“Sunlight has long been the best disinfectant to prevent problems in our market”
SEC Seeks More Transparent Disclosure For Investors, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, press release 2008-227, Sept. 25, 2008.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it will hold a roundtable on October 8 to discuss ways to modernize its disclosure system to give investors more useful and timely information for investment decision-making.... "Sunlight has long been the best disinfectant to prevent problems in our markets. The more direct sunlight we can shine on company disclosure documents to extract the information that investors most want and need to make financial decisions, the more honest our markets will be and the stronger investor confidence will be," said Dr. William D. Lutz, Director of the 21st Century Disclosure Initiative.Thanks and a tip of the hat to J.H. Snider who says, "The SEC’s disclosure technology may already be the best of any agency in the Federal government.... Nevertheless, given the recent financial meltdown, it looks like it may continue to break new ground. Continue reading
Missed Econ 101?
In light of all this financial upheaval, I've been trying to find good sources for learning basic economic concepts. I must admit that I haven't taken economics since high school, a class that consisted of one semester learning to balance checkbooks... and that was about it. Lately I've been reading a basic economics book, and have another on my to-read list, but it struck me that what I really needed was a series of short educational publications on specific economic topics. Hmmm... government documents, anyone? Here are some helpful documents and websites I'm using.
- Federal Reserve Education
- Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: Publications
- Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: Publications
- The Federal Reserve, Monetary Policy and the Economy
- Free Enterprise, the Economy and Monetary Policy
- Everyday Economics
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Will Losses on Wall Street Mean Gains for Google in Government Sector?
Wall Street Loses, Google Gains in Government, by Anne Laurent NextGov, September 30, 2008.
Despite the bailout blow-out, my mind has kept wandering all day to a Washington Post story about Google's new office, of all things. Finally, Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, helped me understand why.Laurent says that government agencies won't be spending on IT in the near future because, increasingly, IT is becoming a utility that can be outsourced and that there is already evidence that governments may outsource to Google.
Agencies already are moving. The Post highlights the District of Columbia, where CTO Vivek Kundra has employees using Google's spreadsheets, email, videos, maps, word processing and a wiki. Alabama has won many plaudits and imitators with its amazing mash-up of Google Maps, Virtual Alabama.She links to these interesting stories, among others:
- Wall Street Crisis, Enterprise Technology and Cloud Computing by Bob Gourley
- The End of Corporate Computing, By Nicholas G. Carr
- Google Goes to Washington, Gearing Up to Put Its Stamp on Government by Kim Hart, Washington Post, September 29, 2008; D07
Scaling house.gov
Yesterday, after the House defeated the economic "bailout" bill, citizens swamped their representatives with e-mail and attempted to reach web sites hosted by house.gov to get more information. The result? "Millions of individuals seeking information about the forsaken legislation have slowed its 10 servers to a crawl." (Servers buckle as Congress rejects $700bn Wall Street bailout By Austin Modine, The Register, 9/30/2008.) The response? House limits constituent e-mails to prevent crash, By Jordy Yager, The Hill, 09/30/08 Continue reading
September BOTM Wrap-Up
September's gone already? Well, brief as the month was, I want to say I've really enjoyed being September's Blogger of the Month. Posting here and watching new stories come up daily has been a real treat. My thanks to the FGI folks for giving me a great venue for posting thoughts and finds! And in that spirit, here's a little mish-mash of what I've been reading the past two days. I find it pretty telling (in a geeky way) of where the nation's attention lies, that I'm getting timeout errors in so many areas related to the Economic Stimulus Bill and the general financial hoopla. This morning, I couldn't get to related articles on Wikipedia. Continue reading