Search

Begin New Search Topic Security Political Geography United States

701. Base Structure Report Fiscal Year 2004

Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Since the 1999 edition, the Department of Defense has used its consolidated real property inventory (the Facilities Analysis Database) as the basis for the annual publication of the Base Structure Report. This report contains a comprehensive listing of installations and sites owned and used by the Department. It summarizes the current facilities inventory and provides other basic information, such as information concerning the site locations, names of the nearest city, and, where available, includes personnel authorizations.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Economics
Political Geography:
United States

702. Good News Is No News? The Impact of Credit Rating Changes on the Pricing of Asset-Backed Securities

Author:
John Ammer and Nathanael Clinton
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We assess the impact of credit ratings on the pricing of structured financial products, using a sample of more than 1300 changes in Moody's or Standard and Poor's (S) ratings of U.S. asset-backed securities (ABS). We find that rating downgrades tend to be accompanied by negative returns and widening spreads, with the average effects stronger than those that have been reported in prior research on corporate and sovereign bond ratings. A portion of the negative implications of ABS downgrades are anticipated by price movements ahead of the rating action, although to a lesser degree than has been found for bond ratings. Accordingly, ABS market participants appear to rely somewhat more on rating agencies as a source of negative news about credit risk. Nevertheless, because ABS rating downgrades are relatively rare events, their effects account for only a small fraction of the variance of returns. In contrast to our results on downgrades, market reactions to ABS rating upgrades are virtually zero, on average. Together, the results imply even greater asymmetry in the value-relevance of ABS rating changes than has been found in event studies of changes in bond ratings.
Topic:
Security, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

703. The Information Content of Forward and Futures Prices: Market Expectations and the Price of Risk

Author:
Jonathan H. Wright, Sergey V. Chernenko, and Krista B. Schwarz
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Forward and futures rates are frequently used as measures of market expectations. In this paper we apply standard forecast efficiency tests, and some newer exact sign and rank tests, to a wide range of forward and futures rates, and in this way test whether these are in fact rational expectations of future actual prices. The forward and futures rates that we study under a common methodology include foreign exchange forward rates, U.S. and foreign interest rate futures and forward rates, oil futures and natural gas futures. For most, but not all, of these instruments, we find that we can reject the hypothesis that the forward or futures rates are rational expectations of actual future prices. It is well known that foreign exchange forward rates give less accurate forecasts than a random walk, but we show that this is also true for some interest rate futures and forward rates. We conclude that forward and futures prices are not generally pure measures of market expectations: they are also heavily affected by the market price of risk.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

704. Rebasing, Revisited

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
12-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
One of the key questions for the second term of the Bush administration is how to reposture U.S. military forces both at home and abroad. Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, these forces resemble nothing so much as a smaller version of their Cold War selves, in many ways improved but hardly “transformed”— to use Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's mantra—let alone optimized for the missions they face today and are most likely to face in the near future. While the idea of “force posture” includes factors beyond basing, the tyrannies of time and distance still do much to shape the character of war. The value of bases is as the value of other real estate: it all comes down to location, location, location.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and National Security
Political Geography:
United States and Berlin

705. Homeland Defense and the U.S. Military

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The defense of the American homeland has always been the core mission of the U.S. military, but the meaning of that responsibility is undergoing a transformation and demands careful rethinking. Specifically, the September 11 attacks and the global war on terror are forcing American strategists to reevaluate conventional assumptions about how missile defense and neighboring nations fit into U.S. national security.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and National Security
Political Geography:
United States and America

706. A Strategy for Nuclear Iran

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Regardless of who is elected to the presidency in November, the growing threat posed by a nuclear Iran is certain to be at the top of the next administration's national security agenda. Unfortunately, neither a "grand bargain" with Tehran nor a conventional military strike against its nuclear facilities offers much hope of preventing one of the world's most dangerous regimes from acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons. In the short term, at least, the United States must instead work to isolate Iran not only militarily but ideologically, by succeeding in the democratic transformation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Iran

707. The Top Ten Questions for the Post-9/11 World

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
As the great bureaucratic gears that will stamp out the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review—without question, the most important appraisal of U.S. military requirements in a generation—begin to turn, the Pentagon's decisions in the months ahead will shape the post-9/11 world. As a barometer of things to come, here follow the ten most important questions today confronting U.S. military strategists and force planners.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States

708. Unrealistic Realism

Author:
Vance Serchuk and Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
With his July 4, 2004, op-ed in the Washington Post, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry has attempted to lay claim to the mantle of conservative "realism" in this fall's foreign policy debate. Certainly, there is a heavy dose of campaign strategy in this—the idea of "attacking Bush from the right" is just the sort of man-bites-dog angle that appeals equally to Beltway political professionals and the journalists who cover them. But the irony is that Kerry's "realist" policy prescriptions are themselves profoundly unrealistic, taking little account of the post-9/11 world and reflecting a dogmatic, inflexible, even reactionary ideology. They likewise stand opposed to the great liberal tradition of American strategic culture—a history that links the Founders to the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States and America

709. Mind the Gap

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The distance between the strategic objectives of America's national security policy and the institutional capabilities of its military is large—and growing. Around the world, the U.S. Armed Forces—and particularly, the U.S. Army—are increasingly tasked with low-level, long-term counterinsurgency operations against al Qaeda and its allies. But rather than transforming the force for the operational realities of the global war on terror, the new National Military Strategy seems to treat these missions as an afterthought or, in Pentagonese, "a lesser included case." If the United States is to prevail, it is vital that next year's Quadrennial Defense Review address the ends-means gap between an ambitious strategy and a force ill-designed to accomplish it.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States and America

710. Learning to Live without Europe

Author:
Thomas Donnelly
Publication Date:
05-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Despite the best efforts to resurrect the transatlantic bonhomie of the Cold War era, the limitations of any strategic partnership between the United States and Europe are growing increasingly clear. This is not merely a function of fallout over Operation Iraqi Freedom or animosity toward the Bush administration per se. Rather, the split between Europe and the United States reflects a more fundamental clash of strategic cultures. While Americans have historically emphasized preemption, unilateralism, and hegemony in formulating their national security policies, Europeans have preferred balance of power realism. It is time for Washington to recognize that any "partnership" with Europe is as likely to retard as advance U.S. interests in the democratization and liberalization of the Greater Middle East.
Topic:
Security and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, America, Europe, and Middle East