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The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on the The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include CFED's release of its Assets & Opportunity Scorecard, financial education, jobs, asset limits, lower-income consumers, the mortgage mess, and rhetoric about poverty, inequality, and mobility.

CFED’s Assets & Opportunity Scorecard

Many locally-based papers ran pieces this week featuring the release of CFED’s Assets & Opportunity Scorecard. Take a look at our summary of it here. Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Ohio, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Louisiana, among others, all saw pieces that looked at state-level data on assets, earnings, homeownership, education, and the other categories in the report. The Chicago Tribune ran a particularly well done piece, focusing on Illinois families in asset poverty. Even the UK’s Daily Mail featured the Scorecard, quoting David Rothstein about the precariousness asset poverty causes for American families. Rothstein was also quoted closer to home in a piece about Cleveland.

Financial Education

The New York Times covers a financial literacy program for high school age students. One of the workshop teachers described it as a “safety net for her students, who might otherwise be ill equipped to navigate the financial pitfalls they could face as independent adults. ‘No one is teaching them how to do these things,’ she said. ‘They’re set up for failure.’”

Jobs

A minimum wage proposal in New York State would raise the minimum wage to $8.50. While this might give a small boost to low wage workers, it doesn’t help people currently out of a job. Bloomberg reports that jobless claims are down, but The Atlantic features a map of persistent unemployment and finds that pockets of the U.S. have consistently had higher average unemployment than the national average – and not just since the Great Recession.

Asset Limits

The debate over an asset test for the Pennsylvania SNAP program is still going on. On a recent visit to Philadelphia, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the proposed asset test "is not going to save the commonwealth a single dime,” and Mayor Nutter proclaimed, "This is one of the most mean-spirited, asinine proposals to come out of Harrisburg in decades.”  U.S. Rep. Bob Brady chimed in calling it "the dumbest thing I've ever heard of." The PA Department of Public Works has proposed a less strict asset test in response.

Lower-Income Consumers

Muncie, Delaware welcomed the formation of Bank On Muncie, an affiliation between financial institutions, non-profit and government partners aimed at helping currently unbanked Delawareans gain access to financial services. The Consumer Federation of America released a report about the disproportionate burden low- and moderate-income households face when it comes to car insurance. Meanwhile, New York State is considering a bill that would exempt check-cashing businesses from a law that prevents lenders from charging above 25% interest.

Mortgage Mess

Obama’s refinancing plan for mortgages drew a lot of national attention. Check out these articles in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the New York Times for more about what this looks like. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post ran a piece that looks at the foreclosure crisis in nearby Prince George’s County in Maryland, where interviewees tell their stories, putting a face on the trend of racially biased lending practices that have hurt homeowners of color.

Rhetoric about Poverty, Inequality, and Mobility

The Occupy Movement might have been a little quieter nowadays compared to the fall, but its presence is still felt, particularly in the rhetoric that we now regularly hear from politicians and the response it garners in the media. For example, Mitt Romney got himself into some trouble when he said he didn’t care about “the very poor” because of the safety net. (Ask Rachel Black how that’s working out.) The Daily Beast has a piece by Gary Rivlin pointing out the holes in Romney’s remarks and Jon Stewart got in on the action as well. This Boston Globe op-ed critiques the language Romney and other politicians use about being a “self-made man” by reframing the conversation around what true economic mobility entails.

Lastly, this would not be the Groundhog Day edition without a mention of everyone's favorite weatherman, Punxsutawney Phil (fuzzy picture here) who predicted that despite the unseasonably warm weather, we will have six more weeks of winter.