Category: Economic Security

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Unemployment falls to lowest level in two and a half years, Department of Labor says

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

The Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics today released a report sum­ma­riz­ing the state of the econ­o­my for the just end­ed month of Novem­ber. Turns out our nation’s unem­ploy­ment rate has gone down. Here’s Bloomberg with more details: Job gains in the U.S. picked up last month and the unem­ploy­ment rate unex­pect­ed­ly fell to the low­est level […]

Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics

Boeing, Machinists reach agreement to build next generation 737 in Renton

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny announced this morn­ing that it has ten­ta­tive­ly reached a labor agree­ment with the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Machin­ists (IAM) that will ensure the next gen­er­a­tion of its 737 nar­row-body jet (known as the MAX) will be built in Ren­ton, Wash­ing­ton, where pro­duc­tion of the cur­rent 737 is based. “The 737 MAX builds upon the […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Fitch threatens to downgrade America’s credit unless deficit accord is reached by 2013

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Stan­dard & Poor’s, which down­grad­ed U.S. cred­it to AA back in August, anoth­er one of the big three Wall Street rat­ing firms has decid­ed to play the ulti­ma­tum game, after Con­gress’ “super­com­mit­tee” failed to agree on a plan to imple­ment spend­ing cuts last week. Fitch Rat­ings gave the Unit­ed States until […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

A day of action: Progressives across the country use Bank Transfer Day to go bankless

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

As reg­u­lar read­ers know, we at NPI have been long­time cham­pi­ons of mem­ber-owned cred­it unions, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of Sep­tem­ber 2008 and the sub­se­quent bank bailout. NPI’s staff and board belong indi­vid­u­al­ly to dif­fer­ent cred­it unions, and NPI itself is a cred­it union mem­ber. NPI became part of Amer­i­ca’s cred­it union move­ment well […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Banks drop plans to charge debit card fees

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Bank of Amer­i­ca, acknowl­edg­ing that its lat­est attempt to shake more mon­ey out of its cus­tomers’ pock­ets was destroy­ing good­will and hurt­ing rev­enue, announced today that it was can­cel­ing its plans to impose a $5 month­ly fee for deb­it card use, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of JPMor­gan Chase, Wells Far­go, Sun­Trust, and Regions, which have […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Netflix finally listens to its members, drops plans to spin off DVDs-by-mail as Qwikster

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Net­flix is stay­ing Net­flix. The com­pa­ny announced this morn­ing that it was drop­ping its ill-con­­ceived plans to spin out its DVDs-by-mail into a sep­a­rate web­site called Qwik­ster, after weeks of get­ting irate emails and phone calls from its mem­bers. Dear Mem­ber: It is clear that for many of our mem­bers two web­sites would make things […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Washington’s minimum wage to rise to $9.04 an hour beginning in January

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Wash­ing­ton State’s min­i­mum wage will rise thir­­ty-sev­en cents an hour to $9.04 begin­ning in Jan­u­ary, the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries announced today. Ini­tia­tive 688, which vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly passed in 1998, requires the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries to adjust the min­i­mum wage annu­al­ly to account for infla­tion. (I‑688, which NPI’s Steve Zemke was involved […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Bank of America announces $5 monthly penalty for debit card use

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Bank of Amer­i­ca Bank of Greed, one of the largest finan­cial insti­tu­tions in the world, announced today that it will begin charg­ing cus­tomers who use a deb­it card tied to their check­ing account a $5 month­ly penal­ty. (BofA is call­ing it a fee, but of course it’s real­ly a penal­ty). BofA is plan­ning to introduce […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Governor Chris Gregoire calls special session to deal with latest revenue shortfall

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire will call a spe­cial ses­sion of the Leg­is­la­ture begin­ning the Mon­day after Thanks­giv­ing to deal with Wash­ing­ton’s lat­est rev­enue short­fall, her office con­firmed this morn­ing. The ses­sion could go for as long as thir­ty days. “Con­gres­sion­al grid­lock, the Euro­pean debt cri­sis and high unem­ploy­ment con­tin­ue to take their toll on con­sumer con­fi­dence and […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Netflix announces its DVDs-by-mail business will now be called “Qwikster”

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Two months after it announced that it was sep­a­rat­ing DVD rentals and stream­ing into sep­a­rate plans (and auto­mat­i­cal­ly rais­ing prices for cus­tomers who did not act to can­cel one or the oth­er), Net­flix CEO Reed Hast­ings has final­ly admit­ted the com­pa­ny did a poor job han­dling the announce­ment. In a blog post and in a […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Education, Policy Topics

Seattle Times, Eyman donors launch P.R. campaign to urge that universities be funded

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

As if we need­ed more proof that the Seat­tle Times Com­pa­ny is run by a guy with a Jekyll-and-Hyde esque per­son­al­i­ty, pub­lish­er Frank Blethen announced yes­ter­day that the com­pa­ny his fam­i­ly con­trols will be orches­trat­ing a year­long pub­lic rela­tions blitz called the Greater good Cam­paign. The pur­pose of this pub­lic rela­tions blitz — and no, […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Bank of America unilaterally amends deposit agreements for Pacific Northwest customers

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Finan­cial “ser­vices” giant Bank of Amer­i­ca, which has been stag­ger­ing through 2011 under the weight of bad debt inher­it­ed from acqui­si­tions like Coun­try­wide, has begun inform­ing cus­tomers in Wash­ing­ton and Ida­ho that it is chang­ing the deposit agree­ments for per­son­al accounts in both states, NPI has learned. The changes will take effect on Octo­ber 14th, […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

U.S. Department of Justice files suit to block AT&T/T‑Mobile merger

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

This news may come as as a nasty shock to Wall Street (which is used to sweet-talk­ing reg­u­la­tors into get­ting what it wants) but to us, it is a very pleas­ant and wel­come sur­prise: The Depart­ment of Jus­tice today filed a civ­il antitrust law­suit to block AT&T Inc.’s pro­posed acqui­si­tion of T‑Mobile USA Inc. The […]