Beverly Hirtle, Anna Kovner, and Eric McKay, New York Fed: “Stress tests have become an important method of assessing whether financial institutions have enough capital to operate in bad economic conditions. Under the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, both the Federal Reserve and large U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) are required to do annual stress tests and to… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: July 2014
Stop Sneaky Online Tracking with EFF’s Privacy Badger
“The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a beta version of Privacy Badger, a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that detects and blocks online advertising and other embedded content that tracks you without your permission. Privacy Badger was launched in an alpha version less than three months ago, and already more than 150,000 users have… Continue Reading
Report: Dodd-Frank Act Does Not End Too Big to Fail But Perpetuates It as Official Policy
“House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) today released a committee staff report [prepared by the Republican Staff of the Committee on Financial Services] that concludes the Dodd-Frank Act did not end “too big to fail” as the law’s supporters claim, but actually had the… Continue Reading
Growing Deficits Over the Long Term Would Cause Federal Debt to Exceed 100 Percent of GDP by 2039
“Last week CBO released its latest report on the long-term budget outlook. (For a quick overview of the report, take a look at The 2014 Long-Term Budget Outlook in 26 Slides.) Previous blog posts have highlighted the projected imbalance in federal spending and revenues over the next 25 years. Today’s post explains how projected shortfalls would accumulate… Continue Reading
New GAO Reports – African Growth Opportunity, Consumer Finance, State Department
AFRICAN GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY ACT: Observations on Competitiveness and Diversification of U.S. Imports from Beneficiary Countries, GAO-14-722R: Published: Jul 21, 2014. Publicly Released: Jul 21, 2014. CONSUMER FINANCE: Credit Cards Designed for Medical Services Not Covered by Insurance, GAO-14-570: Published: Jun 19, 2014. Publicly Released: Jul 21, 2014. STATE DEPARTMENT: Implementation of Grants Policies Needs Better Oversight, GAO-14-635: Published: Jul 21, 2014. Publicly… Continue Reading
New kind of tracking tool, canvas fingerprinting, is being used to follow visitors to thousands of top websites
ProPublica and Mashable – “A new, extremely persistent type of online tracking is shadowing visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.com. First documented in a forthcoming paper by researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven University in Belgium, this type of tracking, called canvas fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor’s Web browser to draw a hidden image. Because each… Continue Reading
U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians – CRS
U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians. Jim Zanotti – Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs. July 3, 2014. “Since the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed more than $5 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, who are among the… Continue Reading
Obama opens East Coast to oil search, sonic cannons – AP
AP: “The Obama administration is reopening the Eastern Seaboard to offshore oil and gas exploration, announcing final approval Friday of sonic cannons that can pinpoint energy deposits deep beneath the ocean floor. The decision promises to create plenty of jobs and thrills the oil industry, but dismays environmentalists worried about the immediate impact as well as… Continue Reading
Trends in State Courts 2014
“Trends in State Courts 2014 focuses on what courts can do, and are doing, to serve the needs of society’s most vulnerable groups: juveniles and the elderly. Articles in two special sections focus on many aspects of juvenile justice and elder issues, such as the Models for Change Juvenile Justice Initiative funded by the John D.… Continue Reading
Consumer Cloud Robotics and the Fair Information Practice Principles
Proia, Andrew A. and Simshaw, Drew and Hauser, Kris, Consumer Cloud Robotics and the Fair Information Practice Principles: Recognizing the Challenges and Opportunities Ahead (2014). Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology, Forthcoming. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2466723 “Rapid technological innovation has made commercially accessible consumer robotics a reality. At the same time, individuals and… Continue Reading
Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK
“The production of animal-based foods is associated with higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than plant-based foods. The objective of this study was to estimate the difference in dietary GHG emissions between self-selected meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK. Subjects were participants in the EPIC-Oxford cohort study. The diets of 2,041 vegans, 15,751 vegetarians,… Continue Reading
Loopholes for Circumventing the Constitution: Warrantless Bulk Surveillance on Americans by Collecting Network Traffic Abroad
Arnbak, Axel and Goldberg, Sharon, Loopholes for Circumventing the Constitution: Warrantless Bulk Surveillance on Americans by Collecting Network Traffic Abroad (June 27, 2014). HOTPETS, 2014. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2460462 “In this multi-disciplinary paper, we reveal interdependent legal and technical loopholes that intelligence agencies of the U.S. government could use to circumvent constitutional and statutory… Continue Reading
