How Did We Get into This Financial Mess?

As policymakers confront the ongoing U.S. financial crisis, it is important to take a step back and understand its origins. Those who fault "deregulation," "unfettered capitalism," or "greed" would do well to look instead at flawed institutions and misguided policies. The expansion in risky mortgages to underqualified borrowers was encouraged by the federal government. The growth of "creative" nonprime lending followed Congress's strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act, the Federal Housing Administration's loosening of down-payment standards, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's pressuring lenders to extend mortgages to borrowers who previously would not have qualified. Meanwhile, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae grew to own or guarantee about half of the United States' $12 trillion mortgage market. Congressional leaders pointedly refused to moderate the moral hazard problem of implicit guarantees or otherwise rein in their hyperexpansion, instead pushing them to promote "affordable housing" through expanded purchases of nonprime loans to low income applicants. The credit that fueled these risky mortgages was provided by the cheap money policy of the Federal Reserve. Following the 2001 recession, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan slashed the federal funds rate from 6.25 to 1.75 percent. It was reduced further in 2002 and 2003, reaching a record low of 1 percent in mid-2003 - where it stayed for a year. This set off what economist Steve Hanke called "the mother of all liquidity cycles and yet another massive demand bubble." The actual causes of our financial troubles were unusual monetary policy moves and novel federal regulatory interventions. These poorly chosen policies distorted interest rates and asset prices, diverted loanable funds into the wrong investments, and twisted normally robust financial institutions into unsustainable positions

The Role of the Everything But Arms Trade Preferences Regime in the EU Development Strategy

This study examines the effect of the Everything But Arms (EBA) trade preferences regime on exports from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to the European Union (EU). With this aim, an augmented gravity model is estimated for exports from the 79 ACP countries to the EU-15 for the time period 1995 to 2005 using panel data techniques. The model estimates are used to quantify the effect of the EBA preferences on the ACP LDCs export performance and to compare it with the impact of official development assistance. In addition to their separate effects, the combined impact of EBA and aid flows is estimated. The main results show a negative effect of the EBA regime on exports. Otherwise, the combined effect of the EBA and aid on exports is positive, supporting an EU development strategy that includes both sorts of assistance, aid and trade preferences. --development aid,trade preferences,Everything But Arms,panel data

Spacecraft Dynamics and Control Program at AFRPL

A number of future DOD and NASA spacecraft such as the space based radar will be not only an order of magnitude larger in dimension than the current spacecraft, but will exhibit extreme structural flexibility with very low structural vibration frequencies. Another class of spacecraft (such as the space defense platforms) will combine large physical size with extremely precise pointing requirement. Such problems require a total departure from the traditional methods of modeling and control system design of spacecraft where structural flexibility is treated as a secondary effect. With these problems in mind, the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (AFRPL) initiated research to develop dynamics and control technology so as to enable the future large space structures (LSS). AFRPL's effort in this area can be subdivided into the following three overlapping areas: (1) ground experiments, (2) spacecraft modeling and control, and (3) sensors and actuators. Both the in-house and contractual efforts of the AFRPL in LSS are summarized

The Financial Flows of the Transnational Crime: Some Preliminary Empirical Results

Until 2008, the growth of the world economy was quite strong and improved the economic well-being all over the globe, but this development was also accompanied by some risks. One of them is transnational crime, which has shown a remarkable increase in the last 20 years3. This raises the following two questions: (1) How is transnational crime financed, and what do we know about this financing? (2) What economic implications does transnational crime have? In this contribution question (2) will be very briefly answered, however the main focus lies on providing a more detailed answer on the financing of transnational crime (question 1). Additionally a detailed analysis of the finances of transnational crime is crucial to reduce their financial options, so that the basis of their operations is at least limited. Such an analysis is another goal of this chapter. My paper is structured as follows: section 2 provides a literature review on the kinds of transnational crime financing. Section 3 shows the infiltration of transnational crime into the economic system. In section 4 some conclusions and policy recommendations are drawn.

A family of asymptotically stable control laws for flexible robots based on a passivity approach

A general family of asymptotically stabilizing control laws is introduced for a class of nonlinear Hamiltonian systems. The inherent passivity property of this class of systems and the Passivity Theorem are used to show the closed-loop input/output stability which is then related to the internal state space stability through the stabilizability and detectability condition. Applications of these results include fully actuated robots, flexible joint robots, and robots with link flexibility

The Suaineadh Project : a stepping stone towards the deployment of large flexible structures in space

The Suaineadh project aims at testing the controlled deployment and stabilization of space web. The deployment system is based on a simple yet ingenious control of the centrifugal force that will pull each of the four daughters sections apart. The four daughters are attached onto the four corners of a square web, and will be released from their initial stowed configuration attached to a central hub. Enclosed in the central hub is a specifically designed spinning reaction wheel that controls the rotational speed with a closed loop control fed by measurements from an onboard inertial measurement sensor. Five other such sensors located within the web and central hub provide information on the surface curvature of the web, and progression of the deployment. Suaineadh is currently at an advanced stage of development: all the components are manufactured with the subsystems integrated and are presently awaiting full integration and testing. This paper will present the current status of the Suaineadh project and the results of the most recent set of tests. In particular, the paper will cover the overall mechanical design of the system, the electrical and sensor assemblies, the communication and power systems and the spinning wheel with its control system

Momentum Control of Humanoid Robots with Series Elastic Actuators

Humanoid robots may require a degree of compliance at the joint level for improving efficiency, shock tolerance, and safe interaction with humans. The presence of joint elasticity, however, complexifies the design of balancing and walking controllers. This paper proposes a control framework for extending momentum based controllers developed for stiff actuators to the case of series elastic actuators. The key point is to consider the motor velocities as an intermediate control input, and then apply high-gain control to stabilise the desired motor velocities achieving momentum control. Simulations carried out on a model of the robot iCub verify the soundness of the proposed approach

The interface between the area of freedom, security and justice and the common foreign and security policy of the European Union: legal constraints to political objectives

This paper argues that the objective of increased foreign policy coherence, as expressed in the Treaty of Lisbon and the Stockholm Programme of the European Union (EU), faces significant legal obstacles. In particular, the blurred boundaries between situations falling within the EU’s competence regarding the so-called Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), on the one hand, and its Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) on the other hand, may give rise to inter-institutional turf battles. This is illustrated with the practice of adopting restrictive sanctions against individuals and non-State entities in the context of the EU’s fight against terrorism

Integral Resonant Control for vibration damping and precise tip-positioning of a single-link flexible manipulator

Peer reviewedPostprin

Detection of bimanual gestures everywhere: why it matters, what we need and what is missing

Bimanual gestures are of the utmost importance for the study of motor coordination in humans and in everyday activities. A reliable detection of bimanual gestures in unconstrained environments is fundamental for their clinical study and to assess common activities of daily living. This paper investigates techniques for a reliable, unconstrained detection and classification of bimanual gestures. It assumes the availability of inertial data originating from the two hands/arms, builds upon a previously developed technique for gesture modelling based on Gaussian Mixture Modelling (GMM) and Gaussian Mixture Regression (GMR), and compares different modelling and classification techniques, which are based on a number of assumptions inspired by literature about how bimanual gestures are represented and modelled in the brain. Experiments show results related to 5 everyday bimanual activities, which have been selected on the basis of three main parameters: (not) constraining the two hands by a physical tool, (not) requiring a specific sequence of single-hand gestures, being recursive (or not). In the best performing combination of modeling approach and classification technique, five out of five activities are recognized up to an accuracy of 97%, a precision of 82% and a level of recall of 100%.Comment: Submitted to Robotics and Autonomous Systems (Elsevier