April 22, 2010 at 4:47 pm
President Obama returned to Manhattan to lay out his vision for Wall Street reform now inching its way through Congress. Former deputy Comptroller of the Currency Robert Bench, now a senior fellow at the BU Law School’s Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, says the proposed reforms don’t go far enough at reining in Wall Street’s excesses.
“Financial reform should be directed at capturing billions of profits into building capital and reserves at financial institutions. They need to become fortresses of finance rather than perpetual wards of the state.”
Contact Robert Bench, 617-353-5428, bobbench@bu.edu
April 22, 2010 at 10:31 am
The United Nations secretary-general soon will name a new UN climate chief on the heels of the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations. International Relations Professor Adil Najam, director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and lead author of the UN's climate change panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Prize, says the choice is critical for guiding future negotiations. In a commentary in New Straits Times, Najam suggests the attributes needed in a new UN climate chief.
"There is an opportunity here for the secretary-general to send a real signal about the centrality of sustainable development to climate change and global environmental governance. It would be a pity if this opportunity is missed."
Contact Adil Najam, 617-358-4000, anajam@bu.edu
April 21, 2010 at 5:45 pm
History Professor Bruce Schulman, author of "Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism," asks in a Politico commentary: Will the White House punish Democrats who defected on the monumental health care overhaul? After tracing both Franklin Roosevelt's and LBJ's successes and failures in dealing with their own political party, Schulman suggests that President Obama is learning how to balance the withholding of support and outright punishment.
"Strategically stealing pages from the FDR and LBJ playbooks, Obama may prove a more deft chief legislator than anyone imagined."
Contact Bruce Schulman, 617-353-8306, bjschulm@bu.edu
April 21, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Kathryn Bard
Kathryn Bard, a Boston University Associate Professor of Archaeology, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bard, who has conducted pathbreaking excavations in Egypt, is among 229 leaders in the sciences, social sciences, the humanities, the arts, business and public affairs to become members of the Academy -- one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
April 21, 2010 at 12:23 pm
On the heels of the SEC suing Goldman Sachs for fraud, key Senate Republicans are easing up on earlier harsh criticism of financial regulatory reform bills offered by the Democrats. Political science Professor Graham Wilson, author of "Only in America? American Politics in Comparative Perspective," says the shift makes political sense.
"The political costs of being seen to block reforming the financial system that almost wrecked us could be very high. In fact, it is a tribute to the bizarre nature of the U.S. Senate that two years after the crisis that harmed millions around the world struck it is still a challenge to get any reforms enacted."
Contact Graham Wilson, 617-353-2540, gkwilson@bu.edu
April 20, 2010 at 5:43 pm
U.S. antitrust regulators from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have proposed new guidelines for how they scrutinize mergers for possible antitrust violations. Law Professor Keith Hylton, an antitrust law authority, and School of Management finance Professor Michael Salinger, a former FTC director, agree the proposed guidelines more accurately reflect current practice -- but that only time will tell if they'll work.
Hylton: "As defendants become better acquainted with actual practice, the FTC may find that it prefers to make further changes down the road."
Salinger: "What remains to be seen is whether the courts will accept the less structured approach."
Contact Keith Hylton, 617-353-8959, knhylton@bu.edu, or Michael Salinger, 617-353-4408, salinger@bu.edu
April 20, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Lehman Brothers ex-CEO Richard Flud told Congress he has "no recollection" of hearing anything about how the now-bankrupt Wall Street investment bank used controversial accounting techniques to hide toxic assets from the balance sheet. Former Fed bank examiner Mark Williams, who teaches finance at the School of Management and just had a book published on the fall of Lehman ("Uncontrolled Risk"), says instead of "blaming and shaming" another fallen CEO these Congressional hearings should be used to flush out more relevant facts that can help shape regulatory reform.
"A more comprehensive approach can make this hearing a chance to expose the weakness in existing banking regulation and oversight. The stakes are too high to squander this opportunity."
Contact Mark Williams, 617-358-2789, williams@bu.edu
April 20, 2010 at 12:28 pm
A new study produced by Boston University and the Project for Excellence in Journalism that outlines media coverage of the Massachusetts special senate election has revealed some interesting points about the recent race. According to the report, national media initially lost interest in a "fairly dull and utterly local contest." But, "when it became clear something was up, it was polling—not journalistic reporting—that caught the wave in the race to succeed Kennedy."
For more information, contact: Tobe Berkovitz, 617-353-7724, tobetv@bu.edu.
April 16, 2010 at 4:48 pm
A newly released document shows that, although he didn't okay it in advance, then CIA Director Porter Goss in 2005 approved of the decision to destroy dozens of videotapes of brutal interrogations of terrorism detainees. International Relations Professor Joseph Wippl, a 30-year CIA operation officer, asks if the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA personnel doing the interrogations or to protect the CIA from its Abu Gharib moment?
"Like the Nixon [Watergate] tapes, once done on the record, it cannot be undone without serious repercussions."
Contact Joseph Wippl, 617-353-8992, jwippl@bu.edu
April 16, 2010 at 3:58 pm
You'd think that networks that are linked to other networks would be more stable because they'd multiply their redundancy. Wrong. New research by BU physicists, published in the latest Nature magazine and discussed in Wired, shows just the opposite. In fact, networked networks are more susceptible to swift, catastrophic collapse than are independent networks, said study co-author Gerald Paul, a BU research scientist.
"Networks with broad distributions are robust against random attacks. But we found that broad interconnected networks are very fragile."
Contact Gerald Paul, 617-353-3411, gerryp@bu.edu
