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Daily Archives: February 16, 2014

Federal Government’s Track Record on Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure

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The Federal Government’s Track Record on Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure – A report prepared by the Minority Staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Sen. Tom Coburn, MD, Ranking Member. February 4, 2014.

“In the past few years, we have seen significant breaches in cybersecurity which could affect critical U.S. infrastructure. Data on the nation’s weakest dams, including those which could kill Americans if they failed, were stolen by a malicious intruder. Nuclear plants’ confidential cybersecurity plans have been left unprotected. Blueprints for the technology undergirding the New York Stock Exchange were exposed to hackers. Examples like those underscore for many the importance of increased federal involvement in protecting the nation’s privately-owned critical infrastructure. But for one thing: Those failures aren’t due to poor practices by the private sector. All of the examples [in this report] were real lapses by the federal government.”

The perfect storm: The convergence of social, mobile and photo technologies in libraries

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Wendy Abbott, Jessie Donaghey, Joanna Hare, and Peta J. Hopkins. The perfect storm: The convergence of social, mobile and photo technologies in libraries. VALA 2014. Melbourne, Victoria. Feb. 2014. “The intersection of mobile and photographic technologies with social networks has produced platforms such as Instagram. The way libraries are using these platforms has not been investigated… Continue Reading

Structuring Big Data to Facilitate Participation in International Law

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Structuring Big Data to Facilitate Participation in International Law, Roslyn Fuller, National University of Ireland, Maynooth “This is an interdisciplinary article focusing on the interplay between information and communication technology (ICT) and international law (IL). Its purpose is to open up a dialogue between ICT and IL practitioners that focuses on the ways in which ICT can… Continue Reading

Effect of the Basel Accord Capital Requirements on Loan-Loss Provisioning Practices of Australian Banks

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Cummings, James R and Durrani, Kassim Jahn, Effect of the Basel Accord Capital Requirements on the Loan-Loss Provisioning Practices of Australian Banks (January 2014). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2396384 “This study examines the role of regulatory loan-loss provisioning in supporting current developments in Australian regulatory capital requirements. Findings suggest banks current regulatory capital position is a… Continue Reading

FinCEN Issues Guidance to Financial Institutions on Marijuana Businesses

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“The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), today issued guidance that clarifies customer due diligence expectations and reporting requirements for financial institutions seeking to provide services to marijuana businesses. The guidance provides that financial institutions can provide services to marijuana-related businesses in a manner consistent with their obligations to… Continue Reading

When Will the Fed End Its Zero Rate Policy?

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Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco – When Will the Fed End Its Zero Rate Policy? by Jens Christensen “U.S. Treasury yields and other interest rates increased in the months leading up to the Federal Reserve’s December 2013 decision to cut back its large-scale bond purchases. This increase in rates probably at least partly reflected changes in… Continue Reading

IMF – Debt and Growth: Is There a Magic Threshold?

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IMF Working Paper by Andrea Pescatori; Damiano Sandri; John Simon – February 13, 2014: “Using a novel empirical approach and an extensive dataset developed by the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF, we find no evidence of any particular debt threshold above which medium-term growth prospects are dramatically compromised. Furthermore, we find the debt trajectory can… Continue Reading

How Persistent are Monetary Policy Effects at the Zero Lower Bound?

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Christopher J. Neely, How Persistent are Monetary Policy Effects at the Zero Lower Bound?, Working Papers 2014-4, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 09 Feb 2014. “Event studies show that Fed unconventional announcements of forward guidance and large scale asset purchases had large and desired effects on asset prices but do not tell us how long… Continue Reading

A Second Look at the Employment-to-Population Ratio

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Pat Higgins, senior economist in the Atlanta Fed’s research department – “This analysis is a companion piece to my Atlanta Fed colleague John Robertson’s recent macroblog post. John’s blog highlighted some findings of a recent New York Fed study by Samuel Kapon and Joseph Tracy on the employment-to-population (E/P) ratio. Their work has received considerable attention in the media and… Continue Reading

Report to the National Football League concerning issues of workplace conduct at the Miami Dolphins

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NFL Press release on the Well Report and the text of the entire 144 page report. “On November 6, 2013, the National Football League announced that Ted Wells and the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP had been retained to direct an independent investigation into workplace conduct at the Miami Dolphins… Continue Reading