{"id":11960,"date":"2015-09-07T13:36:07","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11960"},"modified":"2015-09-07T13:36:07","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T18:36:07","slug":"fed-up-with-the-fed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=11960","title":{"rendered":"Fed Up with the Fed"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 dir=\"LTR\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/us-fed-interest-rate-hike-low-inflation-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2015-09\" target=\"_blank\">Fed Up with the Fed<\/a><\/h3>\n<p data-line-id=\"8d9672a555f0495490e6562911c445d7\">At the end of every August, central bankers and financiers from around the world meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the US Federal Reserve\u2019s economic symposium. This year, the participants were greeted by a large group of mostly young people, including many African- and Hispanic Americans.<\/p>\n<p data-line-id=\"f2d157be2c6d4f058aadf56cd3acdc89\">The group was not there so much to protest as to inform. They wanted the assembled policymakers to know that their decisions affect ordinary people, not just the financiers who are worried about what inflation does to the value of their bonds or what interest-rate hikes might do to their stock portfolios. And their green tee shirts were emblazoned with the message that for these Americans, there has been no recovery.<\/p>\n<p data-line-id=\"7beacf3f4c55416c98a041aae788a49a\">Even now, seven years after the global financial crisis triggered the Great Recession, \u201cofficial\u201d unemployment among African-Americans is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/empsit.t02.htm\" target=\"_blank\">more than 9%.<\/a>\u00a0According to a broader (and more appropriate) definition, which includes part-time employees seeking full-time jobs and marginally employed workers, the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/empsit.t15.htm\" target=\"_blank\">unemployment rate<\/a>\u00a0for the United States as a whole is 10.3%. But, for African-Americans \u2013 especially the young \u2013 the rate is\u00a0<i>much\u00a0<\/i>higher. For example, for African-Americans aged 17-20 who have graduated high school but not enrolled in college, the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.epi.org\/blog\/young-black-high-school-grads-face-astonishing-underemployment\/\" target=\"_blank\">unemployment rate is over 50%<\/a>. The \u201cjobs gap\u201d \u2013 the difference between today\u2019s employment and what it\u00a0<i>should\u00a0<\/i>be \u2013 is some three million.<\/p>\n<p data-line-id=\"fe78d9481d634a049a4320136afe3aff\">With so many people out of work, downward pressure on wages is showing up in official statistics as well. So far this year, real wages for non-supervisory workers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/research.stlouisfed.org\/fred2\/series\/AHETPI\" target=\"_blank\">fell<\/a>\u00a0by nearly 0.5%. This is part of a long-term trend that explains why household incomes in the middle of the distribution are lower than they were a quarter-century ago.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/>\nRead more at https:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/us-fed-interest-rate-hike-low-inflation-by-joseph-e&#8211;stiglitz-2015-09#ysd6DoKTlIY5xLsF.99<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fed Up with the Fed At the end of every August, central bankers and financiers from around the world meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the US Federal Reserve\u2019s economic symposium. This year, the participants were greeted by a large group of mostly young people, including many African- and Hispanic Americans. The group was not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3832,303,305,2240,384,460,8402,834],"class_list":["post-11960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-bankers","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-global-financial-crisis","tag-great-recession","tag-joseph-stiglitz","tag-project-syndicate","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11961,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11960\/revisions\/11961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}