125 million in new income tax revenues, the report found.
On the flip side, the $13 plan would lead to $1.25 billion in new gross wages; $522 million in new economic activity; and $40 million in new sales tax revenues.
"Our research found that the benefits of a $15 minimum wage far outweigh those of the mayor's proposed $13," Connie Razza, director of strategic research at the Center for Popular Democracy, said in a statement. "At a time when income inequality is at historic levels and American communities are still reeling from the financial crisis, two dollars more may well be the threshold between survival and stability."
"For Chicago, it means over half a billion more dollars in economic activity that would benefit small businesses and communities, millions more in tax revenue for the city, and would significantly raise the wage floor," she added.
During the March 18 primary election, Chicago voters overwhelmingly supported a non-binding ballot referendum to increase the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour for employees of companies with annual revenues over $50 million. The referendum appeared on the ballot in 103 city precincts, garnering support from about 87 percent of voters.
"The time to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour is now, and no half measurers will be accepted," Johnson stressed.
Source
Progressives Choose Wrong Target in Opposing Prospective New York Fed Head
Progressives Choose Wrong Target in Opposing Prospective New York Fed Head
“Of course not," Shawn Sebastian, co-leader of the Fed Up coalition of advocacy groups and labor unions, told Politico...
“Of course not," Shawn Sebastian, co-leader of the Fed Up coalition of advocacy groups and labor unions, told Politico he opposes Williams in part because Williams has occasionally favored interest-rate hikes. Instead, Fed Up recommended a whole slate of “diverse” candidates for the New York Fed job, though their diversity is mainly limited to gender and skin color, not ideas. Many of them work or have worked for the Fed, while others served in various positions in the Obama administration; one is an economist for the AFL-CIO.
Read the full article here.
It Takes a Village: Educators, Unions Rally for Continued Funding of Community Schools
Baltimore City Paper - November 4, 2014, by Evan Serpick - Administrators, teachers, union organizers, community...
Baltimore City Paper - November 4, 2014, by Evan Serpick - Administrators, teachers, union organizers, community leaders, politicians, and students—including cheerleading squads and step teams—were among those gathered in front of City Hall on Oct. 21 to sing the praises of community schools, some literally.
“We are gentle, angry people,” The Charm City Labor Chorus sang from the dais. “And we are singing for our lives.”
The effort, organized by the Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU), Maryland Communities United, Center for Popular Democracy, and AFT-Maryland, aims to press the city government to continue funding the city’s 48 community schools and to ultimately expand the program to include all 210 city schools. (Disclosure: My wife is a teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools.) Community schools work to help students and their families access non-academic services such as health care and food assistance. One key element of the advocates’ efforts, many of those assembled acknowledged, was to inform the public and key officials of exactly what community schools are and how they’re beneficial to students and families.
“People hear ‘community schools’ and they don’t know what that means,” said Councilman Carl Stokes (D, 12th District), who spoke to the crowd “on behalf of [his] colleagues” in support of the effort.
The $10 million in municipal funding for the city’s 48 community schools pays for each school to employ a site coordinator to connect students and families in need with existing services, both public and private. The funding does not, organizers emphasize, pay for the services themselves.
Christopher Gaither, who has been principal of Upper Fells Point’s Wolfe Street Academy for nine years, spoke to the assembled group in Spanish and English. He said when Wolfe Street became a community school in 2006, the school, which had a 72 percent English language learner (ELL) population and 94 percent reduced-price lunch population, ranked 77th among city elementary schools. Eight years later, the ELL rate has gone up to 78 and reduced-lunch rate up to 96, but the school is now ranked second in the city academically, behind only Roland Park Elementary-Middle (which, as Gaither estimated, has an 18 percent reduced-price lunch population). Gaither gives much of the credit to being a community school.
“It sets up systems to identify partnerships to help families to take on challenges,” he said, before adding, more colloquially, “It gives people fish and teaches them how to fish.”
Gaither said his site coordinator helps families apply for food stamps and Medicaid, and also helps find mental health and housing services when needed, in addition to establishing after-school and recreational programs.
“No parent at Roland Park would think it’s acceptable if their child had to go to school hungry or without sleeping because of bedbugs,” he said. “Why should our parents?”
He added that, while community school funding doesn’t pay directly for social services, it does make that funding more effective, since site coordinators are able to link social-service providers directly with families in need so those providers spend less time and money on outreach.
Among those speaking at the rally were Chelsea Gilmer, a seventh-grader at City Springs Elementary/Middle School downtown who is active in Baltimore Urban Debate League, and Yolanda Pernell, a parent of children at Callaway Elementary, a community school in Northwest Baltimore where the site coordinator created an after-school program with the Boys and Girls Club of Metropolitan Baltimore.
Fred D. Mason, president of the Maryland and D.C. AFL-CIO, was on hand to explain why unions support community schools. “It provides a better, safer, more productive community for teachers to work in,” he said. “When the community organizations are coming into the school, interacting with the students, it just make a better overall environment for everybody.”
But BTU president Marietta English, who has been pushing City Hall hard on the issue, worries that funding for community schools will be cut. “We’re looking at how we can get the funding for next year,” she said. “Right now, it’s all about the budget deficit. Everybody I talk to is like, ‘Well you know we got a budget deficit.’ I hear their support but in the end, it’s ‘Where do we get the money?’”
Speaking to City Paper after the rally, Stokes said funding community schools was imperative.
“The city government needs to put it in the budget in this coming budget year—they should pass it so that it goes into the budget for July and can apply to next year,” he said. “This works. The schools that have the full funding for the coordinator, it works for them. A lot of kids come from environments that aren’t as strong as they could be, should be, and to make that environment in the school helps kids all around.”
Source
Fed chair Jay Powell faces his first political test
“Some campaigners are critical of the Fed’s handling of the mis-selling scandal at Wells Fargo, which is headquartered...
“Some campaigners are critical of the Fed’s handling of the mis-selling scandal at Wells Fargo, which is headquartered in Mr Williams’s district, while activists with the Fed Up group want the New York Fed to restart its search. “We haven’t seen as big a backlash as this to a regional Fed appointment,” said Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University. “The criticism has been coming only from the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. The Fed depends on there being public support, and it can only make tough decisions if it is seen as having legitimacy. The more criticism it faces the harder it is to do its job."
Read the full article here.
2 days ago
2 days ago