Jared Bernstein: Chair Yellen Looks Under New Rocks, Finds Same Thing that’s Under Old Rocks

By Jared Bernstein
August 24, 2014

I yield to no one in my admiration for the careful, thoughtful, and reality-based economics practiced by Fed Chair Janet Yellen. So I was taken aback a bit by a section in her Jackson Hole speech on Friday.

It was the part where she gave a number of reasons why the absence of wage pressures may not, paradoxically, be signaling that considerable slack remains in the job market, and therefore, may not be signalling that the Fed should wait on raising rates to stave off faster inflation. Continue reading Jared Bernstein: Chair Yellen Looks Under New Rocks, Finds Same Thing that’s Under Old Rocks

Tracking Police-involved Killings in the US

A Gawker article caught my eye this weekend. It is entitled: “What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings.” In it, I expected to learn about different state and national agencies and watchdog groups that do just that. Much to my dismay, no one really does. That is, with the exception of two or three reporters who’ve recently started, no one really does. Continue reading Tracking Police-involved Killings in the US