アメリカ連邦準備制度理事会（FRB）ジャネット・イエレン議長は9月21日、記者会見でアメリカ大統領選の共和党候補ドナルド・トランプ氏からの非難に、品位をもって退けた。
トランプ氏は、景気浮揚効果を狙って低金利を続けるイエレン議長を「オバマ大統領の功績を高めるために、利率を低いままにしている」と非難している。トランプ氏は、オバマ大統領が指名したイエレン議長に「恥を知れ」と発言するほど、過激な批判を強めている。
主要金利を引き上げないとするFRBの見解を表明した後、イエレン議長は記者に対し次のように話し、中央銀行の独立性を断固として守った。
「金融政策を短期指向の政治圧力から切り離すため、議会は独立的な機関としてFRBを設立しました。党利党略のからむ政治は、中央銀行のあるべき姿に関する私たちの決定に何ら影響を与えません」
「会合では政治に関する議論はしません。金融政策の決定に際し、政治情勢を考慮に入れることはありません」
イエレン議長はトランプ氏の名を一度も口にすることなく、極めて巧みに反論した。名前を出せば、彼女はトランプ氏が仕掛けた罠にはまり、党略的な議論が新たに巻き起こったことだろう。
イエレン議長は慎重な言動で、輸入品に対する課税強化が及ぼす経済的な影響に関する質問に対しても言質を与えなかった。オバマ大統領が行う政策に波風を立てないようにする意図は明白だった。トランプ氏は、アメリカの製造業を保護し、不公平な貿易慣行に報復するために関税をかけて貿易を制限すると公約している。
FRBは政治に関与しないことをイエレン議長が強調したが、11月8日の大統領選前には利上げをしないだろうという多くのアナリストの見方に対しても、同じように沈黙を守ろうとしている。
「11月に行われるFRBの会合で、指標金利を引き上げる可能性は残されている」と、イエレン議長は強調した。この会合は、大統領選の1週間前に開催される。
ハフポストUS版より翻訳・加筆しました。
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Photography in the Recession
Sharon Lockhart(01 of39)
Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California. \"I\'ve been working in that region for several years,\" Lockhart said. \"I know the economic issues that the people there are facing and I\'ve been thinking about addressing the ranching industry for a while. Many of the pressures of development and globalization have effected life in California\'s Central Valley over the last few years. Land values during the real estate bubble forced ranchers to divide up and sell their land. As the bubble burst, the money that had flowed into the area disappeared and many got caught in the squeeze. In addition, cheap beef from Brazil and other developing countries has driven down the price on American cattle. Small businesses like this cattle auction have been there since the 40s and have struggled to face these pressures. The combination of historical ties to the depression of the 30s and the struggles of our current recession seemed prescient to me.\"
Alec Soth(02 of39)
Maria, Owatonna, Minnesota, 2011. Soth, who attempted to create a one-to-one analysis of Lange\'s migrant images, found it difficult to arrive at the same result. \"One thing that became very clear in the pictures, on the technical front was, there\'s something about how [Lange\'s] picture works between eye contact and lack of eye contact -- so much of her photograph is the two children not looking at the lens and then the mother looking off,\" he said. \"A photograph so much is this question of surfaces on which the audience projects info on to it. What we project onto it is, the children aren\'t looking, she\'s looking off, it\'s almost like she\'s thinking about their future. I tried to include their children or not to different degrees, and tried to not do it in exactly the same way and see if i could get at something. In the end what makes a great photo is indescribable.\"
Alec Soth(03 of39)
Eueth, Owatonna, Minn. \"The original migrant mom image has this sort of burlapy background and the clothing has a warm quality,\" Soth said. \"Now it\'s clothes from Target and Walmart and there are logos on all the clothes. It\'s almost bizarre.\"
Walead Beshty(04 of39)
Transparency (Positive)/Transparency (Negative). Beshty, a Los Angeles-based photographer, traveled to the richest and poorest communities in America -- Fisher Island, Fla., and Allen, SD. Fisher Island, which is only accessible by ferry, has the nation\'s highest per capita income. Allen has the same population as Fisher Island, but with the lowest median annual income in the nation -- less than $8,000. Beshty sent the exposed film of his photos unprotected through an airport X-ray machine, creating an abstract representation that the catalogue calls an \"unbiased witness to the sites he visited.\"
Larry Clark(05 of39)
Adam, Marfa, Texas, 2011.Clark, who splits his time as a film director, photographer, writer and producer, is best-known for his 1995 film \"Kids,\" and often focuses on teenage drug use. For this project, he traveled to Marfa, Texas, to photograph two skateboarders, Adam and Eric, who appear stoned throughout.
Larry Clark(06 of39)
Moses, Marfa, Texas (2011). The catalog authors call Moses \"the very picture of innocence,\" going on to ask: \"We wonder what the trajectory of his life will be. If this is the new generation, what is in store for their -- and our -- future?\"
Katy Grannan(07 of39)
Untitled, Bakersfield, Calif.Grannan, who predominantly takes portraits, traveled along California\'s Highway 99, photographing areas that Dorothea Lange visited 75 years ago, cities like Modesto and Bakersfield that are less on the radar. Here, the father-daughter pose has a feel similar to Dorothea Lange\'s \"Migrant Mother.\"
Katy Grannan(08 of39)
Kern River, Rosedale Highway, Bakersfield, Calif. Along with her portraits, Grannan took a series of black-and-white images along Highway 99 that bear a strong resemblance to some of the FSA photos. Here, we see a dry riverbed near a highway overpass, \"filled with water for the first time in years,\" the catalog notes, where locals enjoy a dip to escape the intense heat.
Katy Grannan(09 of39)
Untitled, Fresno, Calif. Grannan captures the beauty and despair of a homeless woman in Fresno.
William E. Jones(10 of39)
Jones traveled to Massillon, Ohio, and Canton, Ohio, which, according to the catalog, \"is an industrial and agricultural hub, one of America\'s fastest-dying cities.\" \"On several occasions during this recent trip, people tried to sell me real estate, including a house for $20,000 and a giant factory building (also a historical landmark) for $300,000,\" Jones said. \"Many in the area now see art as the potential salvation of a stagnant real estate market, and artists, who have taken over a number of abandoned buildings, as respectable residents of the community.\"
William E. Jones(11 of39)
For the industrial economy of the American Midwest, \"the current recession is merely the latest in a long series of economic setbacks,\" Jones said. \"It is as though whole regions of America have simply been left to die. I think this neglect is one of the most urgent social and political problems of the U. S., and it doesn\'t seem to be going away any time soon.\"
Roe Ethridge(12 of39)
SE 1st Street, Belle Glade, FL, 2011.Ethridge photographed Belle Glade, where is parents are from. According to the catalog, it produces about half of America\'s annual crop of this sweet stalk. \"The town slogan announces that \"Her Soil Is Her Fortune,\" yet this currency has clearly dwindled in value,\" the authors write. In his photos, Ethridge shows a veneer of beauty mixed with reality.
Roe Ethridge(13 of39)
Durango in a canal, Belle Glade, Fla. Ethridge juxtaposes the more idyllic images with ones like this, of a car sinking into a canal.
Cathy Opie(14 of39)
Toan (Water Guy). Opie took a cue from Stryker\'s instruction \"Looking down my street\" and photographed local shopkeepers in her neighborhood of South Los Angeles. She focused on shopkeepers who are persevering in today\'s economy.
Cathy Opie(15 of39)
Tavir (Gas Station).
Cathy Opie(16 of39)
Claudia (Hairdresser).
Martha Rosler(17 of39)
5Leaves, Grumpy\'s, Lokal. Rosler, well known for her series of photomontages, Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful,\" focused on making composites of her neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn (she noted her issues with the \"parachuting photojournalist, showing up and trucking out\"). \"I think that it\'s very difficult in a small presentation to convey the complexity of an urban situation,\" she said. \"I did my best to suggest both with the images and accompanying text that there is always a level of complexity in urban situations that you cant quite capture with your photograph.\"
Collier Schorr(18 of39)
AMERICANS #1.Schorr created three collages that superimpose her photos of young cowboys with excerpts from the Danish photographer Jacob Holdt\'s 1977 book \"American Pictures.\" The catalog authors explain: \"An adolescent, acne-scarred cowboy attempts an iconic cowboy pose, but through Schorr\'s sensitive approach and surgical cropping, he comes across as an apprehensive and vulnerable youth. Four hopeless gazes peer out from behind him -- the faces of elderly, homeless African American men.\"
Stephen Shore(19 of39)
East Village, NYC, July 2011.Shore, the second living photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stayed in his hometown of New York to document the cultural holdouts in the gentrifying Lower East Side and East Village neighborhoods. \"It was an area that in my lifetime I saw an amazing transition that\'s still taking place, from an area that was drug-ridden and really very bad, to an area that then became more ethnic, and finally an area that is seeing a resurgence of a lot of young people living here,\" he said. Shore noted that while sometimes gentrification completely changes the look of a neighborhood, that\'s not what happened here, with elements of the neighborhoods\' core culture still holding strong. Image courtesy 303 Gallery, New York
Stephen Shore(20 of39)
Lower East Side, NYC, July 2011. Shore made a conscious choice not to focus on people. \"I\'m interested in how a culture expresses itself in its artifacts, its signage,\" he said. Image courtesy 303 Gallery, New York
Stephen Shore(21 of39)
East Village, NYC, July 2011. \"What struck me was her body and the tattoo of wings on her,\" Shore said. Image courtesy 303 Gallery, New York
Hank Willis Thomas(22 of39)
This photo series is composed of 72 contiguous 6 x 9 inch inkjet prints.Willis Thomas visited his grandmother\'s old neighborhood in North Philadelphia. According to the catalog, \"In the 1970s, [the neighborhood] started to decline. In 2000, bullets broke the artist\'s grandmother\'s bedroom windows, and in 2008, after someone was killed outside her front door, she moved away.\" Willis Thomas noted: \"I saw how earnestly the [FSA] photographers were trying to document the places and the people, and I wanted to make an attempt at that myself, so I went to a place that I knew well.\"
Hank Willis Thomas(23 of39)
\"The neighborhoods on the verge of a change,\" Willis Thomas said. \"A lot of the middle class people who were able to move out of that neighborhood did. People living there now are renters, so they don\'t have as much of a connection to place.\" \r\n
But according to Hoffmann, the city is also going from floundering to flourishing: \"Through a scheme that the city is running, people are able to buy these houses, refurbish them, and the whole area is revitalized -- but not through the influx of commercial enterprises, or people who are moving out of more expensive neighborhoods. Through some sort of government intervention into a particular neighborhood.\" Thomas added: \"It seems like the area is on the verge of flourishing, but it\'s not quite there yet. It\'s good for some people -- who can afford to stay, or buy. Those who were already under-resourced suffer from that type of change.\"
But according to Hoffmann, the city is also going from floundering to flourishing: \"Through a scheme that the city is running, people are able to buy these houses, refurbish them, and the whole area is revitalized -- but not through the influx of commercial enterprises, or people who are moving out of more expensive neighborhoods. Through some sort of government intervention into a particular neighborhood.\" Thomas added: \"It seems like the area is on the verge of flourishing, but it\'s not quite there yet. It\'s good for some people -- who can afford to stay, or buy. Those who were already under-resourced suffer from that type of change.\"
Walker Evans(24 of39)
>loyd Burroughs, cotton sharecropper. Hale County, Ala., 1935 or 1936.
Gordon Parks(25 of39)
New York, N.Y. Harlem newsboy, 1943.
Marion Post Wolcott(26 of39)
Why open the door, coal miner\'s child uses \"cat hole.\" Bertha Hill, W.Va., 1938.
Dorothea Lange(27 of39)
Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, Calif., 1936.
Gordon Parks(28 of39)
Washington, D.C., Government charwoman, 1942.
Carl Mydans(29 of39)
Manville, N.J., showing series of identical houses, 1936.
Walker Evans(30 of39)
Houses. Atlanta. Georgia, 1936.
Russell Lee(31 of39)
The hands of Mrs. Andrew Ostermeyer, wife of a homesteader, Woodbury, Iowa, 1936.
John Vachon(32 of39)
Under the elevated railway, Chicago, Ill., 1940.
Walker Evans(33 of39)
General store interior. Moundville, Ala., 1936.
Dorothea Lange(34 of39)
Family walking on highway, five children. Started from Idabel, Okla. Bound for Krebs, Oklahoma, 1938.
Esther Bubley(35 of39)
Pittsburgh, Pa. Woman cleaner at the Greyhound garage, 1943.
Jack Delano(36 of39)
In the cafe at a truck drivers\' service station on U.S. 1 (New York Avenue), Washington, D.C., 1940.
Esther Bubley(37 of39)
Glen Echo, Md.. Sunbathers on the sand beach at the swimming pool in the Glen Echo amusement park, 1943.
Carl Mydans(38 of39)
Getting the ground ready for spring planting, North Carolina, 1936.
Jack Delano(39 of39)
Convicts and guard, Oglethorpe County, Ga., 1941.
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