Culprits or bystanders? Offshore jurisdictions and the global financial crisis

Questions have been raised regarding the role of low-tax offshore jurisdictions in the global financial crisis, based largely on evidence that many problematic asset-backed securities were issued from or listed in the Cayman Islands, Jersey, Ireland, and other ‘offshore’ sites. However, there has not been a systematic investigation of the offshore geography of crisis-implicated securitization. Here we fill this gap by constructing the first comprehensive jurisdictional map of the largest pre-crisis Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) programs, and examining the rationale for and impacts of this geography in detail. We show that offshore jurisdictions were disproportionately involved in producing the most unstable ABCP classes. However, this is difficult to explain in terms of the traditional role of offshore banking centers as sites for direct avoidance of onshore regulation and transparency. Rather, we propose a Minskian model of pre-crisis offshore ABCP production, wherein these jurisdictions specialized in alleviating incidental institutional frictions (e.g. double taxation) hindering onshore financial innovation. In this context, they could sometimes be legitimately described as improving the institutional ‘efficiency’ of financial markets; however, by facilitating the endogenous evolutionary instability of these markets, this apparently innocuous service had profoundly negative effects. This normative disconnect poses a conundrum for offshore reform

Sticky Power

Modern civilization revolves around money. However, money is a paradox. It is nothing more than a representation of and medium for decentralized networks of social trust, but its production is controlled by highly centralized networks of firms, places, and governments, and there is never enough of it to go around. Moreover, given that the creation of money, as credit, is based on expectations, money is at its heart an instrument for human agency to change the future. At the same time, however, the financial systems that produce money are deeply rooted in the past, and perpetuate themselves through history. This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the paradox of money, by introducing a novel conceptual lens—that of Global Financial Networks—to cast new light on the geography, history, politics, and sociology of finance from the middle ages to the global financial crisis and beyond. It shows that the power of finance is inherently “sticky”; with what are generally assumed to be new innovations such as “offshore” finance actually dating back centuries, and the architecture of global financial networks more broadly adapting to the rise and fall of empires and new technologies while changing surprisingly little in their basic character; or at most changing very slowly. A recognition of the mechanics of this durability, it is argued, calls for a new approach to reforming finance which is less reactively focused on regulation, and more proactively focused on building new institutional systems with a long-term “sticky power” of their own

Sticky Power

Modern civilization revolves around money. However, money is a paradox. It is nothing more than a representation of and medium for decentralized networks of social trust, but its production is controlled by highly centralized networks of firms, places, and governments, and there is never enough of it to go around. Moreover, given that the creation of money, as credit, is based on expectations, money is at its heart an instrument for human agency to change the future. At the same time, however, the financial systems that produce money are deeply rooted in the past, and perpetuate themselves through history. This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the paradox of money, by introducing a novel conceptual lens—that of Global Financial Networks—to cast new light on the geography, history, politics, and sociology of finance from the middle ages to the global financial crisis and beyond. It shows that the power of finance is inherently “sticky”; with what are generally assumed to be new innovations such as “offshore” finance actually dating back centuries, and the architecture of global financial networks more broadly adapting to the rise and fall of empires and new technologies while changing surprisingly little in their basic character; or at most changing very slowly. A recognition of the mechanics of this durability, it is argued, calls for a new approach to reforming finance which is less reactively focused on regulation, and more proactively focused on building new institutional systems with a long-term “sticky power” of their own

Effects of Different Strength Levels on the Ability of Older Adults to Recover from Backward or Forward Balance Losses

Falls in older adults are an important concern due to the potential injuries associated with falling. Decreases in muscle strength as a result of natural aging could impair the ability of older adults to prevent either a backward or forward fall. Two musculoskeletal models were used to predict the effect of progressive aging-related losses in muscle strength on the ability to recover (i.e. restore static balance) after recovery step touchdown following a backward or forward balance loss. Additionally, the model-predicted effect of strength training selected muscle groups on the ability to recover after step touchdown following a backward balance loss was determined. The ability to recover was determined by mapping the boundary of the feasible region for balance recovery, with shifts in the boundary associated with changes in this ability. It was found that as healthy older adults age into their 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, typical aging-related losses in strength progressively decreased the ability to recover from both backward and forward balance losses. There was an observed larger effect of strength declines on balance recovery at older ages, and these effects were mainly due to declines in reestablishing center of mass stability. Simulated strength training of the ankle dorsiflexors improved the ability to recover after a backward balance loss, but strength training the knee extensors and/or hip extensors did not. These results suggest that strength training that includes the dorsiflexors should be included in fall prevention programs and should be emphasized in older adults representative of those beyond their 60’s

Connections of the corticomedial amygdala in the golden hamster. II. Efferents of the “olfactory amygdala”

The anterior cortical (C1) and posterolateral cortical (C2) nuclei of the amygdala are designated the “olfactory amygdala” because they each receive direct projections from the main olfactory bulb. The efferents of these nuclei were traced after sterotaxic placement of 1—5 ΜCi tritiated proline in the corticomedial amygdala of male golden hamsters. Following survival times of 12, 24, or 48 hours, 20 Μm frozen sections of the brains were processed for light microscopic autoradiography. Efferents from C2 terminate in layers II and III of the olfactory tubercle and in layer lb of pars ventralis and pars medialis of the anterior olfactory nucleus. Fibers from this nucleus also project to layers I and II of the infralimbic cortex and to the molecular layer of the agranular insular cortex. More posteriorly, fibers from C2 teminate in layer I of the dorsolateral entorhinal cortex, and in the endopiriform nucleus. From C1, efferent fibers travel in the stria terminalis and terminate in the precommissural bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and in the mediobasal hypothalamus. Efferents from C1 also innervate the molecular layer of C2, the amygdalo-hippocampal area, and the adjacent piriform cortex. Neurons in both C1 and C2 project to the molecular layer of the medial amygdaloid nucleus and the posteromedial cortical nucleus of the amygdala, the plexiform layer of the ventral subiculum, and the molecular layer of the lateral entorhinal cortex.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50013/1/901970108_ftp.pd

Asset management as a digital platform industry: a global financial network perspective

While contemporary technological disruption is increasingly conceptualized in terms of the logic and paradoxes of the digital platform economy, discussions of “FinTech” have only engaged to a limited extent with these debates—particularly from an economic geographic standpoint. Here we fill this gap by proposing an adapted Global Financial Network (GFN) framework for conceptualizing the organizational and geographic logic of the digital platform economy in finance, and applying it to examine the impact of the digital platform model on asset management. As we will show, asset management is being profoundly disrupted by what we dub digital asset management platforms—or DAMPs—which encompass services including index fund and ETF provision, robo-advising, and analytics and trading support. Like other digital platforms, DAMPs do not so much leverage technology to enhance their competitiveness within markets, as to radically restructure the market itself. Also, like other platforms, their rise has produced a winner-take-all paradox of centralization through democratization that defies predictions of technology-enabled industry decentralization. However, the logic and implications of the rise of DAMPs diverges, in other respects, from non-financial digital platforms, as finance has long possessed an informational intensity and regulatory and organizational fluidity characteristic of the digital platform economy. Consequently, the digital platform model has mostly developed endogenously in asset management through incremental innovation by major financial firms—in a process that has reinforced the position of leading incumbent asset management centers, and above all New York—rather than being introduced from the outside by upstart technology firms and clusters

Effect of Perturbation-Based Balance Training on Fall Risk and Fear of Falls in Community-Dwelling Older Adults – A Pilot Study

Falls are a major health concern among adults ≥65 years as it is the leading cause of injury and injury related death in the United States. Perturbation-based training (PBT) has been shown to reduce rate of falls by 50% and 24 slips has been shown to be optimal. It is unknown whether falls reduction would be greater with one session or spread out over multiple sessions. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of PBT dosage (12 slips over 2 sessions vs. 24 slips in one session) on falls incidence, fear of falling, and reactive stepping in community-dwelling older adults