Fed Up With Being Shut Out of Federal Reserve, Activists Descend on Summit

As U.S. Federal Reserve officials gather this week in Jackson Hole, Wyoming to discuss “Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy” at their annual policy symposium, they will be met by members of the progressive Fed Up Coalition, who say the central bank “privileges the voices and needs of corporate elites rather than those of America’s working families.”

Specifically, the coalition is warning against the very real prospect of higher interest rates, saying a rate hike would slow the economy and harm those for whom the so-called “recovery” has been weakest, including poor people, women, and communities of color. Instead, the coalition is calling on the Fed to ditch those plans and give vulnerable communities, including “tens of millions of Black Americans who are still struggling,” a say in economic policy.

Fed officials have for months signaled an intent to raise short-term interest rates—which were slashed to zero in 2008 in an effort to spur spending and investment—as soon as this fall or winter. As the Washington Post reported Thursday, reported wage growth “combined with the strong hiring and a rapidly falling unemployment rate, gave the Fed hope that the economy would be able to withstand the first rate hike in nearly a decade by the end of the year.”

But recent volatility in stock markets in the U.S. and globally, as well as internal policy disagreements, are leading some economic observers to predict that the Fed may now be less likely to set a rate hike at its September meeting.

Regardless, the Fed Up campaign—anchored at the Center for Popular Democracy and supported by 25 groups including the Economic Policy Institute, Demos, and the AFL-CIO—says raising interest rates would be foolhardy.

And they’re in Wyoming to make that view known. According to the Huffington Post, “Fed Up’s member organizations brought over 100 primarily low-income grassroots activists from across the country for the gathering. It’s a dramatic increase from its inaugural visit to Jackson Hole last year, when the campaign brought a group of 10 activists.”

As Sam Ross-Brown wrote at the American Prospect this month, “Fed Up’s goal is a more ‘pro-worker’ Federal Reserve, and their first step is stopping the Fed from hiking interest rates before wages and employment have a chance to catch up with the recovery. Building on a similar action last year, the coalition began circulating a petition this week demanding the Fed keep rates low until wages and employment rise.”

“There is no data supporting the Fed’s push for higher interest rates,” said Ady Barkan, campaign director for Fed Up. “While they toy with halting the recovery, there is a crisis of stagnant wages and a lack of good jobs.”