Extended shoe giveaway; more on black women's wealth

Today's super busy at the 9-5 so no full post, just a round-up.

First, I've decided to extend the deadline to get your questions in for the women's shoe giveaway until March 30 instead of March 15 because I've gotten so many great questions that I haven't had time to answer them all. So ladies, you've got the rest of the month to ask me a question here, tweet me or ask me on formspring.

I'm giving away a pair of the shoes pictured below from ShoesGotSole for the best personal finance question from a woman this month (March is Women's History Month). The shoes are being provided by CSN Stores, which also sells kids bedding, modern furniture and other things, so be sure to check them out in thanks for hooking up the giveaway.

Next week, I'm going to go hard some more on this data about black women and wealth. Earlier this week I posted the results of research that found single black women's median wealth was lower than that of married couples and that of single black, white and Hispanic men or women.

This morning I saw a report of new Federal Reserve data showing that net worth nationally rose slightly for the third straight quarter. That's good news during a deep recession but it begs the question of whether black women's abysmal net worth is following the trend. I'll get into that next week.

As well, the inevitable, which I hoped wouldn't happen did: people are using the black men-black women's net worth data to fuel more played-out "gender wars" conversations. Someone texted me last night about a conversation in which the data came up and some men were calling black women "greedy" and "too ambitious". So I'm going to do some thinking and a few interviews and dig into why the data is definitely NOT fuel for an "us vs. them" conversation.

Have a great weekend and check back in next week.

Federal Reserve tries talking to consumers

Sadly, most people don't know anything about what the Federal Reserve does, even though it plays a central role in our economy and has been controversial for its role in the recession and federal banking bailouts.

I won't bore you with all that stuff here but one valid criticism of the Fed is that for all it's regulatory power over the financial sector, consumers don't understand what it does and that perhaps it should do more to educate them.

Seems like at least one Fed branch is trying to change that. This morning I got an email from the Cleveland Fed about a new online publication called "Forefront". Written by three Fed staff economists, the headline on the first issue is "Making Financial Markets Safer for Consumers". The content is still policy-heavy but for the Fed, churning out articles that discuss how it might better regulate financial services specifically to the benefit of consumers is step in the right direction.

My personal favorite: this paragraph that uses exploding toasters as an analogy for the kinds of mortgages some consumers were duped into signing up for in the housing meltdown:

The exploding toaster holds a special place in consumer protection lore. It is obviously an unsafe product: If they knew about the danger, consumers would not buy the toaster and regulators would pull it off store shelves...Some believe that although consumers wouldn't knowingly buy an exploding toaster, in the past few years millions of them took out an "exploding mortgage."

Granted, this is a simplified analogy. But it underlines the observation that ordinary consumer goods seem a lot safer than some financial products. How do consumer goods markets—and their regulators—differ from consumer finance markets?

I emailed the Cleveland Fed public affairs staffer who sent the initial email to me (and other media, I assume) to ask if Forefront was aimed at consumers, media or economists but as of yet haven't gotten an answer. But you can click the link above to have a look for yourself.

Is Bernanke right about the economy turning around in 2009?

The chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank says he actually believes the recession could turn around this year. He's also pissed off about the more than $100 million in bonuses that bailed out insurer AIG is paying its top executives.

Is he too optimistic? Do you believe the economy will turn around in 2009? And is Bernanke, who has a Wall Street background, being disingenuous in his anger over the executive bonuses?