Word: complexity
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...conversation is how ratings agencies get paid. Since the 1970s, the largest ratings agencies have been paid by the companies that issue bonds or securities. This "issuer-pay" model has been roundly criticized for leading the agencies to cozy up to the firms creating financial products - especially the complex ones - by assigning ratings that are more favorable than justified in order to hold on to the business. At the beginning of 2008, there were just 12 top-rated companies in the world, but some 64,000 structured finance instruments, like mortgage-related CDOs, won that seal of approval...
...Harvard College Women’s Center, said that she especially appreciated the contributions of the audience members. “I was really impressed with the level of honesty, and that people were willing to share,” said Marine. “This is a complex subject, and it’s difficult to talk about sometimes. [It’s] fraught with a lot of silence, hesitation, and ambivalence, especially by white people.” Loc Truong, assistant director of the Harvard Foundation, said that he felt that a major take-home point from yesterday?...
...series of questions from concerned staff workers, perplexed professors, and student activists. Faced with a $220 million deficit over the next two years, every member of the assembly had some reason to worry. “Each of us represents his or her own segment of a huge, complex organization,” said Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University Library. “And the questions naturally take the form of ‘What about me?’” Confirming his own observation, Darnton continued, “I have to admit, Mike, that...
...highly-classified EXACTO program began a year ago, when the U.S. military's band of scientists and engineers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - which played a key role in the creation of both the Internet and GPS - let the military-industrial complex know it was seeking a supergun. "The ability to more accurately prosecute targets at significantly longer range would provide a dramatic new capability to the U.S. military," DARPA'S solicitation for bids said. "The use of an actively controlled bullet will make it possible to counter environmental effects such as crosswinds and air density...
...Federal Government. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a more frightening sight than that of all 535 members of Congress grappling with a congregation of bureaucrats and voting on whether high school graduates should or should not be required, for example, to be able to plot real and complex numbers as points on a plane. Even at the state level, there were times when standards became tangled in political debates, including a protracted "fuzzy math" dispute over whether students should be taught to estimate answers and understand concepts rather than memorize multiplication tables and master long division. When politicians...