News and Issues

Jo Freeman Reviews: "This book is a biography of three women and an organization. It’s an unusual way to write about either, but Turk makes it work. The three women are Patricia Hill Burnett, Aileen Hernandez, and Mary Jean Collins born in 1920, 1926 and 1939 respectively. The organization is the National Organization for Women, founded in 1966 'to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.' ”  more »

FTC Issues Annual Report to Congress on Agency’s Actions to Protect Older Adults; Adults 60 and older report losses of $1.6 billion in 2022 to scams. The analysis of fraud reports ...showed that adults aged 60 and over were substantially less likely to report losing money to fraud than adults aged 18-59... Consumers 80 and older reported losing a median of $1,750 to fraud, while those in their 70s reported a median loss of $1,000, with both numbers increasing over 2021...The report calls on Congress to update the FTC Act in response to the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in the AMG Capital Management case, which severely limited the FTC’s ability to recover money that older adults and other consumers lose to scammers. more »

Christopher J. Waller: "The data in the past few months has been overwhelmingly positive for both of the FOMC's goals of maximum employment and stable prices. Economic activity and the labor market have been strong, with what looks like growth well above trend and unemployment near a 50-year low. Meanwhile, there has been continued, gradual progress in lowering inflation, and moderation in wage growth. This is great news, and while I tend to be an optimist, things are looking a little too good to be true, so it makes me think that something's gotta give. Either growth moderates, fostering conditions that support continued progress toward our 2 percent inflation objective, or growth doesn't, possibly undermining that progress. But which is going to give — the real side of the economy or the nominal side?" more »

"This FEDS Note summarizes high-level findings from the COVID-19 questions, showcasing differences in families' experiences of the first years of the pandemic across income and education groups and connecting these differences to income and net worth measured in the SCF. In particular, lower-income families and families with lower levels of educational attainment were more likely to experience a reduction in work, which could reflect their lower incidence of telework and higher incidence of a severe COVID-19 infection. These differential employment experiences appear to map well to between-survey income growth across the income distribution, especially after accounting for unemployment benefits, which were temporarily expanded over this period." more »