Check this thread to follow along with the tour we planned to give outside the Fed's symposium this morning. We explain what's holding down wages and how the Fed continually fails to represent communities of color. https://twitter.com/popdemoc/status/1033012762719412224

So we're done with our tour, but the @NatlParkService decided they didn't like our maps and threatened to arrest anyone who opened them up in the same space as the @federalreserve.

Wanna find out why they're so scared of what Fed Up has to say?

THREAD.

#10YearsAfter

Our tour went around the Jackson Lake Lodge, stopping to tell a different piece of the story of the conference: Why is it in Jackson Hole, why does Fed Up come to Jackson Hole, what doesn't the Fed know? (NAIRU, r*, why they're undershooting inflation) and more.

The Fed chooses to hold it's most important economic policy conference in Jackson, WY, the most unequal city in America, in one of the whitest states in America, all because Paul Volcker wanted to go fly fishing while the rest of America suffered through a recession he caused.

The @federalreserve is the most powerful economic policymaker in the country, and they are all in Jackson Hole to hobnob with other central bankers and luminaries. Think the Davos of America.

Don't working people of color deserve to be part of that conversation?

#10YearsAfter

The @federalreserve is confused about the most fundamental questions underlying their decisions.

How do they achieve maximum employment not knowing NAIRU?
Most say they want to get to neutral -- neither accomodative nor contractionary. But what's r*?

#10YearsAfter

Why does the @federalreserve approach this uncertainty by cavalierly sacrificing the potential jobs and wages of millions of workers for the sake of a theoretical prophylactic against a miniscule, temporary depreciation of concentrated wealth?

Personnel is policy.

#10YearsAfter

Quarles and George actually think too many people have jobs. They want more people to be out of work? Hawks have been crying wolf about hitting NAIRU for years and they've been so wrong for so long even Powell is questioning the utility of the concept of NAIRU.

#10YearsAfter

Everyone's up in arms about Trump compromising Fed independence, but Trump can't do anything to Powell. @GoldmanSachs on the other hand continues to leverage positions of power at the Fed for profit.

#10YearsAfter

The Fed's conference this year was about corporate concentration. Increased market power has fundamentally changed the economy, pushing the prospect of a wage-price spiral further away. That means the Fed needs to let unemployment lower.

#10YearsAfter

The @federalreserve has been the focus of the civil rights movement since Coretta Scott King advocated for full employment and drove the passage of the Humphrey Hawkins full employment act, which is 40 years old this year.

#10YearsAfter

We went around the lodge filling the space with these tour stops about what the Jackson Hole conference is actually about as the @federalreserve arrived for their $1000 per ticket conference,

Then we were told we had 1 min to close up our maps or be arrested.

#10YearsAfter

If the Fed is going to decide whether or not we should have a job, we won't let the threat of arrest keep us away. We took pictures of the maps on our phones to do the rest of the tour and hold the space.

And now you were there along side us!

/end

#10YearsAfter