Predident's Budget of the U.S. Government , FY 2011

is now available from the U.S. GPO: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/home.action. The online PDF versions of the FY 2011 budget are digitally signed and certified in order to assure users of the authenticity of the documents.

Financial Crisis: Exit and Reform

The financial crisis has hit economies around the world and prompted both short-term questions about how best to alleviate the worst consequences responsibly and long-term questions about reforming the global financial system.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international body of 30 developed countries, recently took a comprehensive look at the current crisis and existing financial institutions and offered a menu of strategy recommendations to help global economic policy managers extricate their economies from the crisis. The foreword to this report (PDF) reads:

Two questions, then, are at the core of this report: How and when can governments safely wind down their emergency measures? And how can we sensibly reform financial markets? The purpose is to draw together and demonstrate the interconnections among a wide range of issues, and in doing so to contribute to global efforts to address these challenges.

The report divides its recommendations into both reforming financial incentives and phasing out emergency measures. The report provides a good resource for students wishing to obtain a deeper understanding the current system of national and international finance.

A Century of Growth

With the arrival of 2010 and the end of the decade, many individuals have spent time looking back at trends over the past ten years, identifying the decade's "bests" and "worsts," or simply pondering how the world has changed since 2000. In the same spirit of looking backward, here is an excellent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that examines technology and economic growth in four of the world's major economies: France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors take a slightly longer view than the previous decade, instead looking back over the Twentieth century.

The report specifically deals with productivity of labor and total input. Productivity gains are a good measure of technological progress: economically, technology helps to increase output generated from a given level of input.

The authors find:

The past 120 years have been characterized by: (i) rapid economic growth and large productivity gains in all four countries; (ii) a long decline of productivity in the United Kingdom relative to the United States, and to a lesser extent also to France and Japan, a relative decline that was interrupted by the second world war (WW2); (iii) the remarkable catching-up to the United States by France and Japan after WW2, that stopped in the case of Japan during the 1990s.

Much, but not all, of these changes are due to the use of information and communication technology (ICT). The report is an excellent resource for learning about how economies change over time.

Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act

While the nation grapples with wars overseas and health care reform at home, climate change legislation is steadily making its way through Congress. The House of Representatives already passed a climate package; the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works passed their own legislation, dubbed the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.

The legislation would create a cap and trade program targeted at greenhouse gas emissions, push forward carbon capture and storage research, and appropriate funds for a variety of climate and energy-related work at EPA, the Department of Energy, and other agencies. The Congressional Budget Office just completed a cost estimate of the bill to determine budget and deficit impacts. The estimate, worth reading in its entirety here, finds the bill would:

• Increase federal revenues by about $854 billion; and
• Increase direct spending by about $833 billion.

In total, those changes would reduce budget deficits (or increase future surpluses) by about $21 billion over the 2010-2019 period. (All estimated effects would be on-budget.) In years after 2019, direct spending would be less than the net revenues attributable to the legislation in each of the 10-year periods following 2019. Therefore, CBO estimates that enacting S. 1733 would not increase the deficit in any of the four 10-year periods following 2019.

Has the Stimulus Package Worked?

Has the stimulus package worked? It's a question that many inside and outside of government have been asking for a long time. It will likely be some time before anyone is able to say with minimal uncertainty. That said, a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has attempted to provide an answer, at least in terms of job creation. There is still significant uncertainty, however.

The CBO writes in its report (PDF available here):

Recipients report that about 640,000 jobs were created or retained with ARRA funding through September 2009. Such reports, however, do not provide a comprehensive estimate of the law’s impact on employment in the United States. That impact may be higher or lower than the reported number for several reasons (in addition to any issues about the quality of the data in the reports).

Another resource on the stimulus package is this excellent overview (PDF) of fiscal stimulus policy by the Congressional Research Service.

Health Care Bills & Premiums

It's not easy to keep up with all the analyses of the various health care proposals in Congress, but here is an interesting report (PDF) that addresses the impact of the current Senate bill on premiums. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates different impacts for different insurance purchasers:

The effects of the proposal on premiums would differ across insurance markets (see Table 1). The largest effects would be seen in the nongroup market, which would grow in size under the proposal but would still account for only 17 percent of the overall insurance market in 2016. The effects on premiums would be much smaller in the small group and large group markets, which would make up 13 percent and 70 percent of the total insurance market, respectively.

CBO estimates that higher impacts would happen for non-group purchasers than for employer-based group insurance purchasers, who could see a small increase or decrease in premiums. The full report is worth checking out.

Jobs and Growth

With the recession dragging on for many individuals, and the unemployment rate hovering around 10%, there is talk of new legislation to further stimulate job creation. This begs the question, how effective is policy in counteracting the business cycle and creating positive employment outcomes?

Much work has been done on the subject of employment policy and the workforce. Here's a partial reading list for those who are interested. The President's chief economic adviser, Christina Romer, co-authored one paper on the subject in the '90s that gives a good overview of federal responses to recessions; the Government Accountability Office has done extensive work reviewing the Workforce Investment Act; the National Renewable Energy Lab has looked at the economic and employment effects of renewable energy on a state-by-state basis; and the CBO has performed some macroeconomic analysis of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known as the stimulus bill.

Fall Depository Library Conference Meeting, 2009

Now, you can read all about the Fall Depository Meeting whether you attend it or not. The full descriptions of the presentations are available here.

One of the most interesting sessions was "Demystifying Digital Depository: What it is and What it could do for the future of the FDLP." The concept of a digital depository system is that each depository library stores its selected digital documents on its local server in order to ensure access and long-term preservation. This practice would provide additional protection against any financial risk that no single system such as GPO FDsys can provide alone. View this site for the further discussion including the methods of storing documents locally.

Housing Market Report

A major driver of the current financial crisis is the burst housing bubble; many have asked the question, why did the housing market collapse?

The Atlanta Fed Reserve attempts to answer this question in a new study, "Decomposing the Foreclosure Crisis: House Price Depreciation versus Bad Underwriting." In this study, the authors build a model employing exhaustive housing and mortgage data from the past two decades, and then focus on the housing market experience in Massachusetts to try to gain some insight into root causes. The authors come to an interesting conclusion:

We argue that relaxed underwriting standards did severely aggravate the crisis by creating a class of homeowners who were particularly vulnerable to the decline in prices. But, as we show in our counterfactual analysis, that emergence alone, in the absence of a price collapse, would not have resulted in the substantial foreclosure boom that was experienced.

Chesapeake Bay Bill Committee Report

The environmental status and health of the Chesapeake Bay has long been a source of concern for many in our region. There is currently a bill in Congress that attempts to address these issues, by directing OMB and EPA to undertake budgeting and planning for restoration and management.

The bill was approved by the House Committee on Natural Resources over the summer; the House Committee report (PDF) on the bill has just been added to GPO's online catalog. Follow the link to learn more about the bill's provisions, background, and legislative history to date.

Filibusters and Cloture

Senator Joe Lieberman (CT) has been in the news lately for his stance on health care reform and whether or not he'll vote for cloture or filibuster any proposals. So...what do these terms all mean?

For an answer, look to this report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service on cloture and the filibuster. It provides excellent, readable background on what these procedural tactics are and the effects they can have on the legislative process. It was published in 2003, but still very relevant today.

House Hearing Report on Combating Gangs

In light of the recent major drug raids across North America, here you can find a related report from the Government Accountability Office to the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Titled "Combating Gangs: Better Coordination and Performance Measurement Would Help Clarify Roles of Federal Agencies and Strengthen Assessment of Efforts," the report addresses the roles of various federal departments and law enforcement agencies in combating gang crime, including coordination, performance measurement, and funding.

The report ultimately recommends that the Department of Justice:

...reexamine roles of headquarters anti-gang entities, establish performance measures for antigang efforts, review [US District Attorney] gang-related case data, and, along with [the Department of Homeland Security], develop a common definition for “gang.”

The report also states that the Homeland Security Department agrees with these recommendations.

Oklahoma State Library Named the Best in the Nation

GPO named the Oklahoma Dept. of Libraries as the 2009 Federal Depository Library of the Year. See the story more at http://www.gpo.gov/pdfs/news-media/press/09news42.pdf

Federal Register in XML format

Federal Register is now available in XML format, which makes them easier to use. The register is easily accessible from FDsys (Federal Digital System)from 1994 on.

President Obama's Health Care Reform Address

to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9 is available (text & Video) on GPO Federal Digital System (FDsys), a one-stop site to authentic, published Government information.

->Link to President's Address
->Link to Video

Swine Flue again.

I am forwarding some flu guidances that our Education Liaison Librarian sent out since that influenza is currently more active:

* New CDC H1N1 Guidance for Colleges, Universities, and Institutions
of Higher Education <http://digbig.com/5bafcc>

* Updated Guidance for Businesses and Employers for the Fall Flu
Season <http://digbig.com/5bafcd>

* Updated Federal Guidelines for 2009 H1N1 Influenza in Schools Offer
Many Options <http://digbig.com/5bafce>

* Influenza A(H1N1) and Pandemic Preparedness Under the Rule of
International Law <http://digbig.com/5bafcf>

* Prevention and Control of Seasonal Influenza with Vaccines -
Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices
(ACIP), 2009 <http://digbig.com/5bafcg>

World Bank Climate Data Portal

provides quick climate and climate related data for policy makers and development participants. The Web site is at http://beta.worldbank.org/climatechange/ and includes a data visualization tool.

Site Maps Stimulus Spending

Do you want to know: how much funding is being distributed to each state, how much funding is being provided to each state by each federal department, how the funding is flowing to individual contractors, and how many jobs are being created in the locations? See the new mapping feature of Recovery.gov.

Asksam: Obama Speech ebook

A free searchable collection of Barack Obama speeches from 2002-present is available from Asksam. Please check out:
+ State of the Nation-Speech to Congress on 02/24/2009
+ First 100 Days-Address to Nation on 04/29/2009
+ Cairo Speech-Cairo, Egypt Address on 06/04/2009.

2008 Notable Government Documents

from May issue of Library Journal. Included are Atlas of Global Development, Black American People (1870-1989), U.S. Marines in Iraq, Civics and Citizenship Toolkit, the Little Acorn, and The World Cruise of the Great Fleet. All of them are available through GMU. Please check out our catalog.