Council Moves to Enhance Voter Registration Through City Agencies
Gotham Gazette - November 24, 2014, by Samar Khurshid - At a hearing Monday, the New York City Council's Committee on...
Gotham Gazette - November 24, 2014, by Samar Khurshid - At a hearing Monday, the New York City Council's Committee on Governmental Operations approved the latest drafts of two bills that enhance the responsibility of city agencies to conduct voter registration and a resolution calling for the State Legislature to pass similar legislation.
These measures are an attempt by the Council to improve the compliance of City agencies with Local Law 29, also known as the Pro-Voter Law, which was passed in 2000. The law requires 19 city agencies to handle voter registration applications for customers.
The new legislation is headed to the full Council for a vote on Tuesday and then, if passed as expected, to the desk of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The bills expand the mandate of the Pro-Voter law to seven additional agencies and create a standard for enforcing the law, including required semi-annual reports from participating agencies. Implementation of the existing law has proven to be a problem, with city agencies failing to uphold their responsibilities to offer registration forms to New Yorkers doing other business with the City.
The accompanying resolution calls upon the State Legislature to augment existing agency-assisted registration laws to include codes on registration forms that would help track agency performance and registration statistics.
Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of what he called the "good government committee," introduced Intro 493 A which expands scope of the Pro-Voter law and sets a deadline of December 1, 2015 for agencies to integrate their forms with voter registration.
The second bill, Intro 356 A, which establishes reporting requirements for the agencies, and the accompanying resolution, were introduced by Council Member Jumaane Williams.
"The last election was abysmal," Williams said of voter turnout in response to questions from Gotham Gazette. Stating that the city and state are falling behind in civic participation, he said, "This should be an issue that all parties - Republicans, Democrats, third parties - every party should be working to increase participation."
The push for increased voter registration began in July with Mayor de Blasio's Directive 1, which ordered agencies under the Pro-Voter law mandate to create plans for implementing the law. Then, in October, the City Council introduced the two new bills in response to a report released by a coalition of good government groups which showed the City's lax compliance with Local Law 29.
According to the report, 84 percent of clients at 14 of these agencies were not provided registration applications when they should have been. Additionally, only 2 out of 5 applicants with limited English proficiency were given translated applications, and agents were not trained in the application process.The report was compiled by the Pro-Voter Law Coalition, comprised of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, Citizens Union of the City of New York, and the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). Their investigation was aided by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
The report's importance is highlighted by the fact that over 30 percent of New Yorkers who were interviewed at the agencies were not registered to vote.
The de Blasio administration initially rejected the two bills over privacy concerns and on the grounds that they came too close on the heels of Directive 1 and wishing to see agencies given more time to comply. Taking those concerns into consideration, changes were made to Williams' bill on reporting mandates. Williams disagreed with the administration but eventually came around to ensure changes were made in the proposal which will protect applicants' information while still allowing the Board of Elections to track registration data from agencies.
"I'm expecting (the) resolution to have a serious impact in Albany," said Council Member Kallos to Gotham Gazette. "Whether it's the Assembly or the Senate, we can all agree that government works better when we measure what its doing and this will take a step towards that."
Representatives of the good government groups that authored the report also testified at the hearing. Steven Carbo, director of Voting Rights and Democracy Initiatives at CPD praised the proposals, asserting, "Likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of eligible voters were never given the opportunity to register to vote over the years, perpetuating regrettably low rates of voter registration in New York particularly among lower income, of color and immigrant citizens," he said.
Peggy Farber, legislative counsel for Citizens Union, called the proposals "meaningful steps to improve the pro-voter law, to codify the important work of the administration."
On Tuesday, the bills and the resolution will head to the full Council for a vote at the Stated Meeting, where they are very likely to pass.
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Senate's Kavanaugh Vote Ends in Chaos After GOP Sen. Flake Asks for FBI Sex-Assault Probe
Senate's Kavanaugh Vote Ends in Chaos After GOP Sen. Flake Asks for FBI Sex-Assault Probe
One day after Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford testified about her sexual assault allegations against the...
One day after Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford testified about her sexual assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday voted to send Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the full Senate — but it wasn’t without drama.
Read the full article here.
Black Lives Matter Coalition Makes Demands as Campaign Heats Up
Black Lives Matter Coalition Makes Demands as Campaign Heats Up
More than 60 organizations associated with the Black Lives Matter movement have released a series of demands on Monday...
More than 60 organizations associated with the Black Lives Matter movement have released a series of demands on Monday, including for reparations.
The list of six platform demands is aimed at furthering their goals as the presidential campaign heads into the homestretch.
The release of the six demands comes a few days before the second anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., which set off months of protests and led to a national conversation about police killings of blacks.
As part of the effort, the groups are demanding, among other things, reparations for what they say are past and continuing harms to African-Americans, an end to the death penalty, legislation to acknowledge the effects of slavery, as well as investments in education initiatives, mental health services and jobs programs.
“We wanted to intervene in this current political moment where there is all this amazing and inspiring work that is resisting state violence and corporate power,” said M. Adams, co-executive director of Freedom Inc., a nonprofit group based in Madison, Wis., which focuses on violence within and against low-income communities of color.
The list comes right after the Republicans and Democrats held their respective national conventions, and as the general election fight is heating up, with the two nominees, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton, now crisscrossing the nation campaigning. But the coalition will not be endorsing any presidential candidate.
Marbre Stahly-Butts, who is part of the leadership team of the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table, which worked on the demands, said: “On both sides of aisle, the candidates have really failed to address the demands and the concerns of our people. So this was less about this specific political moment and this election, and more about how do we actually start to plant and cultivate the seeds of transformation of this country that go beyond individual candidates.”
The groups worked on creating the demands for a year before making their demands known on Monday. They now plan to start local campaigns aimed at pushing for changes in law enforcement and community programs in cities across the country.
“We seek radical transformation, not reactionary reform,” Michaela Brown, communications director of Baltimore Bloc, another participating group, said in a statement. “As the 2016 election continues, this platform provides us with a way to intervene with an agenda that resists state and corporate power, an opportunity to implement policies that truly value the safety and humanity of black lives, and an overall means to hold elected leaders accountable.”
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR
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As Wells Fargo is Accused of Fabricating Foreclosure Papers, Will Banks Keep Escaping Prosecution?
Democracy Now - March 21, 2014 - A new internal report says the Justice Department massively overstated its successes...
Democracy Now - March 21, 2014 - A new internal report says the Justice Department massively overstated its successes in targeting mortgage fraud while in fact ranking it as a low priority for investigation. The Justice Department’s inspector general says despite playing a central role in the nation’s financial crisis, mortgage fraud was deemed either a low priority or not a priority at all. This comes as a recently revealed internal Wells Fargo document appears to guide lawyers step by step on how to fabricate missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. Wells Fargo is the country’s largest mortgage servicer and services some nine million home loans.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A new internal report says the Justice Department massively overstated its successes in targeting mortgage fraud while in fact ranking it as a low priority for investigation. The Justice Department’s inspector general says despite playing a central role in the nation’s financial crisis, mortgage fraud was deemed either a low priority or not a priority at all. In one instance, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed to have filed lawsuits on behalf of homeowner victims for losses totaling more than $1 billion, but the actual amount was 91 percent less, around $95 million.
This comes as a recently revealed internal Wells Fargo document appears to guide lawyers step by step on how to fabricate missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. Wells Fargo is the country’s largest mortgage servicer and services some nine million home loans.
AMY GOODMAN: State and federal regulators are now focusing on the allegations in the lawsuit brought by Linda Tirelli, who joins us now. She’s an attorney representing clients being foreclosed on by Wells Fargo. Earlier this month, she discovered the Wells Fargo manual on how to produce missing documents to foreclose on homeowners. She’s a partner at the Garvey, Tirelli & Cushner law firm in White Plains, New York.
In Minneapolis, we’re joined by Kevin Whelan, campaign director for the Home Defenders League, a national movement of underwater homeowners and allies who organize to keep people in their homes and demand accountability.
Wells Fargo declined Democracy Now!'s interview request, saying they're in a, quote, "quiet period" pending the announcement of their quarterly earnings.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Linda Tirelli, let’s begin with you.
LINDA TIRELLI: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe this manual, how you got it and what it reveals?
LINDA TIRELLI: Absolutely. The manual that I have, it’s actually entitled the "Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Foreclosure Attorney [Procedure] Manual, Version 1." And it says on it that it’s last published 2/24/2012. Mind you, the national mortgage settlement agreement was announced a week prior, on 2/19/2012.
The way I obtained it, it was actually sitting right there on the Internet, of all things. A colleague of mine, through a Max Gardner’s Bankruptcy Boot Camp, which I am a member, an active member, gave it to me and said, "Hey, I found this online, and I know you’re doing a lot of Wells Fargo cases. Maybe you can use this."
Reading it, my jaw just dropped. As I see it, it’s clearly outlining procedures, not just for the $12-an-hour robo-signers that we’ve heard about all these years, but for the lawyers, who need to be held accountable to a much higher degree. It’s the manual for the lawyers to actually fabricate documents, as I see it, and request that documents that are lacking be fabricated by Wells Fargo. It’s absolutely appalling.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you know, we’ve had on Democracy Now! a couple of times the Brooklyn Supreme Court judge, Arthur Schack, who raised a campaign over—not only over the robo-signers in many cases that he had before his court, but also over the bank officials and the attorneys who participated in this fraud. And there have been several judges in different parts of the country who have raised these issues. How do you think this advances the whole issue of going after—of having the smoking gun to go after these companies?
LINDA TIRELLI: Well, I think that judges cannot make determinations based on suspicion. OK? This is the first and only internal document that I’m aware of that clearly outlines the fraud. And that’s how I put it in my allegations to the court. And we are very, very fortunate in New York to have a number of proactive judges who get it, but unfortunately, they’re few and far between across the country. My hope is that judges as wonderful as Arthur Schack and as great as many of our federal judges—I do appear mostly in federal courts—that they will be proactive, they will take this seriously and start to question Wells Fargo on their procedures.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to read a bit from the Wells Fargo document. In this section called Note Endorsement, it says, quote, "If the blank endorsement is in the file for an original state, execute the endorsement, send the original document to the attorney, and complete the Z02 step." Can you explain what this means?
LINDA TIRELLI: Sure. I take that to mean that if there is actually an endorsement that exists, they need to endorse it. But as the party in—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And by "endorsement," you mean?
LINDA TIRELLI: Sign it over.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oh.
LINDA TIRELLI: OK. But the question is: Do they have the authority to sign it over? Is it an authorized endorsement? Who’s signing it over? As the lawyer, I would need to know that before proceeding with a foreclosure. If it’s a document that needs to—if it was a note that needed to be endorsed, under a pooling and servicing agreement, which is followed by every securitized trust—and most of these loans, let’s face it, are owned by securitized trusts in some form or another—they should have been endorsed long before the foreclosure was ever started, at the time that it was actually acquired by the trust, or allegedly acquired by the trust.
AMY GOODMAN: So this manual talks about how to fabricate a document—
LINDA TIRELLI: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —that you don’t have, that you need.
LINDA TIRELLI: That’s how I’m reading it.
AMY GOODMAN: That Wells Fargo would need.
LINDA TIRELLI: Exactly. That’s—
AMY GOODMAN: To foreclose on the house.
LINDA TIRELLI: Exactly right. That’s exactly how I’m reading it. I’m reading it to say that it’s not just, when there is a blank endorsement, fill in the blank. But sometimes when there—there’s actually a procedure in here, as I read it, for when there’s no endorsement, OK? Go ahead and endorse the note. Just request that the note be endorsed. And that’s what we call, in our area of law, a "tada endorsement." The bank produces a copy of a note, just for example, that has no endorsement on it, and then when we ask about it and say, "Gee, this note is not endorsed to your client. How is it that you’re—you know, you’re bringing foreclosure?" and they say, "Oh, here, use this version. Tada! Now we have an endorsement." And it’s always a rubber stamp, that you or I could go to Staples and purchase for $9.95.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You also, one of your cases, came across a document which was purportedly from an official of Washington Mutual Bank in 2010, but Washington Mutual didn’t exist in 2010, because it had collapsed back in 2008.
LINDA TIRELLI: 2008, that’s right. That document was signed by Mr. John Kennerty in—who works for Wells Fargo, or worked for Wells Fargo at the time. And in this procedure manual, there’s actually a procedure for obtaining what’s called an assignment of mortgage, OK? So, basically, as I’m reading this procedure, it’s saying, "Gee, if you need an assignment, the attorney should request it through the document department, and then, magically, one will appear for you." And that’s exactly what we’re seeing. The people that work for Wells Fargo in these various departments, when they receive a request from an attorney, they take that as permission to actually sign something, without doing any research whatsoever. How is it, as you point out, we had anything assigned from in a company that ceased to exist two years prior? It just simply makes no sense. That document’s fabricated. And in that particular case, I will point out, the judge actually deemed that document to be a fraudulent document on record.
AMY GOODMAN: I remember when Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur was standing on the floor of the House and telling homeowners, "Stay in their homes and demand that they produce the note. Produce the note." I wanted to go to Eric Schneiderman. Last May, the New York attorney—the New York attorney general announced plans to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for violating the terms of a settlement aimed at curbing foreclosure abuses. The $26 billion settlement was reached in 2012 between five major banks and 49 attorneys general. It provided basic protections for homeowners, such as requiring banks to notify them about missing documents within a certain time period. But Schneiderman said the banks had violated the terms of the settlement with impunity. At the news conference in May, he lifted a massive sheaf of papers to show the hundreds of complaints issued by homeowners against the banks.
ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Two of the participating servicers, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have flagrantly violated their obligations under the settlement. I’ve sent a letter to the monitoring committee, the body that oversees the implementation of the national mortgage servicing settlement, notifying them of my intention to sue both Wells Fargo and Bank of America for noncompliance with servicing standards spelled out in the settlement. This enforcement action, which is the first taken under the settlement, is based on 339 individual complaints from New Yorkers against these two banks in just the last six months
AMY GOODMAN: Linda Tirelli, can you explain what happened with this case?
LINDA TIRELLI: Yes. Well, first of all, I want to point out, and very much to Mr. Schneiderman’s credit, within four hours of the New York Post writing the article exposing this documents, within four hours, I received not only a phone call, but an email from Attorney Schneiderman’s office, and we had a long discussion about it. I also received the phone call and an email from the New York State Division of Financial Services. So I’m hoping that they are now launching new investigations.
Basically, to put—as I understand Mr. Schneiderman’s point, Wells Fargo was signing off on the national mortgage settlement agreement out of one side of its mouth. Out of the other side, they were republishing their manual to say, "Hey, we’re going to continue business as usual. All right? Throw some money at it. It’s done. Quiet down the homeowners. We’ll just continue business as usual." And that’s what we’re seeing. That’s exactly what we’re seeing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Kevin Whelan, from the Home Defenders League, can you put this in a national context of the mortgage crisis? Here we are now, six years into the home mortgage crisis that crashed the entire economy.
KEVIN WHELAN: Absolutely. Thanks you for having me, very much, today. We hear, every time there is an uptick in real estate prices in some parts of the country, that the foreclosure crisis or the mortgage crisis is over. And certainly, Wells Fargo and the big banks are back to making record profits and feel like everything is great. But foreclosures are still tearing apart many communities, particularly communities of color that were targeted for predatory and subprime lending. And one in five American homeowners is still underwater, meaning they owe more on their house than the house is currently worth.
So we’ve made the banks whole without effectively curbing their abusive practices to give homeowners the runaround, to use falsified documents and to rush toward foreclosure when there’s a perfectly good way to reach a different settlement. And they’ve not done enough to make homeowners whole, including doing principal reduction that they promised to do under settlements.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you respond to this latest news about the attorney general—the office making a low priority or no priority at all going after these mortgage lenders?
KEVIN WHELAN: Yeah, absolutely. The news is no surprise to people that have been fighting foreclosure in communities around the country. We work with 25 community groups in our at-large organization, so people can come find us at HomeDefendersLeague.org and get on a phone call and learn how to start a petition and fight for their homes. And people have been, you know, in cases all over the place, trying to stave off foreclosure.
We had a family in New Jersey last month, Paulette McQueen and her 86-year-old mom, who had missed one mortgage payment in 2010, went to Wells Fargo the next month with both checks in hand, and Wells Fargo wouldn’t take their money and started a three-year campaign to take their house. That was only resolved when people in 13 cities delivered petitions to Wells Fargo’s offices around the country. And they finally got a call back and are going to work out a solution to be able to stay in their home. It was a whole week before a sheriff’s sale.
So, it’s—you know, families that are facing this know both that the housing crisis isn’t over and that nothing has happened that’s on a deep enough or broad enough scale to make the banks fearful or sorry for either the harm they’ve done, or change their behavior in fundamental ways.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, there are some localities, some local governments, that have tried—intervened themselves in trying to beat back the crisis of people being kicked out of their homes. Could you talk about some of those examples?
KEVIN WHELAN: Yeah, there—one thing that’s—we know there’s something to it, because the banks, led by Wells Fargo, are especially panicked and angry about the solution. But in Richmond, California—I think you had the mayor of Richmond, Gayle McLaughlin, on the show before—has been a city that’s led the way—and many more are going to follow—to enact principal reduction, meaning resetting loans to their current market value on the local level. And this is exciting because, while these federal agencies, like the Justice Department, are too often captive of the big banks, people can use democracy and win on the local level sometimes.
The concept for this particular program is that cities would work with other investors to buy the loans at their fair market value on the secondary market, which is pennies on the dollar of what these underwater loans are worth, and help refinance homeowners into new loans that have equity. And this is a concept that has gotten started in Richmond, but people are meeting even today in different cities around the country to spread this. And I think, not so much because it would cost them money as because it’s a chance for people to use the rule of law and democracy to impact the economy and impact banks’ behavior, banks like Wells Fargo have sued, unsuccessfully, and made all kinds of threats about redlining communities in order to try to stop it. People can go to FightingForeclosures.org and learn more about that particular plan and get involved in that campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: Kevin Whelan, you’ve been arrested outside of Attorney General Eric Holder—outside the Justice Department, demanding more action. And yet, Linda Tirelli, we have this latest news that as—that the attorney general claimed to have filed lawsuits on behalf of homeowner victims for losses totaling more than a billion dollars. In fact, it was 91 percent less than this, at $95 million. What do you think should happen? Who gets prosecuted here, and who is let go free?
LINDA TIRELLI: I think that at this point, let’s face it, we’re never going to see a perp walk, as much as we’d like to see one, because this is illegal activity that we’re talking about. At the very least, I think now this document gives the New York attorney general free access to every attorney who’s ever followed this manual and hold them accountable, because it is illegal. And we are held, as attorneys, to a much higher standard. We have to do a certain amount of due diligence, and we cannot knowingly produce false documents and submit them into a court of law. Our entire judicial process is based on integrity. This document, as I read it, OK, is going to bypass the integrity of the entire system, and it becomes now the civil procedure rules according to Wells Fargo. And that’s the rules they’re willing to play by.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And more importantly, the author of that document, right, who approved that document for all these lawyers to use.
LINDA TIRELLI: Exactly right, exactly right. And I want to point out that I actually introduced this document—
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
LINDA TIRELLI: —in a motion to reopen discovery after a trial, and my hope is that we will get discovery and get someone to a deposition table and get the answer to that.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Eric Holder was attorney general, he was a senior partner at Covington & Burling. Among the banks they represented, the four largest: Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.
LINDA TIRELLI: No shock there.
AMY GOODMAN: Linda Tirelli, attorney representing clients being foreclosed on; Kevin Whelan of Home Defenders League, thanks so much for joining us.
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The Federal Reserve Leaves Key Interest Rate Unchanged Amid Slower Job Growth
The Federal Reserve Leaves Key Interest Rate Unchanged Amid Slower Job Growth
The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it will keep its benchmark interest rate at current levels in response...
The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it will keep its benchmark interest rate at current levels in response to lackluster job creation in recent months and other discouraging economic data.
The decision will shield American consumers from higher borrowing costs, but it also reflects the fragility and unpredictability of the current economic recovery, some seven years after the Great Recession officially ended.
The central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee is keeping the influential target federal funds rate — the Fed-set interest rate banks charge one another for overnight lending — at a range of 0.25 to 0.5 percent. Since the rate is a benchmark for lending throughout the economy, leaving it unchanged will likely prevent higher interest rates on mortgages, car loans and other household debts.
The Fed has a dual mandate to craft monetary policy that both maximizes employment and keeps inflation in check. The FOMC lowers the federal funds rate to accelerate job growth by reducing borrowing costs. It raises the rate to limit price inflation by slowing the pace of job growth.
The FOMC’s decision not to do the latter in June was widely expected. Fed officials signaled earlier this month that disappointing job creation had undermined the case for a rate hike. The economy created just 38,000 jobs in May, and new data show that the preceding two months produced fewer jobs than previously believed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The central bank is also responding to tepid inflation. The price of consumer goods, excluding food and energy, rose 1.6 percent in the 12 months ending in April, according to the price index favored by the Fed — well below the Fed’s 2-percent target. And a University of Michigan survey revealed on Friday that U.S. households’ expectations of long-term inflation are lower than they have been at any point since the survey began collecting data in 1979.
In a press conference following the announcement, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen acknowledged the role that those developments played in the central bank’s decision, noting that “recent economic indicators have been mixed.”
Yellen also said that the prospect of a “Brexit,” or British exit from the European Union, was “one of the factors” that led the central bank to hold off on an interest rate hike. The United Kingdom will vote on the country’s membership in the EU on June 23.
If the U.K. chooses to leave the EU, which functions as a single market, it could ultimately have adverse effects on the U.S. economic outlook, Yellen suggested. A higher percentage of British voters supported Brexit than opposed it in a poll released on Monday.
The Fed last raised the federal funds rate by one-quarter of a percentage point in December, the first increase since the financial crisis. The rate had been at or near zero — 0 to 0.25 percent — since December 2008.
With the December interest rate increase, the Fed seemed to express confidence that the economic recovery had entered a new phase, indicating it was time to pivot to the work of preventing inflation. Yellen predicted that the move would be the first in a series of small interest rate hikes that would gradually raise rates to levels that are more historically normal.
Since then, however, disappointing economic data have repeatedly delayed the pace of those increases. Slower global demand reduced the availability of credit, and wage growth remained sluggish, prompting the Fed not to raise the federal funds rate in March.
Fed officials suggested in May that economic conditions would finally permit them to raise the rate again in June. But the May job creation data, released on June 3, rapidly dashed those plans.
The central bank’s next opportunity to announce a rate hike will be July 27, after a meeting of the FOMC.
Wednesday’s announcement will come as welcome news to many progressive economists and activists who have long argued that the job market has much more room to grow before inflation becomes a serious problem.
While the official unemployment rate is 4.7 percent, much of its recent decline is due to people dropping out of the workforce altogether. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of people actively seeking work in addition to those who are working, is significantly lower than it was in 2000.
In fact, when you exclude workers 55 or older who may have retired voluntarily, labor force participation is lower now than it was at its worst point during the past two business cycles, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
A job market where people continue to give up on finding work is part of the reason wage growth has failed to meet expectations, since employers still have little reason to compete for workers, progressive economists argue. Average hourly pay rose 2.5 percent in the 12-month period ending in May, not enough for a significant boost in most Americans’ paychecks.
The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups that advocates for Fed policy that is favorable to workers and communities of color, cites figures like those when pleading with the Fed to hold off on raising rates. Fed Up has called on the Fed not to raise the benchmark interest rate until “the economic recovery reaches all communities,” said Jordan Haedtler, Fed Up campaign manager.
Progressives were overjoyed when presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton expressed her sympathy with these concerns last month. The campaign said in a statement that as president, Clinton would appoint Fed officials who take seriously the central bank’s mandate to maximize employment, in addition to its duty to tamp down inflation.
Clinton stands to benefit politically from Wednesday’s announcement, since voters typically judge the candidate of the incumbent party for the economy’s performance. A rate increase would have squeezed economic demand, risking even slower job growth in the months ahead of the general election.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has expressed a wide variety of views about the Fed. He most recently suggested that he supports low interest rates, but that he plans to replace Yellen as Fed chair.
Yellen said Wednesday that the central bank will act based on economic data in the coming months, even if its actions are perceived as affecting the general election in November. “We are very focused on assessing the economic outlook and making changes that are appropriate without taking politics into account,” she said.
This piece has been updated with Yellen’s comments.
By Daniel Marans
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Feds Accused of Selling Out Neighborhoods to Wall St. Firms
Aljazeera America Fault Lines Blog - September 9, 2014, by Mark Kurlyandchik - In September 2010, the federal...
Aljazeera America Fault Lines Blog - September 9, 2014, by Mark Kurlyandchik - In September 2010, the federal government got into the business of selling delinquent home mortgage loans, which are at least 90 days past due, to the highest bidder. The program was instituted to help the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) rebuild its cash reserves, which were wiped out by a wave of loan defaults.
In the first two years of the program, the FHA sold 2,000 loans in six national auctions. In September 2012, it expanded its loan pools under the newly named Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, or DASP, selling more than 3,000 loans in the first auction. The FHA also introduced a second stated objective of the program to help stabilize neighborhoods by creating a new category of loans tied to geographic areas hit hardest by foreclosures with mandates that purchasers service them in a manner that stabilizes surrounding communities.
Two critical new reports on DASP admit that the program is helping the FHA avoid having to hit up taxpayers for more money. But they question the sincerity of any efforts to protect neighborhoods plagued by foreclosures, pointing out that a whopping 97 percent of the loans have gone to private, for-profit investors, including hedge funds, mutual funds and private equity firms. And approximately just one out of 10 of the loans sold have achieved a neighborhood stabilization outcome.
“These are companies that put the financial gains of their shareholders first and community stabilization second—or I would say it's not even necessarily a priority for them,” says Connie Razza, co-author of a report by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Right To The City Alliance, which came out today.
Razza’s group sent a petition to Julian Castro, who recently took over the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the cabinet agency that houses the FHA, asking him to stop selling loans under the DASP until the program’s implementation could be strengthened and refocused on communities.
When the FHA was created in 1934 to stimulate a lifeless housing market buried in the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S. was a nation of renters—with only 40 percent of Americans owning their homes. The FHA was able to help boost that percentage by offering affordable mortgage insurance to approved lenders who made loans to high-risk borrowers with relatively low down payments. By 2004, nearly 70 percent of Americans were homeowners.
During the recent housing crash, with private lending drying up, the share of FHA-backed loans skyrocketed, rising from a reported 2 percent of all mortgages in 2006 to nearly a third in 2009. Those loans kept housing prices from going into free fall, but a wave of defaults plundered the FHA’s mortgage insurance fund. So, in 2013, it took a $1.7 billion taxpayer bailout to stay afloat.
So far, nearly 100,000 non-performing loans have been sold through DASP, netting the FHA $8.8 billion.
According to a report released last week by the Center for American Progress, only about 11 percent of the loans sold through DASP are now considered “re-performing.” Another 22 percent were either allowed to do a short sale or the home was surrendered in exchange for loan forgiveness. A third of the loans were turned around and sold to other buyers. The final third went into foreclosure.
Bidders who want to acquire neighborhood stabilization loans are required to achieve one of several outcomes that help homeowners and surrounding communities on at least half of the loans they purchase: getting the loans to re-perform, renting the home to the borrower, gifting the property to a land bank or paying off the loans in full. Through May of this year fewer than 18,000 of the FHA loans have been sold through neighborhood stabilization pools, compared to more than 73,000 that have no strings attached.
"In its current form, the DASP is unnecessarily undermining the very mission of HUD by selling loans to some of the same reckless actors who caused the financial crisis."
Connie Razza, Center for Popular Democracy
Instead of getting loans to re-perform, many of the companies buying up the loans may be looking to convert the distressed assets into rental properties. Since the housing crash, Wall Street-backed groups have bought up an estimated 200,000 single-family homes across the country to convert to rentals. As housing prices rise and foreclosures become less common, housing advocates worry that these firms have turned to non-performing loans as a way to increase their housing stock.
For instance, the private equity firm Blackstone, which has recently become the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the country, is a 46-percent owner of Bayview, the company that has won the second-highest number of DASP loans. According to one report, the delinquent notes are sold to the highest bidder without considering past performance metrics at getting the loans to reperform.
Further, allowing the vast majority of the loans to fall into the hands of high-bidding corporate investors—rather than defaulting—keeps many of the properties they’re tied to from going through the typical foreclosure process. As a result, the FHA might actually be diverting housing stock from first-time homebuyers, the very group it was formed to serve 80 years ago, said John Husing, chief economist at the Inland Empire Economic Partnership in San Bernardino, California.
Aljazeera America Fault Lines Blog - September 9, 2014, by Mark Kurlyandchik - "In its current form, the DASP is unnecessarily undermining the very mission of HUD by selling loans to some of the same reckless actors who caused the financial crisis," Razza and her co-authors write in their report.
The reports contend that HUD should be tracking bidders' track record for good outcomes and taking that performance into consideration. They also criticize HUD for a lack of transparency when it comes to making information about what happens to these loans available to the public. Further, they call for boosting the size and ratio of loans sold through the Neighborhood Stabilization Outcome pools and increasing access for non-profits in the bidding process.
“Community development financial institutions and other non-profits have been trying to participate,” Razza said. “They've only won 2.5 percent of the loans and are really shut out because HUD is running the program as a straight auction.”
Representatives for HUD did not respond to specific questions about the program, but offered this statement: “For purchasers, the program is an opportunity to acquire assets at competitive prices with the flexibility to service the assets while providing borrowers an opportunity to avoid costly foreclosures. The program is meeting financial goals as the amounts offered for these assets are steadily rising as volume has increased in recent years.”
Where investors used to pick up non-performing loans in the program for an average of 40 to 50 cents on the dollar, the most recent sale in June had an average of more than 77 cents. The bidding war was reportedly the most contested yet, with the entire pool going to one investor, private equity firm Lone Star Funds.
“I think that as demand for these loans grow, it builds a stronger case for FHA to ask buyers to do more for the communities they’re buying in,” said CAP report co-author Sarah Edelman. “We want to see loss-mitigation requirements on all of the loans sold.”
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At Rally Outside Jamie Dimon's Home, Immigrant Rights Advocates Demand #BackersOfHate Stop Bankrolling For-Profit Prisons
At Rally Outside Jamie Dimon's Home, Immigrant Rights Advocates Demand #BackersOfHate Stop Bankrolling For-Profit Prisons
"Jamie Dimon, in the past two years, 22 people have died in detention centers that you finance," said Ana Maria Archila...
"Jamie Dimon, in the past two years, 22 people have died in detention centers that you finance," said Ana Maria Archila of the Center for Popular Democracy. "JPMorgan Chase has to divest from private prisons and detention centers. You can no longer say you aren't aware of this issue!"
Read the full article here.
Allentown protesters take to streets to urge immigration reform
The Express-Times – October 21, 2013, by Colin McEvoy - Hilda Gonzalez, who moved from Mexico to Allentown 12 years ago...
The Express-Times – October 21, 2013, by Colin McEvoy -
Hilda Gonzalez, who moved from Mexico to Allentown 12 years ago, was handed a speakerphone tonight and asked to tell an assembled crowd of 50 people her personal story.
But when the time came, Gonzalez said she couldn’t bring herself to do it because her own experiences felt so small compared to the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in America.
“These are immigrants who have experienced the fear of being separated from their families,” she said. “Immigrants who have many times had to duck their heads. Immigrants who aren’t treated with dignity.”
Gonzalez was one of about 50 people who took to the streets of Allentown tonight in protest, urging their legislators to take action on immigration reform now that the government shutdown has been resolved.
“I think it’s well overdue that we as a nation do the right thing,” said Guillermo Lopez Jr., of Bethlehem, as the group marched on Hamilton Street. “No human is illegal. That is the truth of this land.”
With the debt ceiling crisis temporarily averted, President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill by year’s end.
The Senate approved such a bill in June that included investments in border security and a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. But the House did not take action on such a bill and many in Congress have expressed skepticism that action will be taken now.
The Allentown protesters held such signs that read “We yearn to breathe free” and “We bleed red, white and blue,” and chanted phrases such as “Undocumented, unafraid” and “No papers, no fear.”
They carried candles and flashlights, which symbolized the hope that reform could bring immigrants out from the darkness, according to organizer Max Cohen, of the Center for Popular Democracy, which organized the event in conjunction with Communidad Unida de Lehigh Valley.
A similar rally will be held Tuesday in Easton, urging support for a resolution Easton City Council is scheduled to consider urging Congress to enact immigration reform.
That rally, run by Organizing for Action, will be held 5 p.m. in Centre Square, with the city council meeting starting at 6 p.m.
The Allentown protesters voiced particular hope that U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, who they called a “level-headed, moderate Republican voice in Congress,” would be an outspoken voice on the issue.
Dent previously said the Senate’s bill had major problems, saying the border security elements in particular needed strengthening.
“We will work on practical solutions that respect the rule of law while responsibly dealing with the 11 million people, slightly less than the population of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, who are in this country unlawfully,” Dent said in July.
But the protesters said they hope Congress will move quickly before the midterm elections become too much of a distraction.
Among the participants was Adrian Shanker, president of Equality Pennsylvania, who said there are about 1 million gay, bisexual or transgender immigrants in the United States, and about one-third are undocumented.
“We can’t be equal until we are all equal,” Shanker said. “Eleven million people live in the shadows. That is not freedom.”
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Why Aren’t Presidential Candidates Talking About the Federal Reserve?
Why Aren’t Presidential Candidates Talking About the Federal Reserve?
In an election fueled by populist anger and dominated by talk of economic insecurity, why aren’t any of the...
In an election fueled by populist anger and dominated by talk of economic insecurity, why aren’t any of the presidential candidates talking about the Federal Reserve?
After nearly a decade of high unemployment, severe racial and gender disparities and wage stagnation, voters are heading to the ballot box in pursuit of a fairer economy with less rampant inequality. In California and New York, low-wage workers are celebrating historic agreements to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. And the economy and jobs consistently rank among the top concerns expressed by voters of all political stripes.
One government institution reigns supreme in its ability to influence wages, jobs and overall economic growth, yet leading candidates for president have barely discussed it at all. The Federal Reserve is the most important economic policymaking institution in the country, and it is critical that voters hear how candidates plan to reform and interact with the Fed.
The Fed too often epitomizes the problems with our economy and democracy over which voters are voicing frustration: Commercial banks literally own much of the Fed and are using it to enrich themselves at the expense of the American working and middle class. When Wall Street recklessness crashed the economy in 2008, American families paid the price.
At the time, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon sat on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which stepped in during the crisis to save Dimon’s firm and so many other banks on the verge of collapse. Although the Fed’s actions helped Wall Street recover, that recovery never translated to Main Street, where jobs and wage growth stagnated.
Commercial banks should not govern the very institution that oversees them. It’s a scandal that continues to threaten the Fed’s credibility. An analysis conducted earlier this year by my parent organization, The Center for Popular Democracy, showed that employees of financial firms continue to hold key posts at regional Federal Reserve banks and that leadership throughout the Federal Reserve System remains overwhelmingly white and male and draws disproportionately from the corporate and financial world.
When the Fed voted in December to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade, the decision was largely driven by regional Bank presidents — the very policymakers who are chosen by corporate and financial interests. In 2015, the Fed filled three vacant regional president position, and all three were filled with individuals with strong ties to Goldman Sachs; next year, 4 of the 5 regional presidents voting on monetary policy will be former Goldman Sachs insiders. Can we trust these blue-chip bankers to address working Americans’ concerns?
Yet despite the enormous power it wields and the glaring problems it continues to exemplify, the Fed has received little attention this election cycle. As noted by Reuters last week, two of the remaining candidates for president, Hillary Clinton and John Kasich, have been mute on what they would do about the central bank. Donald Trump’s sporadic statements about the Fed have been characteristically short on details, prompting former Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Narayana Kocherlakota to call for Clinton, Trump and all presidential candidates to clarify exactly how they plan to oversee the Fed’s management of the economy. Ted Cruz has piped up about the Fed on a few occasions, although his vocal endorsement of “sound money” and other policies that contributed to the Great Depression warrant clarification.
The most detailed Fed reform proposal from a presidential candidate to date was a December New York Times op-ed in which Bernie Sanders wrote that “an institution that was created to serve all Americans has been hijacked by the very bankers it regulates,” and urged vital reforms to the Fed’s governance structure.
On Monday, Dartmouth economist Andy Levin, a 20-year Fed staffer and former senior adviser to Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her predecessor Ben Bernanke, unveiled a bold proposal to reform the Federal Reserve and make it a truly transparent, publicly accountable institution that responds to the needs of working families.
The New York primary provides a perfect opportunity for the remaining presidential candidates to tell us what they think about the Federal Reserve. Candidates in both parties should specify whether they support Levin’s proposals, and if not, articulate their preferred approach for our federal government’s most opaque but essential institution.
As Trump, Cruz and Kasich gear up for a potentially decisive primary, they would do well to respond to the many calls for clarity on the Fed. And on Thursday night, Sanders and Clinton will have the chance to clarify their stances on the Fed when they debate in Brooklyn, just a few miles away from Wall Street and the global financial epicenter that is the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
As New York voters get ready to decide which of the remaining candidates would make the best president, they will be asking themselves which candidate will better handle the economy. The candidates’ positions on the Fed must be part of the equation.
Jordan Haedtler is campaign manager of the Fed Up campaign, which calls on the Federal Reserve to adopt policies that build a strong economy for the American public. Fed Up is an initiative of the Center for Popular Democracy, a nonprofit group that advocates for a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
By Jordan Haedtler
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We Asked Brands How They Handled Their Own Racial Bias Incidents — Most Didn’t Answer
We Asked Brands How They Handled Their Own Racial Bias Incidents — Most Didn’t Answer
Brand: Zara Problem: In 2015, the Center for Popular Democracy surveyed workers at the New York stores of Spanish...
Brand: Zara
Problem: In 2015, the Center for Popular Democracy surveyed workers at the New York stores of Spanish retailer Zara. The survey found that the workers believed black customers were targets of racial profiling and that lighter-skinned employees had better hours and more opportunities for promotion in the company than darker-skinned employees.
Response: Zara denied the allegations.
What have they done to prevent racial targeting in the future? Representatives for the company didn’t answer Racked’s request for comment.
Read the full article here.
2 days ago
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