News release: “The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in collaboration with the Tor Project, has launched an official 1.0 version of HTTPS Everywhere, a tool for the Firefox web browser that helps secure web browsing by encrypting connections to more than 1,000 websites. HTTPS Everywhere was first released as a beta test version in June of… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: August 2011
Assessing This Past Year's Progress in Implementing Attorney General Holder's FOIA Guidelines
DOJ News release: “After reviewing the Chief FOIA Officer Reports, OIP has prepared an assessment of the progress made by the Executive Departments in implementing the President’s FOIA Memorandum and the Attorney General’s FOIA Guidelines. The fifteen Departments account for nearly 80% of all FOIA requests processed by the government. Those Departments were scored on… Continue Reading
Public Interest Group Launches New House Ethics Committee Report Search Tool
Sunlight Foundation: “The House Ethics Committee is responsible for investigating and making recommendations on the enforcement of House ethics rules. In an nod towards transparency, its reports and statements are published online — but they are virtually unusable. The Committee publishes documents in an unsearchable PDF format, spreads them out over of 24 pages, and… Continue Reading
WSJ: Sharp Drop in Houses for Sale, Usually a Plus for Market, May Reflect Foreclosure Logjam Rather Than More Demand
Where Housing Is Headed – While inventory of unsold homes has declined, in some cases substantially, from their year-earlier levels, housing markets are still weighed down by high levels of foreclosures and a stubbornly high unemployment rate. Home buyers in some parts of the U.S. say theyre frustrated by the lack of attractive inventory that… Continue Reading
Bank of Canada: Real-Time Forecasts of the Real Price of Oil
Real-Time Forecasts of the Real Price of Oil Working Paper 2011-16, Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian, August 2011 “We construct a monthly real-time data set consisting of vintages for 1991.1-2010.12 that is suitable for generating forecasts of the real price of oil from a variety of models. We document that revisions of the data typically represent… Continue Reading
European Securites and Market Authority published list of registered and certified credit rating agencies
04 Aug. 2011 – “According to the Credit Rating Agencies Regulation ((EC) No 1060/2009), ESMA publishes today the list of those credit rating agencies that as of today were either registered or certified in the European Union. The credit rating agencies listed here have been registered or certified in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009… Continue Reading
BLS: Payroll employment rises 117,000 in July; unemployment rate changes little
Employment Situation Summary, July 2011: “Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 117,000 in July, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, retail trade, manufacturing, and mining. Government employment continued to trend down. Household Survey Data: The number of… Continue Reading
Audit of SECs Employee Recognition Program and Recruitment, Relocation, and Retention Incentives
Audit of SECs Employee Recognition Program and Recruitment, Relocation, and Retention Incentives, Office of Inspector General, August 2, 2011 “…we found that the SECs budgeting processes for awards and incentives for SK2 employees are flawed and ineffective. The SECs overall award budget for SK (SEC pay level used in lieu of GS) staff and average… Continue Reading
Asians in America Report: Asian-Americans Still Feel Like Outsiders in Corporate America
News release: “Despite graduating from top universities at rates that far exceed their peers and forming an important part of the talent pipeline for many professions, Asian-Americans remain largely underrepresented in leadership ranks, according to Asians in America: Unleashing the Potential of the Model Minority, a new study from the Center for Work-Life Policy. Although… Continue Reading
MF: Taxing Financial Transactions: An Assessment of Administrative Feasibility
Taxing Financial Transactions: An Assessment of Administrative Feasibility. John D. Brondolo, August 01, 2011 “This paper considers how a tax on financial transactions could be applied to three broad and partially overlapping categories of financial instruments: (1) exchange-traded instruments; (2) over-the-counter instruments; and, (3) foreign exchange instruments. For each category, the paper examines the factors… Continue Reading
White House Report – Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism
Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism, August 3, 2011 “Our central goal in this effort is to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from inspiring, radicalizing, financing, or recruiting individuals or groups in the United States to commit acts of violence. The U.S. Government will work tirelessly to counter support for violent extremism and… Continue Reading
Brookings: Immigration and Poverty in America's Suburbs
Immigration and Poverty in America’s Suburbs – Opportunity and Well-being, Immigration, U.S. Poverty, Race, Ethnicity, Roberto Suro, Jill H. Wilson, Audrey Singer – The Brookings Institution, August 2011: “An analysis of poverty levels among U.S.-born and foreign-born residents in the nations 95 largest metropolitan areas in 2000 and 2009 shows that: Foreign-born residents of Americas… Continue Reading
