John Ydstie
John Ydstie has covered the economy, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve at NPR for nearly three decades. Over the years, NPR has also employed Ydstie's reporting skills to cover major stories like the aftermath of Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. He was a lead reporter in NPR's coverage of the global financial crisis and the Great Recession, as well as the network's coverage of President Trump's economic policies. Ydstie has also been a guest host on the NPR news programs Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. Ydstie stepped back from full-time reporting in late 2018, but plans to continue to contribute to NPR through part-time assignments and work on special projects.
During 1991 and 1992, Ydstie was NPR's bureau chief in London. He traveled throughout Europe covering, among other things, the breakup of the Soviet Union and attempts to move Europe toward closer political and economic union. He accompanied U.S. businessmen exploring investment opportunities in Russia as the Soviet Union was crumbling. He was on the scene in The Netherlands when European leaders approved the Maastricht Treaty, which created the European Union.
In August 1990, Ydstie was one of the first reporters on the scene after Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. He accompanied U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia as a member of the Pentagon press pool sent to cover the Iraqi invasion for U.S. media outlets.
Ydstie has been with NPR since 1979. For two years, he was an associate producer responsible for Midwest coverage. In 1982, he became senior editor on NPR's Washington Desk, overseeing coverage of the federal government, American politics, and economics. In 1984, Ydstie joined Morning Edition as the show's senior editor, and later was promoted to the position of executive producer. In 1988, he became NPR's economics correspondent.
During his tenure with NPR, Ydstie has won numerous awards. He was a member of the NPR team that received the George Foster Peabody Award for its coverage of Sept. 11. Ydstie's reporting from Saudi Arabia helped NPR win the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 1991 for coverage of the Gulf War. In 2016, Ydstie received a Gerald Loeb Award for financial reporting for his contributions to an NPR series on financial planning.
Prior to joining NPR, Ydstie was a reporter and producer at Minnesota Public Radio. Ydstie is a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he is now on the Board of Regents. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, summa cum laude, with a major in English literature and a minor in speech communications. Ydstie was born in Minneapolis and grew up in rural North Dakota.
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Did the harsh winter hold down job creation last month? Or did employers brush away the snow and prepare for spring with a new round of hiring? The unemployment report is out on Friday.
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The Federal Reserve has released transcripts from more than a dozen meetings that took place in 2008, as Fed officials and other regulators struggled to get on top of an unfolding crisis.
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Janet Yellen made her first appearance before Congress as chair of the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. Her remarks, released prior to her testimony, stressed that there would be a lot of continuity with past policies, because she had helped develop and implement them.
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The government's latest unemployment report showed the economy still struggling to bounce back from a weak report in December. Employers in January added 113,000 to payrolls, far less than expected. The unemployment rate did notch down to 6.6 percent.
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The Labor Department releases the January jobs report Friday morning. December was a big disappointment. Analysts are puzzling over why an economy that's growing at a better than 3 percent clip can't produce more jobs.
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The Congressional Budget Office said this year's deficit is likely to be about a third the size it was in 2009, when the Great Recession bottomed out. A better economy is the main reason for the improving deficit, but moderating health care costs help.
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A new front has opened in the political battle over the Affordable Care Act, with Tuesday's release of the Congressional Budget Office's annual budget and economic outlook. The economists updated an earlier estimate about how many workers would leave the workforce because they no longer needed a job to have health care coverage — revising upward from 800,000 people to over 2 million people. Republicans pounced on the higher number, and President Obama now finds himself playing defense.
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The world of central banking is largely a man's world. But Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve's new leader, has been undeterred by such barriers since she was in high school in Brooklyn. Now global financial markets will be watching her every move. -
Federal Reserve policymakers are wrapping up a two-day meeting as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke prepares to step down later this week. Investors expect the Fed to stick with its plan to "taper" bond purchases and keep short-term interest rates where they are.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will preside over his last Fed policy-making meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. During his two terms as chairman, he faced a global financial crisis that threatened to become financial Armageddon, followed by a deep recession. -
Alcoa and a subsidiary of the the U.S. aluminum giant, will pay $384 million to the U.S. government for engaging in corrupt practices. The payment is part of a settlement in a bribery case involving the royal family of Bahrain.
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As 2013 wraps up, NPR is looking at the numbers that tell this year's story. When it comes to the economy, $85 billion is a good candidate. That's the amount the Federal Reserve has been pumping into the financial system each month trying to stimulate growth and bring down unemployment. On Tuesday, Fed policymakers begin a two-day meeting at which they'll decide whether to dial back that stimulus.
