International use of the euro

08 July 2015

The euro was increasingly used as a funding currency by international borrowers in 2014 and early 2015, compared with the previous review period, while the share of the euro in foreign exchange reserves remained broadly stable. These are among the main findings of the report on “The international role of the euro”, which examines developments in the use of the euro by non-euro area residents in 2014 and early 2015 and was published today by the European Central Bank (ECB). Continue reading…

British Petroleum settles with record amount

03 July 2015

Officials in the USA have announced an $18.7 billion settlement with BP that resolves years of litigation over the oil spill of five years ago.
The settlement announcement comes as a federal judge was preparing to rule on how much BP owed in federal Clean Water Act penalties after million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. The spill resulted from the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers.

Roadmap for the future of the Economic and Monetary Union

22 June 2015

The presidents of five European institutions published a report entitled “Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union,” commissioned by leaders at the Euro Summit last October. The report, written by the presidents of the European Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Eurogroup and the European Central Bank, lays out a roadmap for further integration of the euro area. Continue reading…

Whitepaper

 

Guideline Data Acquisition for Investigation Purposes

19 June 2015

IT security incidents sometimes are of such nature that the organisation affected by the incident wants to pursue prosecution. However, often the facts are not necessarily immediately communicated to the police for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the ir scope and nature is not clear from the beginning. For prosecution to be successful, the chain of custody needs to be preserved in a legally accepted manner, which requires the evidence to be preserved immediately after the detection of the incident.

It should be noted that communication to law enforcement authorities must be made as soon as possible after discovery of the facts given the volatility of traces and actions that could be taken (Internet identification, etc.). The purpose of these guidelines in this white paper is to help IT services to preserve evidence in an IT security incident in such a way that the investigation by IT security experts or law enforcement authorities can be carried out in an optimal manner.

Whitepaper

 

Endogenous Instability

10 June 2015

Financial Risk Management is strongly hindered by the conventional macro-economic vision of the world, assuming stabilising cyclical processes, that are once in a while temporarily taken out of equilibrium due to external shocks. Reality is much more hectic and has more similarities with debt-driven instability created from within the economy. This results in much more severe market crashes and deeper depressions than conventional theory teaches us. This is the theory of Endogenous Instability.