The measures include reducing overall the level and duration of unemployment benefits, tightening the rules of accepting job offers, at the risk of reduced or losing benefits, responsibility of job search, and means tested benefits. Social security systems frequently have unintended effects, such as “income traps” where it is not worth accepting a job low wage or short term job for a worker.
At the height of the mortgage crisis, those same community bankers partnered with regulators like me to survey the wreckage and to stabilize our communities as best we could. Together, we confronted and weathered that searing experience and learned many lessons along the way. I’m here today to share with you some of those lessons.