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Fed posts data on the financial crisis
The Federal Reserve released documents that identify the recipients of $3.3 trillion in emergency aid provided at the height of the financial crisis. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act (Public Law 111-203) required the release of this information, which had been secret. A lot has been written about this, but here are some of the links I have found particularly interesting. (Thanks to Gary and ResourceShelf for many of these tips!).
- FRB: Regulatory Reform: Transaction Data, Federal Reserve Board (The data.)
- Federal Reserve releases detailed information about transactions conducted to stabilize markets during the recent financial crisis, Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific. (Sabrina's summary of what the Fed has put online.)
- Inured to “Trillions”, By Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review. (CJR has some of the most interesting coverage, summarizing the facts and the analysis coming from journalists.)
- Audit Notes: The Federal Reserve’s Trillion-Dollar Bailout Document Dump, By Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review. (With links to more news coverage and evaluations of the data.)
- Audit Notes: Too Big to Fail Edition, By Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review. (CJR does more analysis of the analyses.)
- A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve, by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Huffington Post. (Sanders, who wrote the amendment to the Dodd-Frank Bill that required the disclosure, gives his first take on the data.)
- Interactive: Which Banks Got Emergency Loans from the Fed During the Financial Meltdown?, By Karen Weise and Dan Nguyen, ProPublica. (ProPublica's interactive mashup of the data.)
- Fed Emergency Lending , Wall Street Journal (The WSJ's mashup of the data.)
- Decoding the Fed’s Emergency Programs, Wall Street Journal. (The WSJ explains some of the details.)
FCC Commissioner Copps: “Getting Media Right: A Call To Action”
Getting Media Right: A Call To Action, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps, Columbia University School Of Journalism, New York City (December 2, 2010). Libraries and Journalism have a lot in common. Copps presents specific recommendations to deal with what he calls the "hour of grave peril" of American Journalism.
The place where I work -- the Federal Communications Commission -- blessed it all, encouraged the consolidation mania, and went beyond even that to eviscerate just about every public interest responsibility that generations of reformers had fought for and won in radio and TV. One FCC Chairman summed up the agency's attitude that there was nothing special about the media by saying, "a television set is nothing but a toaster with pictures." So much for the people's airwaves and for any semblance of concern for the fragile news and information infrastructure that is the lifeblood of society's conversation with itself.Hat tip to Kevin Taglang! Continue reading
CRS may be harmed by blocked access to Wikileaks
Blocking Access to Wikileaks May Harm CRS, Analysts Say, by Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News(December 6, 2010).
“It’s a difficult situation,” said one CRS analyst. “The information was released illegally, and it’s not right for government agencies to be aiding and abetting this illegal dissemination. But the information is out there. Presumably, any Library of Congress researcher who wants to access the information that Wikileaks illegally released will simply use their home computers or cellphones to do so. Will they be able to refer directly to the information in their writings for the Library? Apparently not, unless a secondary source, like a newspaper, happens to have already cited it.”Continue reading
The Importance of Open Standards for E-Government
Open standards explained, OpenSource.Com, by Jason Hibbets (13 Oct 2010). Hibbets introduces two videos by Venky Hariharan (Corporate Affairs Director, Asia-Pacific, at Red Hat).
In this two-part video on the importance of open standards, Venky Hariharan details what open standards are, why open standards are appropriate for e-government, why you should care about how your government preserves your data, and why governments should adopt open standards.Continue reading
The Web is Alive! (But threatened)
It was twenty years ago (December 1990) when the World Wide Web went live on the desktop of its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. But today, Berners-Lee says that the web is threatened.
- Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality, By Tim Berners-Lee, Scientific American (November 22, 2010). The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments -- totalitarian and democratic alike -- are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights.
- The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet, By Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff, Wired, (August 17, 2010). Two decades after its birth, the World Wide Web is in decline, as simpler, sleeker services -- think apps -- are less about the searching and more about the getting. Chris Anderson explains how this new paradigm reflects the inevitable course of capitalism. And Michael Wolff explains why the new breed of media titan is forsaking the Web for more promising (and profitable) pastures. ...The story of industrial revolutions, after all, is a story of battles over control. A technology is invented, it spreads, a thousand flowers bloom, and then someone finds a way to own it, locking out others. It happens every time.
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