Yellen: Opening Remarks

A bit of lip-service for the struggling masses. Move along, there's nothing to see here.

awwwww....eu go north for how long?

what are yellen said?

If Janet Yellen wants to reduce the gap between Rich and Poor, just tell your Federal Reserve to stop PRINTING MONEY!

which mean euro is replacement for usd.
mm , maybe not strong enough euro plus cny will do the job. lol

She said that the Fed acknowledges an income gap between the rich and poor. The Fed will pretend to care, but secretly they will keep becoming richer and widening the gap.

Yep, that just about sums it up.

PA you're a naughty boy.

lol...yes I am

Wealth is unlimited, someone getting richer does not directly cause someone else to be poorer. Quite often, in developed nations, the poor are poor because that is what they have settled for.

Bill Gates is the richest with 70 billion, how has his accumulation of wealth prevented you from achieving your financial goals? What has he taken from you that you are otherwise entitled to?

Aaronfb: "Quite often, in developed nations, the poor are poor because that is what they have settled for." Do you have any solid research to back up this bullshit comment?

I think you should redirect your question to someone else. I'm neither poor nor has anyone stopped me from attaining my success.

Didn't you feel it's weird when the unemployment decreased?

Give me an example of poor in general living in a developed nation that and there is nothing, zip, zero, nada, that they can do to improve their financial state.

Compared to China,the U.S. economy is moving at the speed of a glacier.

2078 .51 sp500 sell goo 2044 points lol

some will trade that gap, ex: cheap things that looks fabulous.

Aaronfib is absolutely right, its not only in developed nations but all over the world. Most of the poor got a mentality that the rich should take charge of the position they're in. Look what's going on in Africa, in some countries they sit on a wealth of resources but are unable to explore it. Why? They're waiting for someone else to come and do it for them.

The concentration of power, control and wealth in the hands of a few is, unarguably, a relatively recent problem. It is a 'problem' and not just an observation because (IMHO) an honest, impartial analysis will show this to be a result of the 'free' market approach to economics since prior to the Great Depression referenced by Yellen, allowing those of means to continue to accumulate riches, cement in their positions and, over just a few generations, progressively lock out opportunities (economic included) to progressively more and more people. Although this is now a world-wide (though not necessarily totally pervasive) phenomenon, it is not self-evident (ie. that it did not have to be this way) and, thus, was not and is not unalterable.

At any one time we are led and even driven by our individual and collective visions and perspectives - sometimes these are in the form of well developed (but often somewhat flawed) theories. It is now past time when America, the 'West' and humanity in general need to reassess and modify political, economic and cultural artifacts that have become reified and obstructive to the common good.

Even though I agree that the Fed's conference will probably not provide all the answers or magically create the Will among some of the most privileged to take serious action, it is the first time I have witnessed an inclination among the powerful few to pay serious attention to deeply ingrained, structural features that are obsolete or, at least in their current form, past their use-by date.

What are we arguing here? Yellen just know how to complain abt poor and rich. Does she knows how to fix it? What kind of solution will she give? Look at her childish questions. She'd better do her homework rather than ask somebody else to do it.

"We know that families are the locus of both opportunities and barriers to economic mobility. There are important research questions to be tackled here. What individual or family characteristics may predict who will achieve upward mobility? How much does someone's initial circumstances in life influence how far that person can get or how hard he or she needs to work to get there? Researchers and policymakers need a better understanding of how much mobility individuals may experience over the course of their lives and at what age people's outcomes may become more difficult to change. "

While I feel Yellen has not formulated the problem fully or clearly enough, she has attempted to identify three main areas in which further research is needed: families, communities and 'the economy'.

She is but one person, and the scope and depth of the problem is such that it requires collective intelligence and action. The conference is a much needed start, and the hope is that it will spur others to question, re-think their ways and act accordingly.

Personally, I think that we already know quite a lot about how to address the various issues involved, but such understandings have yet to permeate the greater public consciousness (and conscience). Many issues are debatable and, indeed, are debated, but have yet to make serious inroads into our various wider cultural and politico-economic contexts. This is where any proposed 'answers' need to be more than simply 'matters of opinion', often based on, and fueled by, nothing more than small-minded dogma and bigotry. Yellen is quite right in calling for more research, though I suspect that, in some respects, we have not even grasped what questions to ask. For this reason, I hope the 'research' is not only scientific, but also philosophical.

In any case, it is heartening to see that such matters are finally being acknowledged and may be beginning to penetrate into the public domain, instead of just being the preserve of academics and fringe splinter elements - sometimes regarded as "crazies", "nutters" or "subversives".

There is always the need of further researches. There already exist many researches about families, communities, economy and much more.

I don't have any answer just some opinion.

US, Japan, China, EZ, Korea, Aus, NZ and other developed nations always have poor ppl who cannot afford their daily needs and must be supported. What's the cause of it? It's true that the answer is income gap.

Poor ppl in developed nations are not poor in absolute term. It's easy to blame them for not having the skills needed to survive in an economy. They cannot generate income needed to cover their expenses.

The rich always wants more, therefore they drive the price of everything up, and it's called inflation. Well, that's not bad, at least there are lots of rich ppl among the poor.

Then the poor don't have enough money for the price of goods. There exists some threshold to pay for the price. Ppl have to try to overcome this threshold.

The reason Yellen and others are concerned is because it is precisely in the so-called "developed" nations that the problem of the increasing gap between rich and poor is most noticeable and entrenched. There are relatively fewer and fewer rich people and the oft-called "middle-class" is now becoming the 'struggling' class, who also need support just to survive - let alone have a good life.

It is about time it was realised that the term "developed" in connection with countries and economies does not denote that they have made it to some pinnacle of achievement, beyond which no further advancement is neither possible nor necessary.

If the process of moving forward in all areas of our lives is viewed more in evolutionary terms, we would always be on the lookout for ways to both strengthen, retain and protect the good and great things we have as well as modify or discard others that may have fallen short.