All these financial terms being tossed around in the news can be confusing to anyone — young or old — who doesn’t have a background in stock market jargon. Youth Radio’s Lauren Silverman didn’t get frustrated when even reading the paper became a chore, instead she got obsessed.
Listen to: Stock Market Obsessed
This week, experts from across the political world came together to talk about open government – the idea that the web can help information flow through agencies to the media and everyday citizens who want to participate and have a say in making policy.
Last year at this time, everyone at the annual Personal Democracy Forum had one thing in mind – the 2008 presidential election. But did we miss the bigger picture? Was all the attention focused on the race causing policymakers to overlook looming problems in the markets? Would pushing the government to share more information online have made a difference in how we’re coping with the current economic crisis?
Recent projects inside the administration are making a start at helping people understand the dimensions of the economic recovery. The new White House IT Dashboard allows you to follow the impact of investments being made by various government agencies like the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security.
But reports like this Capitol News Connection report about the large donations that finance executives have given to lawmakers highlight the closed-door status that special interests – and the finance industry in particular – continue to enjoy.
The public’s role in public media is also being leveraged in creative ways. Perhaps one of the best examples occurred last week when NPR asked their website visitors and Twitter followers to identify the lobbyists in the photo below, from a Senate hearing on health care.
The result? A post on NPR’s Dollar Politics blog and a clearer sense of who’s paying attention in Washington.
When we were setting out to create a site to cover the economy, it was difficult to figure out where to begin. There’s a lot of great material already out there, but how can we as public media tell a different story that allows readers, listeners, and viewers to figure out what’s really important and get a sense of how things are interconnected?
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It’s easy to say that young people don’t care about the economy – that they are too busy starting their own music act or sending racy text messages to care about foreclosures, the stock market or health care reform.
But the economic downturn is affecting teens and recent college graduates in a profound way. It’s harder for teenagers to get summer jobs, some are seeing their parents cope with job losses, and still others are turning the bad times around by exploring opportunities older generations may not have the flexibility to try out.
Judy Woodruff reports on college graduates in Richmond, Va., who are helping older residents refine their resumes and re-enter the job market.
And in Detroit, Woodruff met a 25-year-old who’s encouraging community development by creating loyalty cards for local businesses.
The White House has also noted this spirit of entrepreneurship by using Recovery.gov funds to create summer jobs for students and is asking the public to share their summer job stories online.
Jobless rates are still rising, with states like Michigan and California reporting ranks of the unemployed exceeding ten percent for the first time since World War II. So how could things actually be slowly improving?
Looking at the NPR unemployment map, which organizes the May numbers released today state-by-state, the picture doesn’t look good. The entire Midwest is colored dark brown, meaning an unemployment rate of over 10%. The only states with any neutral or positive signs were Nebraska and Vermont.
But those official numbers are only for May – including statistics through last week in June, Patchwork Nation’s hardship index “uses key indicators – unemployment, foreclosures, and gasoline prices – to measure short-term changes in economic stress. Simply put, the index’s scores this month show some improvement,” Dante Chinni, the project director writes in a blog post this week. “The average U.S. score fell some seven points – from about 25 in May to roughly 18 in June.”
Marketplace’s Tamara Keith looks at unemployment insurance rates as an indicator of improvement, but warns that the good numbers we’re seeing this week really only mean things are getting “less bad.”