Employment
Federal Reserve Issues FOMC Statement Signaling a March Interest Rate Hike as Well As Reducing the Size of the Fed's Balance Sheet
"The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. In support of these goals, the Committee decided to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent. With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate. The Committee decided to continue to reduce the monthly pace of its net asset purchases, bringing them to an end in early March. Beginning in February, the Committee will increase its holdings of Treasury securities by at least $20 billion per month and of agency mortgage backed securities by at least $10 billion per month. The Federal Reserve's ongoing purchases and holdings of securities will continue to foster smooth market functioning and accommodative financial conditions, thereby supporting the flow of credit to households and businesses." more »
Jerome Powell's Testimony at His Nomination Hearing for a Second Term as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; A Link to The Beige Book
"Congress provided by far the fastest and largest response to any postwar economic downturn. At the Federal Reserve, we used the full range of policy tools at our disposal. We moved quickly to restore vital flows of credit to households, communities, and businesses and to stabilize the financial system.
These collective policy actions, the development and availability of vaccines, and American resilience worked in concert, first to cushion the pandemic's economic blows and then to spark a historically strong recovery. Today the economy is expanding at its fastest pace in many years, and the labor market is strong." more »
On A Chilly Saturday, Winter Graduates Turn to Their Future: “Some of (your) most important lessons came from a real-life curriculum no one ever anticipated”
The years Saturday’s graduates spent at Berkeley were marked by turmoil: days-long campus power outages, devastating wildfires that choked the air with smoke, free-speech demonstrations and national reckonings with economic inequality, police shootings, racism and anti-democratic violence. “Some of (your) most important lessons came from a real-life curriculum no one ever anticipated,” Chancellor Carol Christ told the graduates in her keynote speech. “We are living in a historic moment when everything is shifting about us in ways that will have a profound impact upon the future,” she added. “This may be a perilous time, but so, too, is it a time of creative ferment and possibility, and that is prime time for this public university and for you, our newest alumni.”
(UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser)
(UC Berkeley photo by Keegan Houser)
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Jo Freeman Reviews: Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict Over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920 – 1963
Jo Freeman Reviews: “All citizens are created equal but some or more equal than others” is the message of this book. Women are not the only unequal citizens in this country, but they are the most numerous. The Equal Rights Amendment was an attempt to bring real equality to women’s legal status after the 19th Amendment gave women the right, but not always the reality, to the franchise. Focusing on the first 40 years of the struggle for the ERA, DeWolf divides proponents and opponents into emancipationists and protectionists... Although this book is on the ERA, it does go into other laws that affected women, especially their employment opportunities. Read it as a general review of public policy on women, especially at the federal level. Then imagine how different things would have been if the ERA had been ratified several decades ago." more »