2,001 research outputs found
Banking and financial crises in United States history: what guidance can history offer policymakers?
This paper assesses the validity of comparisons between the current financial crisis and past crises in the United States. We highlight aspects of two National Banking Era crises (the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907) that are relevant for comparison with the Panic of 2008. In 1873, overinvestment in railroad debt and the default of railroad companies on that debt led to the failure of numerous brokerage houses, precursor to the modern investment bank. During the Panic of 1907, panic-related deposit withdrawals centered on the less regulated trust companies, which had only indirect access to the existing lender of last resort, similar to investment banks in 2008. The popular press has made numerous references to the banking crises of the Great Depression as relevant comparisons to the recent crisis. This paper argues that such an analogy is inaccurate. The previous banking crises in U.S. history reflected widespread depositor withdrawals whereas the recent panic arose from counterparty solvency fears and large counterparty exposures among large complex financial intermediaries. In historical incidents, monitoring counterparty exposures was standard banking practice and the exposures were smaller. From this perspective, the lessons from the past appear less directly relevant for the current crisis.Financial crises - United States ; Systemic risk
Banking and Financial Crises in United States History: What Guidance can History Offer Policymakers?
This paper assesses the validity of comparisons of the current financial crisis with past crises in the United States. We highlight aspects of two National Banking Era crises (the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907) that are relevant for comparison with the Panic of 2008. In 1873, overinvestment in railroad debt and the default of railroad companies on that debt led to the failure of numerous brokerage houses, an antecedent to the modern investment bank. For the Panic of 1907, panic-related deposit withdrawals centered on the less regulated trust companies, which were less directly linked to the existing lender of last resort, similar to investment banks in 2008. The popular press has made numerous references to the banking crises (there were three main ones) of the Great Depression as relevant comparisons to the present crisis. This paper argues that such an analogy is inaccurate in general.Systemic Risk, Financial Crises, Bank Failures
Extreme Magnetoresistance in Magnetic Rare Earth Monopnictides
The acute sensitivity of the electrical resistance of certain systems to
magnetic fields known as extreme magnetoresistance (XMR) has recently been
explored in a new materials context with topological semimetals. Exemplified by
WTe and rare earth monopnictide La(Sb,Bi), these systems tend to be
non-magnetic, nearly compensated semimetals and represent a platform for large
magnetoresistance driven by intrinsic electronic structure. Here we explore
electronic transport in magnetic members of the latter family of semimetals and
find that XMR is strongly modulated by magnetic order. In particular, CeSb
exhibits XMR in excess of % at fields of 9 T while the
magnetoresistance itself is non-monotonic across the various magnetic phases
and shows a transition from negative magnetoresistance to XMR with field above
magnetic ordering temperature . The magnitude of the XMR is larger than
in other rare earth monopnictides including the non-magnetic members and
follows an non-saturating power law to fields above 30 T. We show that the
overall response can be understood as the modulation of conductivity by the Ce
orbital state and for intermediate temperatures can be characterized by an
effective medium model. Comparison to the orbitally quenched compound GdBi
supports the correlation of XMR with the onset of magnetic ordering and
compensation and highlights the unique combination of orbital inversion and
type-I magnetic ordering in CeSb in determining its large response. These
findings suggest a paradigm for magneto-orbital control of XMR and are relevant
to the understanding of rare earth-based correlated topological materials.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
Ubic: Bridging the gap between digital cryptography and the physical world
Advances in computing technology increasingly blur the boundary between the
digital domain and the physical world. Although the research community has
developed a large number of cryptographic primitives and has demonstrated their
usability in all-digital communication, many of them have not yet made their
way into the real world due to usability aspects. We aim to make another step
towards a tighter integration of digital cryptography into real world
interactions. We describe Ubic, a framework that allows users to bridge the gap
between digital cryptography and the physical world. Ubic relies on
head-mounted displays, like Google Glass, resource-friendly computer vision
techniques as well as mathematically sound cryptographic primitives to provide
users with better security and privacy guarantees. The framework covers key
cryptographic primitives, such as secure identification, document verification
using a novel secure physical document format, as well as content hiding. To
make a contribution of practical value, we focused on making Ubic as simple,
easily deployable, and user friendly as possible.Comment: In ESORICS 2014, volume 8712 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
pp. 56-75, Wroclaw, Poland, September 7-11, 2014. Springer, Berlin, German
Recommended from our members
Nanotailoring Stereolithography Resins for Unique Applications using Carbon Nanotubes
Nanostructured materials and exploiting their properties in stereolithography (SL) may open
new markets for unique rapidly manufactured functional devices. Controlled amounts of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were successfully dispersed in SL epoxy-based resins and
complex three-dimensional (3D) parts were successfully fabricated by means of a multi-material
SL setup. The effect of the nanosized filler was evaluated using mechanical testing. Small
dispersions of MWCNTs resulted in significant effects on the physical properties of the
polymerized resin. A MWCNT concentration of .05 wt% (w/v) in DSM Somos® WaterShed™
11120 resin increased the ultimate tensile stress and fracture stress an average of 17% and 37%,
respectively. Electron microscopy was used to examine the morphology of the nanocomposite
and results showed affinity between the MWCNTs and SL resin and identified buckled
nanotubes that illustrated strong interfacial bonding. These improved physical properties may
provide opportunities for using nanocomposite SL resins in end-use applications. Varying types
and concentrations of nanomaterials can be used to tailor existing SL resins for particular
applications.Mechanical Engineerin
Recommended from our members
Optical photon reassignment microscopy (OPRA)
To enhance the resolution of a confocal laser scanning microscope the additional information of a pinhole plane image taken at every excitation scan position can be used (Sheppard 1988). This photon reassignment principle is based on the fact that the most probable position of an emitter is at half way between the nominal focus of the excitation laser and the position corresponding to the (off centre) detection position. Therefore, by reassigning the detected photons to this place, an image with enhanced detection efficiency and resolution is obtained. Here we present optical photon reassignment microscopy (OPRA) which realizes this concept in an all-optical way obviating the need for image-processing. With the help of an additional intermediate optical beam expansion between descanning and a further rescanning of the detected light, an image with the advantages of photon reassignment can be acquired. However, just as in computational photon reassignment, a loss in confocal sectioning performance is caused by working with relatively open pinholes. The OPRA system shares properties such as flexibility and ease of use with a confocal laser scanning microscope, and is therefore expected to be of use for future biomedical routine research
- …