Activists are heading over to Jackson Hole to let Fed Reserve Chair Janet Yellen know that working families need more help from the Federal Reserve:
District resident Shemethia Butler never finished college or studied finance. But she plans to fly to Wyoming this week for one of the most elite economic conferences in the world. Her goal: schooling the central bankers gathered among the Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole about the hard realities of her own kitchen-table economics.
There’s $899 in monthly rent for the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her 5-year-old daughter, $83 to $90 for electricity, $40 for her cell phone. Meanwhile, Butler brings in less than $700 a month from her part-time job at McDonald’s. She doesn’t need a spreadsheet to know that the numbers don’t add up.
“I’m going to Wyoming to let these bankers in Jackson Hole know that we are not in recovery,” said Butler, 34. “I need them to understand. I need them to see where I’m coming from.”
The three-day meeting in Jackson Hole, sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, includes a keynote by Fed Chair Janet Yellen. In the past, notable speakers have included Columbia University economist Michael Woodford and Bank of India Gov. Raghuram Rajan. The atmosphere is decidedly academic, with strict rules governing the presentation and debate of research papers that can run 50 pages or longer -- not the typical setting for a populist uprising.
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This year the conference is focused on the health of labor markets, a key consideration for the Fed as it weighs when to end its unprecedented support for the American economy. And activist groups have become increasingly worried that workers themselves are not included in the discussion.
The Center for Popular Democracy is slated to release a letter Tuesday signed by more than 60 left-leaning organizations, ranging from community groups to bigger players such as the Economic Policy Institute, Public Citizen and Demos. They are calling on the Fed to keep its easy-money policies in place until wages start to rise and what has been an exceptionally uneven recovery begins to broaden out.