Some Retailers Promote Decision to Remain Closed on Thanksgiving
New York Times - November 14, 2014, Steven Greenhouse - This...
New York Times - November 14, 2014, Steven Greenhouse - This Thanksgiving, the open-versus-shut debate has grown even louder.
Walmart, Kmart, Macy’s, Target, RadioShack and many other major retailers are proclaiming that they will be open on Thanksgiving Day to make shoppers happy. But Costco, Marshalls, GameStop and T. J. Maxx are riding the backlash against holiday commerce by boasting that they will not relent: They will remain closed that day to show that they are family-friendly and honoring the holiday.
But even as retailers vie for every dollar during a very competitive season, Tony Bartel, the president of GameStop, views this debate as open-and-shut. “For us, it’s a matter of principle,” said Mr. Bartel, whose company has 4,600 stores nationwide. “We have a phrase around here that we use a lot — it’s called ‘protecting the family.’ We want our associates to enjoy their complete holidays.”
“It’s an important holiday in the U.S., and our employees work hard during the holiday season, and we believe they deserve the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving Day with their family and friends,” said Richard A. Galanti, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Costco Wholesale, the nation’s second-largest retailer after Walmart. “We’ve never opened on Thanksgiving, and when the trend to do so occurred in the last couple or three years, we chose not to because we thought it was the right thing to do for our employees.”
More than two dozen major retail chains plan to stay dark on Thanksgiving, including Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, the Burlington Coat Factory, Crate and Barrel, Dillard’s, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Patagonia.
Johan Araujo, a senior game adviser at GameStop’s flagship store in Herald Square in Manhattan, applauded his company’s decision. “It’s good to know they’re thinking about us and what we want,” he said. His plans involve cooking the turkey for his fiancée and friends this year.
Sidney Bartlett, the manager of Mr. Araujo’s store, said that when the store used to be open on Thanksgiving — it started closing for the holiday last year — it was painful to figure out which employees to inconvenience and schedule to work that day. “I thought it’s great the C.E.O. decided to close for the holiday,” he said.
He said it saddened him to see so many stores open that day. “We’ve shifted as a nation — it’s not so much about the family, it’s all about business,” said Mr. Bartlett, who is studying for an M.B.A. at Columbia.
“We don’t believe we will lose any ground to competitors,” said Mr. Bartel, the company’s president. “Even if we lose some ground to competitors, we are making it corporate principle — we have committed to associates that we will not open on Thanksgiving.”
Pushed by competitive forces, some malls are opening on Thanksgiving Day for the first time. In Paramus, N.J., Westfield Garden State Plaza and Paramus Park will open from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., prodded by Macy’s decision to open its stores in those malls.
Walden Galleria, a mall with over 200 stores near Buffalo, threatened to fine retailers about $200 an hour if they don’t open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.
Carrie Gleason, director of the Fair Workweek Initiative, a campaign pushing retailers to adopt schedules that are more friendly to workers, said, “What’s different from years past is there are more and more retailers coming out publicly and saying, ‘We’re staying closed on Thanksgiving.’ ” They want to demonstrate to their customer base that they’re family-friendly.”
More than 55,000 people have signed a petition on change.org urging Target to remain closed on Thanksgiving, while the Boycott Black Thursday Facebook page has more than 87,000 likes.
Walmart officials say they are doing consumers a favor by opening on Thanksgiving. To reduce the long lines that have upset many shoppers on Black Friday, Walmart announced on Tuesday that it would spread Black Friday over five days.
“It became Black Friday, then it became Thursday, and now it’s becoming weeklong,” said Duncan Mac Naughton, chief merchandising officer at Walmart. “Maybe it’s going to be November.”
Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman, said many shoppers were happy that the company would be open on Thanksgiving. “We’re in the service industry, and we’re just like airports and grocery stores and gas stations that are open on Thanksgiving so they can provide what customers need,” she said. “We’ve been open on Thanksgiving for 20-something years.”
Walmart will again face a wave of protests this holiday season. Our Walmart, a union-backed group of Walmart workers pushing for higher pay, said on Friday that it would hold protests at 1,600 Walmarts on Black Friday.
After keeping almost all its stores closed last Thanksgiving, the financially troubled RadioShack said that it planned to open its stores from 8 a.m. to midnight this Thanksgiving. But after some employees voiced dismay, the company changed course to give them time for their feast. Its stores will open from 8 a.m. to noon, close for five hours and reopen from 5 p.m. until midnight, and again at 6 a.m. on Friday.
The University of Connecticut Poll conducted a survey last November that found that nine out of 10 Americans said they didn’t plan to spend Thanksgiving hunting for bargains, while 7 percent said they planned to visit stores on Thanksgiving Day.
The poll of 1,189 adults, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percent, found that 49 percent disapproved of stores opening on Thanksgiving Day, with 16 percent approving and 34 percent neutral.
Last Thanksgiving, J. C. Penney, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Sears and Target all opened at 8 p.m. This year, Kmart plans to open at 6 a.m. and remain open for the next 42 hours.
“All these companies were closed for decades,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “What’s changed is that some have chosen to remain open, and those companies should be getting demerits. People should ask, ‘Is this the sort of society we want to live in that people aren’t even given the option of celebrating holidays?’ ”
He said that if stores decided to open on Thanksgiving, working that day should be voluntary, not mandatory. He said many part-time workers were eager to work on Thanksgiving.
Mr. Appelbaum praised the Macy’s store in Herald Square for using only workers who volunteer to work that day
Macy’s plans to open at 6 p.m. this Thanksgiving, two hours earlier than last Thanksgiving — and Sears is doing the same thing. “Customer response to the 8 p.m. opening last year was exceptionally strong,” said Jim Sluzewski, Macy’s senior vice president for communications. “At Macy’s Herald Square store, we had 15,000 customers waiting outside when the doors opened. The experience was similar across the country. Many customers asked why we couldn’t open a little earlier.”
In contrast, he said Bloomingdale’s, a Macy’s subsidiary, would remain closed on Thanksgiving Day, saying it was “less promotional” than Macy’s.
Roger Beahm, executive director of the Center for Retail Innovation at Wake Forest University, said it was smart competitively for retailers to open on Thanksgiving. “Did the folks who questioned the sanctity of Thanksgiving learn a lesson?” he said. “A good start to the holiday retail season can really make your year, and a late start can really cripple retailers.”
Dan Evans, a spokesman for Nordstrom, said his company kept its stores closed on Thanksgiving, with a few employees completing holiday decorations that day, before they are unveiled on Black Friday.
“If our customers really wanted us to open on Thanksgiving, that’s what we’ll do,” Mr. Evans said. “We used to be closed on the Fourth of July. We used to be closed on New Year’s Day, but customers wanted us to be open on those days, so now we’re open on those days. Our customers guide us. We don’t guide them.”
Source
The Housing Recovery Has Skipped Poor and Minority Neighborhoods
On October 11, 2009, when Isaac Dieudonne was two years old, his family moved into a new home in Miramar, Florida. As...
On October 11, 2009, when Isaac Dieudonne was two years old, his family moved into a new home in Miramar, Florida. As they began to unpack, young Isaac bounded out the front door in search of fun. The parents found him several minutes later, floating dead in the fetid pool of a foreclosed house.
Since the financial crisis began in 2008, approximately 5.7 million properties have completed the foreclosure process, and stories like this begin to answer the critical question of what happens to all those homes. While many are resold, too often they fall into disrepair, creating blight that drags down property values and turns communities into potential deathtraps, attracting not just mosquitoes and mold, but crime and tragedy.
According to expert reports, this neglect occurs disproportionately in communities of color, part of a disturbing pattern. While the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the ability to use the Fair Housing Act to challenge discriminatory effects in neighborhoods, the nation’s neighborhood layout looks more segregated than ever, exacerbating the racial wealth gap. There’s no point in having an anti-housing discrimination law if it isn't vigorously employed to prevent a real societal division that drags down minority families. The Justice Department, free of uncertainty about the Fair Housing Act’s future, needs to work to realize the law's intended purpose.
The housing recovery has skipped more low-income neighborhoods.Fifteen percent of homes worth less than $200,000 are still underwater, where the borrower owes more on the house than it’s worth. This is compared to only six percent of homes over $200,000. Property values in low-income neighborhoods have not bounced back to the degree of their wealthier counterparts.
An important study from Stanford University shows how this housing divide doesn’t align with socioeconomic status, but with race. Middle-class black households are more likely to live in neighborhoods with lower incomes than the average low-income white household. This creates fewer opportunities for minorities, as neighborhood poverty can predict the quality of schooling and the availability of jobs for the next generation. Areport from the American Civil Liberties Union shows that median household wealth for African-Americans continued to drop after the housing collapse, long after median wealth for whites stabilized. They project this to continue well into the next generation, with a drop in the average black family’s wealth by $98,000 more than it would have been without the Great Recession.
Foreclosures are largely responsible for this widening disparity. Predatory lending was directed at minority homeowners. Subprime mortgages weregiven disproportionately to minority borrowers, and after the housing bubble collapsed, these loans failed at higher rates. Racial segregation prior to the crisis turned these neighborhoods into targets, with subprime lending specialists going door-to-door and luring even those who owned their homes outright into refinances with dodgy terms. Banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America paid fines for pushing minority borrowers into subprime loans, even when they qualified for better interest rates. But these fines—$175 million and $335 million, respectively—were substantially lower than they paid for other bubble-era abuses.
More black and Latino borrowers had their wealth exclusively tied up in their homes, and when they lost them, more of their wealth dissipated. Even after the collapse, the Federal Reserve found that from 2010-2013, net worth of nonwhite or Hispanic families fell 17 percent, compared to an increase of 2 percent for white families.
This wealth transferred in part to Wall Street. Private equity and hedge funds scooped up hundreds of thousands foreclosed properties in low-income communities, and converted them into rentals. This prevented minority homeowners from benefiting from any return in property values, and displaced many from their neighborhoods. And a recent survey of community organizations finds that this has created higher rents and more transient neighborhoods.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with quasi-public mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, auction off these homes to investors at a discount, according to a study from the Center for Popular Democracy. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently passed a resolution urging these government lenders to sell instead to non-profits that would work to protect homes from foreclosure.
And then there is the disparate treatment of foreclosed properties repossessed by banks, known as real estate owned (REO). The National Fair Housing Alliance’s findings in 29 metropolitan areas indicate that REO in communities of color are twice more likely to have damaged doors and windows, overgrown weeds and trash on the premises and holes in the roof or structure. This violates the Fair Housing Act: Banks are responsible for maintenance and upkeep on all properties, and if they neglect that in black and Latino neighborhoods, the Justice Department can sanction them.
The failure to maintain foreclosed properties has multiple negative effects for communities. Blight creates health and safety concerns, acts asmagnets for crime, and lowers property values for neighboring homes. It also reduces the tax base for municipalities, as nobody pays property taxes on an empty house. The city of Detroit has already lost $500 million from foreclosures in the past few years; 78 percent of homes with subprime loans are know foreclosed or abandoned.
Last week, fifteen Senate Democrats, including leaders Chuck Schumerand Dick Durbin and ranking member of the Banking Committee Sherrod Brown, asked regulators to open an investigation into the treatment of foreclosed properties. “The same communities of color that were victimized by predatory lending may now be facing the double whammy of racial bias when it comes to the upkeep of foreclosed homes,” said Brown. But policing foreclosed properties would only begin to close the gap between white and non-white neighborhoods.
The entire point of the Fair Housing Act, passed shortly after Martin Luther King’s death in 1968, was to reverse the findings of the Kerner Commission, that the country “is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” But reading through these statistics, you wouldn’t know the Fair Housing Act existed. We are further than ever from what Justice Anthony Kennedy described as the act’s “role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society.” It has been impotent in the face of multiple discriminatory shots at people of color, which has opened up a historically large wealth gap and crippled their opportunity.
Until we figure out another way for the middle class to build wealth other than purchasing a mortgage, the discriminatory effects of our housing system will further a permanent underclass among people of color in America. The Justice Department has an enormous amount of work to do.
Source: The New Republic
In Troubled Times, the Federal Reserve Must Work for Everyone
Global Shock It's true that many of the causes of the recent stock market turmoil are global, rather than...
Global Shock
It's true that many of the causes of the recent stock market turmoil are global, rather than domestic. But those distinctions are becoming less important in a world of unfettered capital flow. Regional markets, like regional ecosystems, are interconnected.
Europe is struggling because of a misguided attachment to growth-killing austerity policies. Like Republicans in this country, Europe's leaders are focused on unwise government cost-cutting measures that hurt the overall economy.
China's superheated markets have experienced a sharp downturn, and its devaluing of the yuan is likely to affect American monetary policy. Many of the so-called "emerging markets" are in grave trouble, their problems exacerbated by an anticipated interest rate hike from the U.S. Fed.
Plunging crude oil prices are a major factor in the events of the last few days. But questions remain about the underlying forces affecting those prices. Demand is somewhat weaker, and Saudi officials are refusing to cut production. But there is still some debate about whether these and other well-reported factors are enough to explain the fact that the price of a barrel of oil is roughly half what it was just over a year ago, in June 2014.
American Turmoil
Talk of recovery here in the U.S. has been significantly dampened by events of the last several days. The now-interrupted stock market boom had been Exhibit A in the case for recovery.
Exhibit B was the ongoing drop in the official unemployment rate. There, too, signs of underlying weakness can be found. The labor force participation rate remains very low for people in their peak working years, as economist Elise Gould notes, and has only come back about halfway from pre-2008 levels. Jared Bernstein notes that pressure to raise wages, which one would also expect in a recovering job market, also remains weak.
All this argues for a rational and coordinated policy, one in which the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government act together to restore a wounded economy. What would that look like?
It would not include raised interest rates -- something that nevertheless continues to be a topic of serious discussion. As Dean Baker points out, China's currency devaluation alone should have been enough to take that idea off the table. What's more, as Baker rightly notes, such a move would only make sense if the Fed "is worried that the U.S. economy was growing too quickly and creating too many jobs." That's a notion most Americans would probably reject as absurd. Most are not seeing their paychecks grow or their job opportunities multiply.
Anxiety about inflation, while all but omnipresent in some circles, is not a rational fear. A slow rise in prices (0.2 percent in the 12 months ending in July, as opposed to the Fed's recommended 2 percent per year) tells us that inflation is not exactly looming on the horizon.
Now what?
"Everything is going to be dictated by government policy," the chief investment officerof a well-known investment firm said this week. In that case, isn't it time for a national conversation about that policy?
Another investment strategist told the Wall Street Journal that today's challenges come at a time when "global central banks have exhausted almost all their tools ... It's difficult to see how central banks come in to support markets."
If they've exhausted all their commonly-used tools, it may be time to develop new ones -- not to support "markets," but to promote jobs and growth for everyone.
First, do no harm. The Fed needs to hold off on any move to raise interest rates. But inaction is not enough. It was given a dual mandate by Congress: to stabilize prices and keep employment at reasonable levels.
Activist groups like the "Fed Up" coalition, led by the Center for Popular Democracy (and including the Campaign for America's Future), are working to move the Fed toward that second objective. They've been pushing to change its governing boards, which are heavily dominated by big banks and other major financial interests, and have called for policies that focus on improving the economic lives of most Americans.
Those policies could take a number of forms. One idea comes from Jeremy Corbyn, the populist politician who's on track to become the next leader of Great Britain's Labour Party. Corbyn's economic plan includes "quantitative easing for people instead of banks." Corbyn proposes to grow the financial sector in a targeted way, by giving the Bank of England (the UK's version of the Fed) a mandate to "invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects."
A headline on the website of the Financial Times says (with apparent surprise) that "Corbyn's "People's QE" could actually be a decent idea."
Corbyn also proposes to "strip out some of the huge tax reliefs and subsidies on offer to the corporate sector." The added revenue would go to "direct public investment," including the creation of a 'National Investment Bank' to "invest in the new infrastructure we need and in the hi-tech and innovative industries of the future."
Qualitative Easing
Call it "qualitative," rather than "quantitative," easing. It would increase the money supply, but for money that is to be invested in the real-world economy -- the one that creates jobs, lifts wages, and creates broad economic growth.
Could something like Corbyn's plan ever happen here? There's no reason why not. The Federal Reserve wasn't created by bankers, nor is it there to serve bankers -- although a lot of people inside and outside the Fed act as if it were. (The choice of a former Goldman Sachs executive for its latest major appointment won't help change that.)
The Federal Reserve was created by the American people through an act of Congress. Its governors and its policies are there to protect and serve the public. The Fed should use its oversight capabilities to ensure that banks don't behave in a reckless manner or help private funds and other unsupervised institutions to behave recklessly.
We are still paying the price for allowing big-money interests to dominate both lawmaking on Capitol Hill and monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. That must change. Congress and the Fed, acting together, should ensure that our nation's policies benefit the many who are in need of help, not the few who already have more than they need.
Richard Eskow is a writer and editor with the Bernie 2016 campaign, the host of The Zero Hour radio program, and a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. The opinions expressed here are his own.
Source: Huffington Post
Overnight Finance: Obama huddles with Yellen; Puerto Rico bill markup Wednesday
Overnight Finance: Obama huddles with Yellen; Puerto Rico bill markup Wednesday
TRADING NOTES: President Obama met with Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen, but interest rates were...
TRADING NOTES: President Obama met with Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen, but interest rates were apparently not on the agenda.
Obama did not plan to discuss interest rates with Yellen, according to White House press secretary Josh Earnest. He argued such a conversation could undercut the chair's independence in setting monetary policy.
"I would not anticipate that, even in the confidential setting, that the president would have a conversation with the chair of the Fed that would undermine her ability to make these kinds of critical monetary policy decisions independently," Earnest told reporters ahead of the meeting.
The closed-door discussion is instead an opportunity to "trade notes" on broader economic trends in the U.S. and abroad, as well as on a new set of regulations on Wall Street financial firms.
Obama and Yellen talked about the growth outlook, "the state of the labor market, inequality and potential risks to the economy," the White House said after the meeting. The Hill's Jordan Fabian has more: http://bit.ly/25VuzIZ.
HOUSE TO MARKUP PUERTO RICO DEBT BILL: The House Natural Resources Committee will begin on Wednesday to mark up legislation aimed at saving Puerto Rico from a massive debt crisis.
Lawmakers have been working to make significant changes to the measure, which is expected to unveiled as early as Monday night, since the panel released a discussion draft on March 29.
The Puerto Rico measure, which put the island's finances under federal oversight and authorize a restructuring of some of its debt, will need to strike a balance and attract bipartisan support and the backing of the White House to move forward.
LEW MAKES CASE FOR GLOBAL ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday made the case for the United States to continue its global economic leadership as the administration faces criticism from Donald Trump and other presidential candidates.
"We know that the global landscape of the next century will be very different than that of the post-war era," Lew said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And if we want it to work for the American people, we need to embrace new players on the global economic stage and make sure they meet the standards of the system we created, and that we have a strong say in any new standards."
"The worst possible outcome would be to step away from our leadership role and let others fill in behind us," he added. The Hill's Naomi Jagoda fills us in: http://bit.ly/1qjTIwe.
GOLDMAN SACHS SETTLES MORTGAGE PROBE FOR $5 BILLION: Goldman Sachs will pay more than $5 billion to settle charges that it engaged in "serious misconduct" when selling risky mortgages leading up to the 2008 financial collapse.
The $5.06 billion civil settlement also saw the Wall Street giant admit it failed to properly inform investors of the risks in the subprime mortgage securities the bank was selling.
"This resolution holds Goldman Sachs accountable for its serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail," acting associate attorney general Stuart Delery said in a statement.
One of the government charges, which Goldman has now acknowledged, was that the bank kept internal concerns about the strength of the mortgage market hidden from potential investors. Here's more from The Hill's Peter Schroeder: http://bit.ly/1qjTJQQ.
SANDERS SAYS GOLDMAN'S BUSINESS 'RIGGED': Bernie Sanders charged Monday that the settlement proves Goldman Sachs's business is "based on fraud."
The Justice Department announced Monday that the Wall Street giant would pay over $5 billion to settle charges it sold risky mortgage investments in the lead up to the financial crisis, and didn't tell investors enough about it.
Sanders, who has built his presidential campaign in large part on big bank bashing, said the settlement proves his point.
"What they have just acknowledged to the whole world is that their system ... is based on fraud," he told supporters in New York.
Sanders also complained that the civil settlement did not include any criminal charges, proving the "corruption of our criminal justice system." http://bit.ly/1TNk2Lm
HAPPY MONDAY and welcome to Overnight Finance, where we're wondering why Herbert Hoover gets to join the racing presidents. I'm Sylvan Lane, and here's your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.
Tonight's highlights include securities fraud charges for Texas's attorney general, a trillion-dollar national pension gap and a Tax Day delay.
See something I missed? Let me know at slane@thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://www.thehill.com/signup/48.
ON TAP TOMORROW:
Senate Finance Committee: Hearing on examining cybersecurity and protecting taxpayer information, 10 a.m
Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services: Hearings to examine proposed budget estimates and justification for fiscal year 2017 for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission., 10:30 a.m.
House Rules Committee: Business Meeting: H.R. 2666: No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act; H.R. 3340: Financial Stability Oversight Council Reform Act; H.R. 3791: To raise the consolidated assets threshold under the small bank holding company policy statement and for other purposes.
Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act expected to be released.
"Getting Her Money's Worth: What Will It Take to Achieve Equal Pay?" discussion featuring Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), 11:45 am.
BERNIE FANS LEFT'S FLAMES AGAINST FED: Liberal activists are putting a target on the Federal Reserve for the 2016 elections, much to the delight of the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Denouncing an agenda that they say tilts toward Wall Street, members of the "Fed Up" coalition on Monday unveiled a set of reforms that would alter how the central bank does business.
"No longer are we focused only on fixing the Fed's monetary policy and internal governance positions," said Ady Barkan, the group's campaign director. "We are now beginning an effort to reform the Federal Reserve itself. Peter Schroeder breaks down the fight: http://bit.ly/23yMSBH.
YOU HAVE THREE MORE DAYS TO PROCRASTINATE: For most people, tax returns are due one week from today.
This year's due date for filing federal individual income tax returns is April 18, not April 15. This is because the District of Columbia is observing Emancipation Day on April 15, which falls on a Friday, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
People living in Massachusetts and Maine have until April 19 to file their tax returns because those states observe Patriots' Day on April 18.
Those who are serving in combat zones or contingency operations or become hospitalized due to injuries from their service can have additional time to pay their taxes. Those affected by federally declared disasters might also have more time, the IRS said: http://bit.ly/1Q3tzHk.
AG GROUPS PUSH FOR PACIFIC TRADE DEAL: The nation's farmers and ranchers are putting their weight behind efforts urging Congress to pass a sweeping Asia-Pacific deal this year.
In a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, 225 food and agricultural groups called on lawmakers to move forward on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership before President Obama leaves office.
"The TPP presents a valuable opportunity for U.S. agriculture; one that we cannot afford to miss," the groups wrote. The Hill's Vicki Needham explains why: http://bit.ly/1S5QCFD.
SEC CHARGES TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL: The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday charged Texas's top law enforcement official with civil securities fraud for allegedly deceiving investors in a computer company.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) received 100,000 shares of Servergy, a Nevada-based technology company, to pitch investors on a server it was selling between 2011 and 2013, according to the SEC complaint. Servergy officials allegedly marketed the server with incorrect information, and Paxton allegedly did not disclose to investors that he would be paid a commission: http://bit.ly/1RPHyG0.
US PUBLIC PENSIONS FACE $3 TRILLION HOLE: The nation's public pension system is facing a $3.4 trillion funding hole that may force cities and states to either cut spending or raise taxes to cover future shortfalls.
The deficit in pension funds is three times more than official figures and is growing, and without an overhaul could weigh on state and local budgets and lead to Detroit-like bankruptcies, according to research reported by the Financial Times.
Joshua Rauh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who put together the report, told the FT that "the pension problems are threatening to consume state and local budgets in the absence of some major changes."
"It is quite likely that over a 5- to 10-year horizon we are going to see more bankruptcies of cities where the unfunded pension liabilities will play a large role." Here's more from Vicki Needham: http://bit.ly/1Su85op.
CONSERVATIVES FIGHT ENERGY TAX BREAKS IN FAA BILL: Conservative groups that oppose a proposal to include energy tax breaks in the long-term reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration are vowing to take their fight to the House if the Senate moves ahead.
Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners said Monday that if the Senate ends up attaching energy tax provisions to the FAA bill, the organizations will ratchet up pressure on lawmakers across the Capitol to oppose the language or pass a clean-extension of FAA.
"If the Senate isn't going to do anything to stop this, we're going to put pressure on the House," Andy Koenig, senior policy advisor at Freedom Partners, said on a press call. "The House is under no obligation to take up a bunch of energy subsidies if they don't want to." The Hill's Melanie Zanona walks us through the battle: http://bit.ly/1RPHrKH.
DEMS CALL FOR GREATER NONBANK MORTGAGE OVERSIGHT: Two Democratic lawmakers are calling on the nation's top consumer protection agency to ramp up its oversight of nonbank mortgage servicers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.) asked the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Monday to identify all of and collect more data on the growing number of financial institutions other than banks that service mortgages.
Warren and Cummings pointed to recommendations from a non-partisan government watchdog report published Monday. Warren, a long-time financial industry watchdog, and Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, requested the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study. I'll fill you in on the rest here: http://bit.ly/1Sc3ldc.
Did you know 67% of all job growth comes from small businesses? Read More
NIGHTCAP: Five Starbucks locations in DC will start serving alcohol and "small plates," which is millennial for paying more money for less food: https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/04/08/5-dc-starbucks-will-sell-beer-wine-small-plates-next-week/.
By Sylvan Lane
Source
Yellen Says Improving Economy Still Faces Challenges
The Washington Post - August 22, 2014, by Ylan Q. Mui - Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen on Friday expressed...
The Washington Post - August 22, 2014, by Ylan Q. Mui - Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen on Friday expressed growing confidence that America’s market is improving but uncertainty over how much further it has to go.
Yellen began her remarks before a select group of elite economists and central bankers here by enumerating the unequivocal progress made since the Great Recession ended: Job growth has averaged 230,000 a month this year, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.2 percent after peaking in the double digits during the depths of the crisis.
But she quickly transitioned to the challenges in determining how close the labor market is to being fully healed — and how much the nation’s central bank should do to speed its convalescence. Although Yellen has consistently emphasized that the recovery is incomplete, her speech Friday focused on the difficulty of making a current diagnosis.
“Our understanding of labor market developments and their potential implications for inflation will remain far from perfect,” Yellen said at the annual conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. “As a consequence, monetary policy must be conducted in a pragmatic manner.”
The Fed slashed its target for short-term interest rates to zero and pumped trillions of dollars into the economy in the aftermath of the recession. More than five years later, it is finally scaling back that support. The Fed is slated to end its bond-buying program in October and is debating when to raise interest rates.
That decision carries enormous consequences: Move too soon, and the Fed risks undermining the economic progress made so far. Move too late, and it could risk stoking inflation in the future and sowing the seeds of the next financial crisis.
Investors generally expect the Fed to raise rates in the middle of next year, but several central bank officials gathered here cautioned that the moment could come earlier if the recovery improves more rapidly than expected. Yellen gave no clear timeline Friday but called for a “more nuanced” reading of the labor market as the economy returns to normal.
For example, the size of the nation’s workforce unexpectedly declined after the recession, the result of both demographic factors and unemployed workers who gave up hope of finding a job. Yellen reiterated Friday that a stronger economy could help stem that drop and suggested it may already be working. She also said that the run-up in involuntary part-time work and the low level of people choosing to quit their jobs could be reversed as the labor market improves.
But Yellen seemed to shift her stance on the country’s stagnant wage growth. Previously, she has cited it as a sign that the labor market remains weak. But on Friday she called on research that suggests wage growth has been subdued because employers were unable to cut salaries deeply enough during the recession, a phenomenon dubbed “pent-up wage deflation.” She also suggested that globalization and the difficulty that the long-term unemployed face in finding jobs could also be depressing wage growth.
The uncertainty facing the Fed means it will be carefully evaluating economic data over the coming months, Yellen said. And she said the central bank will remain nimble in its response.
“There is no simple recipe for appropriate policy in this context, and the [Fed] is particularly attentive to the need to clearly describe the policy framework we are using to meet these challenges,” she said.
Central bankers were not the only ones gathered in the Grand Tetons this year. Several workers and activists also traveled to Jackson Hole and called on the central bank to be cautious in removing its support for the economy, the first protest at the conference in recent memory.
The grass-roots group, organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, also issued an open letter to the Fed earlier in the week signed by more than 60 activist organizations. Kansas City Fed President Esther L. George — one of the most vocal proponents of raising interest rates soon — met with the protesters in Jackson Hole on Thursday for about two hours to hear their stories. Ady Barkan, senior attorney at the Center for Popular Democracy, said the groups plan to request meetings with other Fed officials as well.
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Report: Black Unemployment in Bay Area More Than Three Times the Average
SF Examiner - March 6, 2014, by Chris Roberts - After 200 unanswered job applications, Ebony Eisler finally landed a $...
SF Examiner - March 6, 2014, by Chris Roberts - After 200 unanswered job applications, Ebony Eisler finally landed a $15 an hour position as a medical assistant in Mission Bay. But since she's a temp worker, she earns less than her co-workers, who make $20 to $25 per hour for the same work.
Still, as a black woman in San Francisco, she is fortunate. The unemployment rate for black people in the Bay Area is 19 percent, according to 2013 U.S. Census Bureau data crunched by the Economic Policy Institute.
Blacks are unemployed at more than three times the rate of workers of other races, according to this data. The Bay Area finished 2013 with a 6 percent total unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In San Francisco, unemployment has dropped rapidly since Mayor Ed Lee took office in January 2011, when the jobless rate was 9.5 percent. The most recent figures from the state Employment Development Department — which does not publish jobless rates by race — pegged The City's unemployment rate at 3.8 percent, by far the rosiest employment figures since the first dot-com boom at the turn of the millennium.
The wide gulf in the jobless rate between ethnic groups living in the same city belies the idea that The City and state have fully recovered from the Great Recession, according to advocates with the leftist Center for Popular Democracy.
The group released the unemployment figures by ethnicity Thursday as part of a national campaign to convince the Federal Reserve Bank to keep interest rates low in order for the economic recovery to trickle down to all workers.
So far, "the recovery is based on white America alone," said Eisler, 36, a Bayview resident who holds an associates degree and a certified nursing assistant license. Her current job, the best she could find, does not cover her $1,800 a month rent, she said.
Statewide, the jobless rate for black people is 14 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute, compared to 6.1 percent for whites, 8.5 percent for Latinos and 5.9 percent for Asians.
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Report Documents $100 Million in Charter School Fraud in 14 States and D.C.
Education Week - May 7, 2014, by Katie Ash - An examination of charter schools in 15 charter markets across the...
The report appears to be one of the first shots fired from Integrity in Education, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to expose corporate interests in public education, and is headed up by Sabrina Stevens, a former teacher and American Federation of Teachers staffer. The organization is decidedly anti-charter, likening school choice to "a euphemism for school closures" on its website.
The report gathered court cases, media investigations, regulatory findings, audits, and other sources from Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania., Texas, and Wisconsin to examine the trends in charter school fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
It found that there were six main categories of fraud, waste, and abuse:
Charter operators using public funds for their personal gain.School revenue being used to support other charter operators' businesses.
Charter school mismanagement that fails to create a safe environment for students, such as not providing background checks on staff or not properly supervising students.
Charters requesting public funds for services they do not provide.
Charters inflating their enrollment numbers to boost revenues.
Charter operators mismanaging funds and schools.
After examination, the report found that the most prevalent form of fraud in charters was the first category—charter operators' using public funds for personal use.
The report provided several recommendations to help prevent fraud, waste, and abuse from occurring. States should establish an adequately funded office solely dedicated to charter school oversight that has the authority to investigate fraud, waste, and misconduct, the report said. All charters should be independently audited each year, and the schools should be held to the same transparency requirements as regular public schools, the report recommended.
In addition, the charter school's application, contract, financial information, board members and affiliations, vendor contracts over $25,000, and board-meeting minutes should be made available publicly online, said the report. In addition, relatives of charter school operators should not be allowed to serve on the board, while parents, teachers, and students (in the case of high schools) should be provided representation there, the report recommended.
The report's appendix includes an extensive list of the different charter fraud, waste, and misconduct cases broken down by state with links to media reports about each one.
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What does the working class want? Better schedules.
What does the working class want? Better schedules.
Mirella Casares is a mother of two who juggles jobs at Victoria's Secret and Olive Garden to support her family. Her...
Mirella Casares is a mother of two who juggles jobs at Victoria's Secret and Olive Garden to support her family. Her schedules are posted monthly, but they frequently change, sometimes with as little as a few hours’ advance notice. Every night before going to bed, Mirella looks at her schedule and knows it could change the next day, forcing her to rejigger her day, scramble to find childcare, and, if her hours are cut, struggle to pay the bills that week and that month.
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New York City allocates $500K to fight feds on deportation
US News - July 17, 2013, by Steven Nelson - Immigration advocates are thrilled that New York City is footing the bill...
US News - July 17, 2013, by Steven Nelson - Immigration advocates are thrilled that New York City is footing the bill for a pilot program to provide free legal representation to people fighting deportation.
The City Council allocated $500,000 in June for the pilot program, with Speaker Christine Quinn – a candidate for mayor – taking the lead in shepherding the funds into the fiscal year 2014 budget, advocates say.
"There really was no controversy because the statistics bore out the injustice," Angela Fernandez of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights told U.S. News.
Non-citizens living in the U.S. without legal permission aren't guaranteed a free lawyer in non-criminal deportation cases.
Immigration law is "as complex as tax law," Fernandez said. She pointed to a research conducted by federal judge Robert Katzmann that found defendants without attorneys prevail less than 10 percent of the time in immigration cases.
"If they have access to a high-quality deportation defense attorney, their chances of prevailing is 67 percent," she said.
The Vera Institute of Justice, a legal advocacy group, will administer the program and approve grants to experienced non-profits whose attorneys specialize in immigration defense.
Fernandez said is costs up to $4,000 to defend a person during the course of immigration proceedings.
"The stakes are pretty high," said Brittny Saunders of the Center for Popular Democracy. "Folks who are detained, in many cases on minor infractions of immigration law, have no right to counsel ... so they're going up against federally trained attorneys."
Fernandez and Saunders agreed that the pilot program - officially called the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project – is the first publicly funded endeavor to defend immigrants against deportation, and they hope it will become permanent.
Quinn's office confirmed to U.S. News that the program was funded in the city's recently approved budget.
The immigration advocates, attorneys and Quinn are scheduled to discuss the program during a Friday event at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law.
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April 15: National Protests on Tax Day Demand Trump Release His Tax Returns
April 15: National Protests on Tax Day Demand Trump Release His Tax Returns
WASHINGTON - Today, the National Working Families Party announced their participation in the Tax Day March. President...
WASHINGTON - Today, the National Working Families Party announced their participation in the Tax Day March. President Trump’s financial ties to Russia are causing growing questions for both Democrats and Republicans. As a result, thousands of people plan to gather in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, April 15, 2017, at 11 a.m. The Tax March was an idea that started on Twitter, but has gained momentum on and offline, with over 135 marches planned in cities across the country...
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