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Kat Aaron

Kat Aaron is a project editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

Recent Articles

Between Rock Bottom and a Hard Place

As the recovery falters, state and federal governments are reducing benefits for the unemployed.

Kat AaronJun 06, 2011
(Flickr/aflcio)

Last week, the housing market took another dive. Unemployment remained at about 9 percent, where it's hovered since January, and the economy added just 54,000 jobs -- far fewer than expected. The private sector added 83,000 new jobs, but continued government layoffs pushed the net number down.

99 Weeks of Problems

There are as many as 1.4 million Americans who have been unemployed so long they've exhausted their benefits, and they're angry. So why aren't they organizing?

Kat AaronMar 28, 2011
A protester arrested in Manhattan in 2010. (AP Photos/Mark Lennihan)

Ninety-nine weeks is a long time. Ninety-nine weeks ago, it was early April 2009. President Barack Obama was wrapping up his first 100 days, and he saw "glimmers of hope across the economy." The official end of the Great Recession, in June 2009, was just around the corner.

Tell that to Wayne Drescher. Ninety-nine weeks ago, the 59-year-old was three months out of a job and collecting unemployment checks. Now, more than two years removed from his layoff -- "a Monday," he says, "the day my world turned upside down" -- he's joined the ranks of the so-called 99ers: people who have exhausted all 99 weeks of available unemployment assistance.

A Crisis by the Numbers

Will a a new national database give regulators the data they need to address the ongoing foreclosure crisis?

Kat AaronOct 07, 2010
(Flickr/Sean Dreilinger)

With more than 1 million total foreclosures predicted this year, the government is finally taking steps toward resolving a vexing dilemma: It has very few details about this very big problem.

Since the subprime mortgage market collapse in 2007, regulators, Congress, and consumer advocates have relied on what one housing expert describes as "a lack of even marginally accurate or complete data" on the level and nature of foreclosure activity. Incredibly, almost three years into the collapse, there is no nationwide, government- collected data on foreclosures.

An Anti-Redlining Law Gets a Makeover

New rules could transform the predatory-lending debate from arguments over anecdotes to conclusions based on hard evidence.

Kat AaronJul 12, 2010

When Congress began tackling financial reform, the overhaul quickly became labeled as "historic" and "sweeping," with attention deservedly focused on regulating derivatives, winding down large financial institutions, and creating the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to regulate mortgages and other financial products. But lost in the torrent of news coverage was a significant move to change the way key information on borrowers and mortgage loans is collected and made public. Those changes, to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) represent a benchmark in the long fight against lending discrimination. They could become an invaluable tool for consumer activists, regulators, and researchers trying to identify egregious lenders and their loans.