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Daily Archives: September 8, 2014

CBO’s Projection of Federal Interest Payments

“Federal debt held by the public will reach about $12.8 trillion by the end of this fiscal year, an amount that equals 74 percent of the nation’s total output (gross domestic product, or GDP) this year. If current laws generally remained unchanged—the assumption that underlies CBO’s baseline projections—CBO projects that such debt would climb to… Continue Reading

International Law and Secret Surveillance: Binding Restrictions upon State Monitoring of Telephone and Internet Activity

CDT: “In the year that has followed Edward Snowden’s first disclosures concerning secret US and UK surveillance practices, many governments, human-rights groups, and UN bodies have debated—and at times disagreed sharply—about whether the Internet and telephone surveillance practices that governments employ today are consistent with international law. With a view to informing these discussions, this… Continue Reading

Follow the Money: Compensation, Risk, and the Financial Crisis

Larcker, David F. and Ormazabal, Gaizka and Tayan, Brian and Taylor, Daniel J., Follow the Money: Compensation, Risk, and the Financial Crisis (September 8, 2014). Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Closer Look Series: Topics, Issues and Controversies in Corporate Governance No. CGRP-43. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2493398 “This Closer Look illustrates the… Continue Reading

New on LLRX – Will Lawyers Embrace Wearable Tech, And The Future?

Via LLRX.com – Will Lawyers Embrace Wearable Tech, And The Future? Nicole Black predicts that smartwatches will soon be very popular with lawyers as they offer an easy and unobtrusive way to filter only the most important information received on your smartphone. So if you’re expecting a priority email or phone call, you can program your phone to… Continue Reading

Student Loan Update: A First Look at the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances

“Earlier this year, Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos released a report aimed at injecting some much-needed evidence into what has become an often-hysterical public debate about student loan debt. Their report, “Is a Student Loan Crisis on the Horizon?” used data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) administered by the Federal Reserve Board to track how the… Continue Reading

NY Fed Finds Consumers Expect Lower Home Price Growth but Improved Credit Availability

“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today released results from its August 2014 Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE), which provides insight into Americans’ views on inflation, prices, the labor market and household finance. The median home price change expectation at the one-year ahead horizon in August was 3.5 percent, its lowest reading since the data… Continue Reading

New GAO Reports – Crop Insurance, Defense Infrastructure, DOD Education Benefits, Medicaid, Contractor Controls, DoD Special Operations

CROP INSURANCE: Considerations in Reducing Federal Premium Subsidies, GAO-14-700: Published: Aug 8, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 8, 2014. DEFENSE INFRASTRUCTURE: DOD Needs to Improve Its Efforts to Identify Unutilized and Underutilized Facilities, GAO-14-538: Published: Sep 8, 2014. Publicly Released: Sep 8, 2014. DOD EDUCATION BENEFITS: Action Is Needed to Ensure Evaluations of Postsecondary Schools Are Useful, GAO-14-855: Published: Sep 8, 2014. Publicly Released:… Continue Reading

EPIC (Finally) Obtains Memos on Warrantless Wiretapping Program

“More than eight years after filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the legal justification behind the “Warrantless Wiretapping” program of President Bush, EPIC has now obtained a mostly unredacted version of two key memos (OLC54)and (OLC85) by former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith. EPIC requested these memos just four hours after the New York Times broke the story about the… Continue Reading