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CRS – Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP): Available Health Insurance Options – Annie L. Mach, Analyst in Health Care Financing; Ada S. Cornell, Information Research Specialist. November 13, 2013 “The statute governing the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) is found in Title 5 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 89. The program is administered by the Office of Personnel Management …
A Tale of Two Commitments: Equilibrium Default and Temptation, Makoto Nakajima, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. December 11, 2013. FRB of Philadelphia Working Paper No. 14-1 “I construct the life-cycle model with equilibrium default and preferences featuring temptation and self-control. The model provides quantitatively similar answers to positive questions such as the causes of the observed rise in debt …
“Americans’ rating of the honesty and ethics of the clergy has fallen to 47%, the first time this rating has dropped below 50% since Gallup first asked about the clergy in 1977. Clergy have historically ranked near the top among professions on this measure, hitting a high rating of 67% in 1985. Gallup has asked …
“The Office of Financial Research (OFR) today submitted to Congress its 2013 Annual Report, fulfilling a requirement to annually assess the state of the United States financial system and analyze threats to U.S. financial stability. According to the report, threats include vulnerabilities in markets for securities financing transactions and credit, vulnerabilities to an increase in interest rates and …
“Today Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Diana DeGette released a memo to Democratic Committee members regarding the security of Healthcare.gov. In a classified briefing two days ago, HHS officials revealed that there have been no successful security attacks on Healthcare.gov and that no person …
The Decay of American Political Institutions by FRANCIS FUKUYAMA. We have a problem, but we can’t see it clearly because our focus too often discounts history. Published on December 8, 2013 “Many political institutions in the United States are decaying. This is not the same thing as the broader phenomenon of societal or civilization decline, which has become …
Acting Responsibly? Federal Contractors Frequently Put Workers’ Lives and Livelihoods at Risk – Senator Harkin Unveils HELP Committee Investigation on Labor Law Violations Among Major Government Contractors, December 11, 2013. “Each year, the United States pays out over $500 billion in taxpayer dollars to private companies for goods and services, much of which is used to pay the …
How to Modernize and Improve the System of Insurance Regulation in the United States “The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) today submitted to Congress and released a report on how to modernize and improve the system of insurance regulation in the United States. Given the significance of the insurance sector in …
Sherman & Sterling: “On December 10 2013, the final regulation implementing the Volcker Rule was adopted by the five US federal bank regulatory agencies. This comes over two years after the publication of the proposed regulation. The text below illustrates the differences between the final and proposed texts.” [Andrew Young]
“The National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates U.S. intelligence satellites, has just released the unclassified portions of its FY 2014 Congressional Budget Justification, a detailed account of its budget request for the current year. Although more than 90% of the 534-page document (dated April 2013) was withheld from public release under the Freedom of Information Act, some substantive …
“Five federal agencies on Tuesday issued final rules developed jointly to implement section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Volcker Rule”). The final rules prohibit insured depository institutions and companies affiliated with insured depository institutions (“banking entities”) from engaging in short-term proprietary trading of certain securities, derivatives, commodity futures and …
Fiscal Policy Effects in a Heterogeneous-Agent Overlapping-Generations Economy With an Aging Population: Working Paper 2013-07, by Shinichi Nishiyama “Among the models that CBO uses to analyze the economic effects of changes in federal fiscal policy is a life-cycle growth model with overlapping generations of heterogeneous households. In this paper, we extend a similar dynamic model …
