Agencies Issue Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Regarding Alternatives to the Use of Credit Ratings in the Regulatory Capital Guidelines, August 10, 2010 “The federal banking agencies (agencies) today have agreed to publish an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (advance notice) regarding alternatives to the use of credit ratings in their risk-based capital rules (capital… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2010
National Security Letter Recipient Can Speak Out For First Time Since FBI Demanded Customer Records From Him
Follow up to previous postings on National Security Letters, this news release: “The FBI has partially lifted a gag it imposed on American Civil Liberties Union client Nicholas Merrill in 2004 that prevented him from disclosing to anyone that he received a national security letter (NSL) demanding private customer records. Merrill, who received the NSL… Continue Reading
Federal Reserve Federal Open Market Committee Statement – Recovery Has Slowed
FOMC Statement, August 10, 2010: “Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in June indicates that the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months. Household spending is increasing gradually, but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Business spending on equipment… Continue Reading
BLS – Productivity and Costs, Second Quarter 2010, Preliminary
Productivity and Costs, Second Quarter 2010, Preliminary: “Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased at a 0.9 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, with output and hours rising 2.6 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annual… Continue Reading
WSJ Graphic Examines Google's Widening Reach
“Google, a company with vast pools of data about us, is moving into the world of highly targeted ads.” See this graphic for details covering 1998 to present. Continue Reading
Treasury Office of Financial Stability Troubled Asset Relief Program Transactions Report For Period Ending July 30, 2010
U.S. Treasury Department Office of Financial Stability – Troubled Asset Relief Program Transactions Report For Period Ending July 30, 2010 – Capital Release Program Related postings on financial system Continue Reading
Rand: Analyzing the Operation of Performance-Based Accountability Systems for Public Services
Analyzing the Operation of Performance-Based Accountability Systems for Public Services, by Frank Camm, Brian M. Stecher “Empirical evidence of the effects of performance-based public management is scarce. This report describes a framework used to organize available empirical information on one form of performance-based management, a performance-based accountability system (PBAS). Such a system identifies individuals or… Continue Reading
Statement Regarding Reinvestment of Principal Payments on Agency Debt and Agency MBS
News release: “On August 10, 2010, the Federal Open Market Committee directed the Open Market Trading Desk (the Desk) at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to keep constant the Federal Reserves holdings of securities at their current level by reinvesting principal payments from agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities (agency MBS) in longer-term… Continue Reading
Haphazard Firefighting Might Have Sunk BP Oil Rig
Report by Aaron Mehta and John Solomon: “Coast Guard officials told the Center for Public Integrity that the service does not have the expertise to fight an oil rig fire and that its response to the April 20 explosion may have broken the services own rules by failing to ensure a firefighting expert supervised the… Continue Reading
Reports Reveal Colleges with the Biggest, Smallest Gaps in Minority Graduation Rates in the U.S.
News release: “Two reports released by The Education Trust – Big Gaps, Small Gaps: Some Colleges and Universities Do Better Than Others in Graduating African-American Students and Big Gaps, Small Gaps: Some Colleges and Universities Do Better Than Others in Graduating Hispanic Students dig beneath national college-graduation averages and examine disaggregated six-year graduation rates… Continue Reading
Google Algorithm Estimates Number of World's Books to be Around 129,864,880
Inside Google Books: “We collect metadata from many providers (more than 150 and counting) that include libraries, WorldCat, national union catalogs and commercial providers. At the moment we have close to a billion unique raw records. We then further analyze these records to reduce the level of duplication within each provider, bringing us down to… Continue Reading
EBRI: What Do We Really Know About Consumer-Driven Health Plans?
Employee Benefit Research Institute – What Do We Really Know About Consumer-Driven Health Plans? August 2010, EBRI Issue Brief #345 ABOUT CDHPs: Employers began offering consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) in 2001 when a handful started offering health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). They then started offering health savings account (HSA)-eligible plans after the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement,… Continue Reading
