latino family only has 6 cents. we still have a long ways to go, and so that s why we re going to capitol hill to really place a spotlight on the importance of public policy and closing this gap. well, doctor, one of the policies that we ve had to help bring minorities into that mainstream economy has been policies of affirmative action, which has sort of come increasingly under assault. we just saw a decision from the supreme court last week allowing a state constitutional amendment banning affirmative action from universities, but how should we view it is policy of affirmative action and how should we view the goals of affirmative action? it seems to me that it s effective for promoting diverse if i in the workplace, but not for getting to the root of that disparity, of that wealth gap between african-americans and whites in particular. actually, i believe it has
years. if we average it out, economic growth has been only 1.7% for 13 years running now. the lowest rate of growth since probably the civil war. and so therefore, we have a huge problem, we need to ask how we got here and why the mainstream economy is failing. my book addresses that. i say it started a long time ago but it got exacerbated by the reagan deficits which weren t intended but they were massive. we tripled the national debt in the 1980s, then greenspan came along in the 90s and tried ameliorate the problem, massive expansion of the fed s balance sheet that created a boom in the stock market and the bust of dot com. we had that in 2000 to 01. greenspan panicked, pushed the interest rate down to 1%, which really really kind of lunatic, caused the housing bubble, that collapsed millions of families were hurt by that. bernanke then tried to double
what you hear from the white house and congress, tax millionaires in some fashion or another, but don t hear a coherent plan for how to deal with the fact that corporations are sitting on profits and that nothing or very little is getting into the mainstream economy and certainly not into employment. the jobs bill won t move quickly enough to solve the anger of the people in the streets. not only that, andrea, but it only deals with next year s problem or the year after that, which is necessary. we do have a severe demand problem. we re seeing a manifestation of a decades worth of trends where good paying manufacturing jobs have been shrinking and the benefit from the innovation of apple and steve jobs brought to us have accrued to a small amount of people. steve jobs, his genius was in the imagination. sure. and thinking of what people would want and creating that demand. nobody questions that steve jobs did wonderful for consumers in this country and around the world.
jim clancy, cnn, atlanta. slavery isn t something just limited to the underworld either. it s present in the mainstream economy, as well, in sectors like food processing, cleaning, even health care. in companies that turn a blind eye to it are risking their reputations. as george kell of the global contact office explains. clearly, the brand damaging issue is the more sensitive one. the brand damage is done so easily. and the more precious the brand, the more sensitive you are. and you just don t want to be associated with human trafficking. so i think it s the brand sensitivity, which is the big driver really. well, since we launched the cnn freedom project on monday, many of you have been writing in asking us how you can get involved. at cnn.com/freedom, we have all of the information to help you make a stand. that s the website address again
know is over technically but a lot of people still feel it. this has been going on now for almost thee years. people have been putting money aside, make sure they get through, hold on to their money and so forth. you might call this pent up demand. people have put off purchases for different types of things. they now feel more freedom to get out and pend. you said recession is over. it is? technically it ended in 2009. we ve still got over 15 million unemployed people. the otr people have had pay cuts. we ve so the of got two economies right now. we ve got the mainstream economy is bouncing back and we re seeing more and more signs of that. and we ve got a lot of people, though, who are still disenfranchised. and that s a huge group of people and that is going to be the big question going into 2011 and 2012 is how quickly do those people rejoin the mainstream economy? i deviated somewhat because i wanted to get into the economy. tiffanys, sales are up.