On Our Radar

The New York Times, August 12, 2022, Climate and Tax Bill Rewrites Embattled Black Farmer Relief Program A $4 billion program to help Black and other “socially disadvantaged” farmers that never got off the ground last year amid legal objections will be replaced with a plan to make relief funds available to farmers who have […]

News-Medical.net, August 11, 2022, Health inequalities amongst ethnic minorities with diabetes have worsened during the pandemic, study shows Existing health disparities amongst ethnic minorities with diabetes have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study published in the journal Diabetes Care has reported. Academics from the University of Leicester are urging care services to address

The New York Times, August 8, 2022, In an Unequal Economy, the Poor Face Inflation Now and Job Loss Later Higher-income households built up savings and wealth during the early stages of the pandemic as they stayed at home and their stocks, houses and other assets rose in value. Between those stockpiles and solid wage

The Atlantic, August 10, 2022, How California Exported Its Worst Problem to Texas At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the shift to remote work was supposed to ease the long-festering housing crisis in “superstar” metros such as Los Angeles and New York. Prices would fall as workers once tethered to offices in Century City

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 8, 2022, A federal complaint accuses Milwaukee of creating ‘containment zones’ where low-income people are concentrated In the complaint filed under seal in February, and unsealed in recent days, property owners James Dieter and Karen Schwenke argue the city has created “containment zones” on the near west side and other areas of the

Politico, August 10, 2022, ‘People will die waiting’: America’s system for the disabled is nearing collapse Private agencies that provide services for the intellectually and developmentally disabled have long warned that, without fresh state and federal funding, they would be unable to provide housing and staff support to the growing number of Americans who need

CBS News, July 28, 2022, U.S. Bank opened fake accounts for unsuspecting customers Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank, the country’s fifth-largest bank with over $559 billion in assets, accessed unsuspecting customers’ credit reports and opened checking and savings accounts, credit cards and lines of credit without customers’ authorization in order to boost sales, the CFPB found in

The New York Times, July 28, 2022, West Virginia Punishes Banks That It Says Don’t Support Coal West Virginia on Thursday morning announced that five major financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, would be barred from doing business with the state because they have stopped supporting the coal industry. The announcement, made by West

The New York Times, June 30, 2022, Where an Army Paycheck Is an Easy Target For soldiers sometimes still in their teens, the dozens of financial services operators that surround Fort Campbell and other military outposts are a gantlet to run every time they step off government property. The results are alarming: The post’s own

The Washington Post, June 13, 2022, Why are my patients still isolating in their homes? Gun violence. As a pediatrician in Philadelphia, I hear this sentiment every day. More families than I can count live their entire lives inside homes to avoid gun violence. Many have lost loved ones; others are petrified they will. Children

NPR, June 14, 2022, Why The Racial Wealth Gap Is So Hard To Close However, starting in the 1980s, the racial wealth gap stopped closing and began widening. In the economists’ dream simulation, convergence would have continued. One important reason for this reversal is Black Americans stopped making progress in catching up to the incomes

Bloomberg, June 8, 2022, Racial Disparity Crisis More than half a century after the US Civil Rights Act barred racial discrimination in the job market, new analysis shows that wealth disparities between Blacks and Whites has been getting worse, not better. On the eve of the pandemic, Black Americans had one-sixth the wealth of White

The Washington Post, May 23, 2022, Opinion: Think you’re the one to beat the crypto crash? Think again. When TerraUSD, a stablecoin — that is, a cryptocurrency that is supposed to be pegged to the dollar or another asset — lost almost all its value this month, it happened so fast that many investors lost

American Banker, May 31, 2022, Brown calls on Wells Fargo to end discriminatory practices ‘once and for all’ In a letter to President and CEO Charlie Scharf, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio called on the executive to “once and for all address Wells Fargo’s governance, risk management, and hiring practices — weaknesses that have plagued