Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

You Are Here: Home » Archives: January 2011

Daily Archives: January 6, 2011

Testimony by Chairman Bernanke on the economic outlook and monetary and fiscal policy

by on

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke – The Economic Outlook and Monetary and Fiscal Policy Before the Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., January 7, 2011

  • The economic recovery that began a year and a half ago is continuing, although, to date, at a pace that has been insufficient to reduce the rate of unemployment significantly.1 The initial stages of the recovery, in the second half of 2009 and in early 2010, were largely attributable to the stabilization of the financial system, expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, and a powerful inventory cycle. Growth slowed somewhat this past spring as the impetus from fiscal policy and inventory building waned and as European sovereign debt problems led to increased volatility in financial markets. More recently, however, we have seen increased evidence that a self-sustaining recovery in consumer and business spending may be taking hold. In particular, real consumer spending rose at an annual rate of 2-1/2 percent in the third quarter of 2010, and the available indicators suggest that it likely expanded at a somewhat faster pace in the fourth quarter. Business investment in new equipment and software has grown robustly in recent quarters, albeit from a fairly low level, as firms replaced aging equipment and made investments that had been delayed during the downturn. However, the housing sector remains depressed, as the overhang of vacant houses continues to weigh heavily on both home prices and construction, and nonresidential construction is also quite weak. Overall, the pace of economic recovery seems likely to be moderately stronger in 2011 than it was in 2010.
  • Charts Used at Hearing with Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke – Jan 7, 2011
  • Related postings on financial system

    • Pew Presentation: Asian-Americans and Technology

    by on

    Presentation: Race and Ethnicity Asian-Americans and Technology Director Lee Rainie spoke at the Organization of Chinese Americans Broadband Summit on January 6, 2011 about Pew Research examining how Asian-Americans use technology, including broadband adoption and online activities. He spoke with Tom Powers, chief of staff of the NTIA, who presented NTIA’s broadband data from its… Continue Reading

    Third Quarter Reports of Mortgage Fraud Up Slightly Mortgage Fraud as Percentage of All SARs Remains Steady

    by on

    News release: “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today released its third quarter 2010 mortgage fraud report, Mortgage Loan Fraud SAR Filings. The report shows that suspicious activity reports (SARs) characterized by filers as indicating possible mortgage loan fraud (MLF) increased 2 percent to 16,693 in the third quarter of 2010 up from 16,339 MLF… Continue Reading

    CBO – Preliminary Analysis of H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act

    by on

    Preliminary Analysis of H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, January 6, 2011 Letter to the Honorable John Boehner “..this letter describes—in broad terms and on a preliminary basis—CBO’s assessment of the effects that repealing PPACA and the relevant provisions of the Reconciliation Act would have on federal budget deficits, the federal… Continue Reading

    Commission seeks views on possible EU framework to deal with future bank failures

    by on

    News release: “Following the publication of a Communication on 20 October 2010 on a European crisis management framework for the financial sector (see IP/10/1353), the European Commission has today launched a consultation on technical details underpinning that framework. Today’s consultation should be read in conjunction with that Communication. The Commission intends to come forward with… Continue Reading

    Report – Cloud-sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-digitized Library Environment

    by on

    News release: “This report presents findings from a year-long study designed and executed by OCLC Research, the HathiTrust, New York University’s Elmer Bobst Library, and the Research Collections Access & Preservation (ReCAP) consortium, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of… Continue Reading

    How Large are Housing and Financial Wealth Effects? A New Approach

    by on

    How Large are Housing and Financial Wealth Effects? A New Approach – Christopher D. Carroll, Johns Hopkins University – Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Jiri Slacalek, European Central Bank (ECB), Misuzu Otsuka, December 17, 2010, ECB Working Paper No. 1283 “This paper presents a simple new method for measuring ‘wealth effects’… Continue Reading

    Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books

    by on

    Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books, Published Online 16 December 2010, Jean-Baptiste Michel et al. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1199644. “We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of “culturomics”, focusing… Continue Reading