Working Life Podcast

It’s an action-packed, let’s-catch-the-thieves-in-the-act episode. The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee just wrapped up its two-day secret June meeting without triggering a new cut in interests rates—and what does that mean? I unravel the state of play at the Fed—and ask the question why shouldn’t we change the basic structure of the Fed—with Dean Baker, Fed-watcher extraordinaire and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Intrigue is also swirling around the renegotiation of NAFTA 2.0 so Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch who knows the entire inside story and state-of-play, is back with all the insight you can’t get from anyone else. I close by noting a sad moment in time—it’s been a whole decade since workers saw a rise in the federal minimum wage, which is stuck at a poverty-level, immoral $7.25. Leo Gertner, a staff attorney with the National Employment Law Center, joins me for a chat about a new report excoriating Congress for failing to raise the minimum