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Daily Archives: November 6, 2014

The Political Consequences of the Great Recession

“American voters remain deeply pessimistic about their own economic prospects and those of the country as a whole and distrust all major institutions of government, including the president, Congress, and both major political parties. As a result, the 2014 elections mark the third consecutive midterm election in which voters turned against the incumbent party to flip partisan control of one branch of Congress. In this election cycle, the Republican Party successfully mobilized discontent with President Barack Obama and the state of the economy to pick up at least seven seats for a minimum 52-seat majority. Democratic-held seats that went to Republicans include Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia, with Louisiana going to a runoff. The GOP solidified its hold on the U.S. House of Representatives, picking up at least 14 more seats for a commanding 243-seat majority so far. It also added three more governorships to its ranks, for a total of 31 states with Republican governors. The loss of Senate control was largely expected given the difficult task Democrats faced this year: In order to keep their majority in the Senate, they needed to hold seats in Republican-leaning states whose voting bases were more conservative, older, and less diverse. But the GOP’s hold on the Senate remains tenuous, with the party facing the prospect of defending 24 Senate seats versus 10 for the Democrats in the 2016 presidential election year. As longtime political journalist Ronald Brownstein notes, as of the 2014 results, neither party has successfully held control of the U.S. Senate for more than eight years since 1980—a trend Republicans will surely need to keep in mind as they organize their agenda going forward.”

Measuring Price Discrimination and Steering on E-commerce Web Sites

Northeastern University: “Internet users reg­u­larly receive all kinds of per­son­al­ized con­tent, from Google search results to product rec­om­men­da­tions on Amazon. This is thanks to the com­plex algo­rithms that pro­duce results based on users’ pro­files and past activity. It’s Big Data at work, and it’s often advan­ta­geous for users. But such per­son­al­iza­tion can also be a… Continue Reading

A Financial System Perspective on Central Clearing of Derivatives

Speech – Governor Jerome H. Powell At the “The New International Financial System: Analyzing the Cumulative Impact of Regulatory Reform”, 17th Annual International Banking Conference, Chicago, Illinois. November 6, 2014. “Prior to the crisis, the then highly opaque market for OTC derivatives grew at an astonishing and unsustainable pace of nearly 25 percent per annum in a… Continue Reading

Registering Researchers in Authority Files

An OCLC Research Report by: The OCLC Research Registering Researchers in Authority Files Task Group Key highlights: “While funders and publishers have been adopting researcher identifiers, it is equally important for research institutions and libraries to recognize that “authors are not strings” and that persistent identifiers are needed to link authors their scholarly output. Although there… Continue Reading

Reshaping the workplace: Tech-related jobs that didn’t exist (officially, at least) 15 years ago

“Technological innovation has been changing the jobs people do, and the way they do them, at least since the first spinning jennies went into service in England’s textile industry in the 1760s. And for about as long, people have sought to forecast what new technologies might mean for the world of work — predictions that tend… Continue Reading

BLS Productivity and Costs, Third Quarter 2014, Preliminary

News release: “Nonfarm business sector labor productivity increased at a 2.0 percent annual rate during the third quarter of 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, as output increased 4.4 percent and hours worked increased 2.3 percent. (All quarterly percent changes in this release are seasonally adjusted annual rates.) From the third quarter of 2013 to… Continue Reading

CFPB Report Finds Debt Collection Tops Older Consumer Complaints

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a report, A snapshot of debt collection complaints submitted by older consumers, highlighting debt collection as a top complaint for older Americans, many of whom say they struggle with debt in retirement. According to the report, some of the debt collection issues older Americans complain about include collectors: hounding about… Continue Reading

Investigative Report – Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg

The landlocked European duchy has been called a “magical fairyland” for brand-name corporations seeking to drastically reduce tax bills, by Leslie Wayne, Kelly Carr, Marina Walker Guevara, Mar Cabra and Michael Hudson. November 5, 2014 KEY FINDINGS Pepsi, IKEA, AIG, Coach, Deutsche Bank, Abbott Laboratories and nearly 340 other companies have secured secret deals from Luxembourg that… Continue Reading

New GAO Reports – Airport and Airway Trust Fund, Food Safety, Information Sharing

FISCAL YEAR 2014 AGREED-UPON PROCEDURES: Excise Tax Distributions to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and the Highway Trust Fund, GAO-15-152R: Published: Nov 6, 2014. Publicly Released: Nov 6, 2014. FOOD SAFETY: FDA and USDA Should Strengthen Pesticide Residue Monitoring Programs and Further Disclose Monitoring Limitations, GAO-15-38: Published: Oct 7, 2014. Publicly Released: Nov 6, 2014. INFORMATION SHARING: DHS Is Assessing Fusion… Continue Reading