Janet Yellen Cites 3 Unemployed Examples But.....

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Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen mentioned the struggle of three Americans to find work in a speech Monday about the dangers of high unemployment. Yet what Yellen left out is that two of them had criminal records, according to a Bloomberg article.

The pair told Bloomberg they believe their criminal records hurt their ability to find new work after the recession struck. One of the workers, Dorine Poole, said she was convicted of a felony 20 years ago but that her record did not stop her from holding a job for some 15 years after her probation ended.

The second worker, who has a background in construction, was convicted of heroin possession last year and is on parole, the article said. The worker claimed that the drug found in his car belonged to a friend.

A Fed spokeswoman told Bloomberg that Yellen knew about the criminal records of the two workers and had personally spoken to both of them in preparation for her speech.

By Fed standards, Yellen speech was atypical. Rarely does a Fed chairman use personal examples or life stories of ordinary Americans to make a point. Such a tactic was popularized by President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, and astute politicians of both parties have used that approach ever since.

Yellen, for her part, has repeatedly expressed grave concern about the plight of the unemployed. She said in her speech that the Fed is prepared to keep interest rates low for quite some time in an effort to stoke economic growth and drive the unemployment rate down.

“In some ways, the job market is tougher now than in any recession,” she said. “The numbers of people who have been trying to find work for more than six months or more than a year are much higher today than they ever were since records began decades ago.”

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