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Reports that every year America's treasury takes nearly $36 billion in old notes out of circulation. How some of this money is now returning as stationary; Recycling efforts engineered by the Massachusetts firm Crane & Company; Additional information and analysis.

Focuses on the United States commercial paper market, which is suffering from a contraction in the amount issued by financial and non-financial companies. Reasons for the decline in issues, including a reduction in borrowing needs; Credit risk of commercial paper; How the market works; How credit downgrades have pushed companies into the tier-two category of issuers.

Focuses on the negative consequence of a reliance among United States companies on convertible bonds known as quasi-commercial paper. How they work; Growth of this market; Use of these bonds by Tyco International; Suggestion that the failure of this market resulted in financial restructuring of corporations.

Presents information on the U.S. paper industry. Details about the deal signed between Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Fort James Corp.; Apprehension that capital spending in the industry will fall below depreciation; Discussion of consolidation in the paper industry; Information on plans of Georgia-Pacific for its cash surplus.

Discusses the redesigned United States $100 bill, in light of the esthetics of paper-money design. Redesign due to security considerations; View that the redesigned Franklin bill is remarkably ugly; History of efforts in the United States to foil counterfeiters, while also producing beautiful bills and financial certificates; The role of engravers.

Focuses on several mergers in the pulp industry in the United States. The merger of Scott Paper and Kimberley Clark; Announcement by International Paper on November 6, 1995 that the company would pay $3.5 billion to acquire a controlling interest in Federal Paper Board; Predictions of slow growth in the paper-making industry.

Focuses on the efforts of U.S. retail companies to limit the sale of cigarette papers on their stores. KMart's plan of selling packets of cigarette papers only if they are attached to pouches of tobacco; Kroger's adoption of rules limiting paper sales to customers.

The article reports that France and Germany are pushing rival models for defence co-operation, but neither is very ambitious. Topics disccussed include acronyms made such as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), European Defence Fund (EDF) and a European Intervention Initiative (E21) as Europeans scramble to reduce their military dependence on the U.S. and the gap between the rhetoric of political leaders and the modesty of these defence drives.

The author speculates about whether paper money, no longer backed by gold, could lose its value if the world's major economies continue to run up debt. Given the dollar's role as a currency of last resort, some wonder if its decline heralds not just an economic adjustment by the United States, but a crisis of sorts in the value of paper money itself. Money in its present form is a relatively new invention. For most of human history money meant either gold or silver, either directly, or indirectly by means of the "gold standard" which meant, at least in theory, that all paper money was backed by gold. But it came to an end in 1971, when inflationary pressures in America caused the country's manufacturers to become uncompetitive and forced the country off the gold standard. Since then the world has relied on "fiat money", so-called because it is created by government fiat and is backed only by the promises of central bankers to protect the value of their currencies. It is the value of those promises that some are now questioning. Although central banks around the world still hold about 30,000 tonnes of gold in their reserves, many have been offloading their stocks over the years. Those who doubt the continued worth of paper money as a store of value point to two things. The first is that the price of gold has been rising even though official inflation is low. But the rise in the price of gold in particular has raised questions. The biggest of these--and the second main reason for concern--is the amount of debt that rich-country governments have been running up.

Comments on a paper airplane competition held by McDonnell Douglas, which was billed as the `World's Greatest Paper Airplane Contest.' The record flight time; Dealing with paper's drawbacks as an aerodynamic material; Other aspects.

The article focuses on efforts by businesses and interest groups to phase out the one dollar bill and replace it with a dollar coin. It states the U.S. is one of the few large economies that issues low-denomination bank notes (LDBN), with Canada and Great Britain having replaced their LDBN before the turn of the 21st century. It comments that lobbyists are trying to convince Congress to switch to dollar coins to reduce the deficit and mentions a Government Accountability Office study about the savings.

Discusses how lawyers, lobbyists, and assorted non-criminals (including government) legally steal the public's tax dollars and why the American public allows them to do it. Transaction activities in the US; Number of lawyers in 1960 (260,000) and number today (541,000); Number of national trade associations; Political lobbyists; Attempts to gauge the costs (and benefits) to America's economy of federal regulation; Five types of federal regulatory costs; More.

The article presents an exploration into economic conditions in the United States, particularly concerning the instability of the mortgage markets and its effects on banking and the trading of commercial papers. Theories on the possible future corrections in the credit markets are provided, citing the Federal Reserve's tendency to adjust rates.

The article focuses on research which found that the share of economics papers in leading journals focused on pure theory fell from 1983 to 2011. Topics discussed the include number of National Bureau of Economic Research papers released in 2017 that featured the use of administrative data in the U.S., a study which found that white men in America earned significantly more than black men and benefits of sharing tax records with researchers.

The article examines the administration of justice in the U.S. Abuses by lawyers of the pre-trial process of discovery of evidence in civil actions are discussed in terms of their effect on the cost of litigation. The increased length and complexity of discovery is also examined as a factor in lengthy delays in the conduct of trials.

This article focuses on the impact of scandals involving fabricated reports on the newspaper industry in the United States. On April 20th, the editor of USA Today, Karen Jurgensen, resigned abruptly following a scandal involving one of her star foreign correspondents, Jack Kelley. Last year, Howell Raines, then editor of the New York Times, eventually fell on his sword in the wake of a similar scandal involving his own star reporter, Jayson Blair. Now that the editors of two of America's three leading national newspapers (the third is the Wall Street Journal) have succumbed to scandals, the publishing industry will no doubt be worrying about who may be next. An investigation by USA Today's own reporters alleges acts of fabrication and fraud that would have made the most wicked bubble-era boss blush. Ultimately, it is the customer--the reader--who holds newspapers to account. That explains the extraordinary efforts of both newspapers to investigate and deal with their problems publicly as they fight to protect their brands.

Looks at the educational agenda laid out by President Bill Clinton in his 1997 State of the Union address. The belief that education will be the top priority of Clinton's second term; Details of Clinton's education agenda; Tax cuts and grants for college students; Problems it would encounter during implementation by the states; Whether Clinton's scheme could stem the rising costs of higher education; Budget issues facing the United States.

Makes observations about distinctions that have been made about possible recipients of an earthquake-relief package of $8.6 billion signed by President Bill Clinton. Illegal immigrants versus citizens; Argument that long-term aid should only go to legal residents; Why the discrimination may be hard to practice; Amount of undocumented immigrants in California; Figures from Governor Pete Wilson; How illegal immigrants contribute to California.

Asserts that the rising tide of equity issuance is an indicator in the continued buoyancy of the American stockmarket. Initial public offerings (IPOS) running at record levels; Hottest new issuers in 1993 include multimedia communications companies, re-insurers and consumer leisure firms; Details.

The article reports that the ever-flowing rush of information technology will not necessarily dash conventional newspapers against the rocks; they may emerge from the waves reborn. Newspapers are in the business of disseminating information, not in the killing business. A romanticism about printing presses still lingers in many newspaper offices. The very word newspaper obstructs attempts to think about change. According to Roger Fidler, who runs the Knight-Ridder information Design Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, there is a need for high-definition touch-sensitive screen, which can replace newspapers.

The article looks at the trend of businessmen from other industries buying newspapers in the U.S. in the context of problems facing the print newspaper industry, discussing the decision of Internet retailer Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos to buy the "Washington Post" newspaper and trends in newspapers' revenue. The purchase of the "Boston Globe" newspaper by sports team owner John Henry is cited.

The article reports the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) plan for travel to the moon and Mars. America's space agency, NASA, has published over 6,000 pages about the contracts for its Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). Frank Sietzen, a journalist and co-author of "New Moon Rising," has spent the better part of six months leafing through these contracts in order to divine the agency's plans. According to Mr Sietzen, the new moonships will have three components that will be launched separately and then bolted together in orbit. One component will be the CEV. The second will be an Earth-departure stage. The third will be the "lunar surface access module", or lunar lander. He predicts that there will be three phases of lunar exploration that will eventually establish a base camp.

The article looks at the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxely act's demands for internal audits on United States and foreign companies. On December 15, 2005, Air China joined the growing ranks of Chinese companies listed on western stock exchanges. Unlike several other big Chinese firms, the national airline chose to land at the London Stock Exchange rather than in New York. One reason is thought to be that listing in America has become increasingly burdensome since Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002 in the wake of the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and elsewhere. The number of controls that big companies must test and document can run into the tens of thousands, down to limiting who can sign company cheques. Sarbanes-Oxley cost General Electric about $30 million in extra payments to its auditor in 2003. All this may be harming American exchanges' ability to compete with European rivals for new listings. Of course, against the expense and lost business must be weighed the benefits of better auditing and more trustworthy accounts.

Reports on the shortage of students at medical colleges in the United States. Role of paperwork in the unpopularity of the medical profession; Mention of insurance claims; Studies concerning the shortage of physicians; Salaries for doctors in the U.S.; Support of the industry by the National Institutes of Health.

The article reports that the United States' second-largest bond market is having a last fling before it finally settles down. The revolution in financing the American dream of home ownership has created the most important part of the fixed-income market after government bonds. The first mortgage-backed security was issued in 1970, but the market took off with the property and debt booms of the 1980s. Fresh mortgage bonds have recently poured on to the market at twice the rate of Treasury bonds and over three times that of investment-grade corporate bonds.

The article discusses economist and Harvard University faculty member Kenneth Rogoff's claim that if nations such as the U.S. and Great Britain scrapped their physical forms of currency it would help the governments collect additional taxes, fight crime, and develop more efficient monetary policies. Computer software company Apple Inc.'s "contactless payment" system is mentioned, along with cash and the amount of paper monetary notes and coins in circulation. The World Bank is examined.

The article discusses a new paper by David Rozado, which argues that the "woke" phenomenon did not begin in America, as is commonly believed, but rather in countries such as Australia, Canada, and Sweden. It mentions that it found that words like "transphobic", "racist", and "sexist" were used more frequently in those countries than in the U.S.

The article examines the effect of the global financial crisis on corporate chief financial officers (CFO). Many CFOs have found it difficult to sell the securities known as commercial paper their companies depend on for short-term financing. The U.S. Federal Reserve Board has set up a special fund to purchase commercial paper.

The article reports on a decline in police-related 911 calls after the murder of African American George Floyd in the U.S. based on a working paper published by economist Desmond Ang in September 2021.

The article examines how political and commercial pressures have led U.S. journalists to reconsider the value and meaning of objectivity. It mentions that several journalists at "Washington Post" newspaper have endorsed demands for "combating racism and discrimination" at the paper; and also mentions that U.S. President Donald Trump has exposed problems with journalistic notions of balance.

The article discusses the implications to free speech of a U.S. court case involving PubPeer, a web site that lets people to anonymously comment on research papers and to alert scientists to mistakes in their papers. Topics discussed include the debate on what scientists can say online and anonymously, a defamation case filed by cancer researcher Fazlul Sarkar against commenters for their insinuation that he was guilty of scientific fraud, and the limit of free speech under the First Amendment.

The article presents the findings of a Visa/PLUS survey about the U.S. budget deficit. The survey reported that 35% of the U.S. people favour advertising on dollar bills if it would help cut the country's deficit or reduce tax. The survey also found out that some of the respondents would want to see new faces on their banknotes. U.S. banknotes were last redesigned in 1929 and carry the images of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and their sort. Respondents suggested that the old faces be replaced by John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King or Elvis Presley.

Surveys change in the structure of money management in America. Mutual funds are now America's largest buyers of common stocks and municipal bonds and a significant force in commercial paper and junk bonds. Growth at the expense of banks and thrifts; Threats of higher taxes causes interest in tax-exempt municipal bonds; Fast-growing defined-contribution plans; Retail and wholesale managers competing for companies' defined-contribution pension assets; Additional information.

The article focuses on a working paper from the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research, "Do banks pass through credit expansions? The marginal profitability of consumer lending during the great recession." It states the paper examined evidence of demand for consumer credit and mentions theories on credit card balances of individuals with similar credit scores but differing spending limit thresholds. It talks about the reduced impact of U.S. Federal Reserve's efforts to increase lending.

The article focuses on Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor of economics who is awaiting Senate confirmation to replace Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. At the height of the stockmarket bubble in 1999, he co-authored an influential paper with Mark Gertler of New York University which argued that central banks should focus on asset prices only insofar as they are likely to influence consumer prices. Targeting asset prices directly, his paper claimed, would create more, not less, instability. This suggests that a Bernanke Fed might be even less inclined to fret about soaring house prices than Mr Greenspan, who has only recently worried aloud about them. Everyone knows that Mr Bernanke, unlike Mr Greenspan, is a long-standing supporter of the idea that the Fed should set a public target for inflation against which it can be held accountable, as many central banks do. Mr Bernanke will doubtless nudge the Fed towards inflation-targeting. But the change is likely to be evolutionary rather than radical. His initial task will be to prove his inflation-fighting credentials and shake off a lingering reputation for dovishness.

The article discusses the outlook for open-access publishing. On February 3rd America's National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's biggest sponsor of medical research, announced that from May it will expect the research work which it has helped to finance to be made available online, to all comers, and free, within a year of that research having been published in a journal. The NIH also plans to make it easy for researchers to do its bidding by spending $2m-4m a year supporting an electronic archive into which these papers can be deposited. This will be managed by America's National Library of Medicine. The $30 billion that it spends on research each year leads to the publication of around 60,000 papers annually--some 11% of the total published in the medical field.

The article looks at electronic voting in the United States prior to the 2004 presidential elections. It is not often that the dry subject of voting technology makes the headlines. It famously happened in America's presidential election in 2000. Many states subsequently invested in new, electronic voting machines, in which old-fashioned paper is replaced by a shiny touch-screen. Around 50 million voters, or almost a third of the electorate, will use such machines to cast their votes in the 2004 election, according to Election Data Services, a consultancy based in Washington, DC. The lack of a paper trail has made new touch-screen voting machines hugely controversial. When it comes to ensuring accuracy and accountability, casino slot machines get more government supervision than federal election voting machines. Optical scanners were recommended by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, an academic group set up after the 2000 election, as the best form of voting machine.

WHEN Dmitry Sklyarov, a young Russian computer scientist, got up to deliver a technical paper at a conference in Las Vegas in 2002, he little suspected that he was about to become something of a global celebrity. But soon after delivering the paper he was arrested by the FBI for breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 American law that bans any efforts to bypass software that protects copyrighted digital files. The arrest sparked a rash of protests in both America and Europe. The Internet hummed with indignation. Charges against Mr Sklyarov have since been dropped, in exchange for a promise to testify. But the case against his employer, Moscow-based ElcomSoft, went ahead in San Jose, California. The trial will mark a crucial stage in the growing struggle between industries supplying content and those arguing that overly strict enforcement of copyright may crush the creativity of cyberspace.

The article reports on the economic relationship between the U.S. and China. The U.S. has long been urging China to revalue the yuan, but the article argues that the change could be bad for the U.S. America has filed a complaint against Chinese export subsidies with the World Trade Organization. The Department of Commerce has put 10-20% tariffs on paper from China and is filing more complaints over pirated media. China could see its economy explode with a revalued yuan.

This article looks at how China has helped to finance America's vast current-account deficit. Until last year nobody seemed to care that the Chinese yuan was pegged to the dollar. But now China's exchange-rate regime has become one of the hottest topics in international finance-yet more evidence of China's growing influence on the world economy. Many economists argue that China's fixed exchange rate distorts trade and investment flows.By refusing to allow its exchange rate to rise against the dollar, China, they say, is hindering the adjustment in global exchange rates needed to reduce America's current-account deficit, which now stands at more than 5% of GDP. As a result of its pegged exchange rate and large capital inflows, China's foreign-exchange reserves have more than doubled since early 2002 to over $480 billion, most of it in American government securities. China is not alone: other Asian economies have also intervened heavily to prevent their currencies appreciating. But sooner or later, those economists say, China will lose its appetite for dollars, causing the greenback to tumble. However, Michael Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau and Peter Garber at Deutsche Bank reject this view. In a series of papers, they argue that America's current-account deficit will be happily financed by China and other Asian countries for at least another decade. This view of Asia's relationship with America helps to explain why in recent years it has proved possible to finance America's large current-account deficit without a bigger rise in American bond yields or a bigger fall in the dollar.

This article focuses on the sharp division between Democrats and Republicans in the United States and how this division will impact the presidential election of 2004. In 2004, America is holding an Eatanswill election. Red states (Republican) and Blue (Democratic) are replacing the Blues and Buffs of Dickens's "Pickwick Papers". This year's race is the first presidential contest since the terrorist attacks of September 2001 raised fundamental questions about the nature and direction of American foreign policy. Equally profound disputes exist over social programmes and economic management when the baby-boomers start to retire. "Cultural issues"--in this election, attitudes to gay marriage and the appointment of anti-abortion judges--testify to America's persistent disputes over basic social values. And America, like Eatanswill, is split down the middle. Party identification remains at parity, with around 45% of voters calling themselves Democrats and 45% Republicans.

The debate over "offshoring" has been brewing since a study by Forrester, a research group, in 2002 claimed that 3.3m white-collar American jobs (500,000 of them in IT) would shift offshore to countries such as India by 2015. Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, talks about a "new and powerful global labour arbitrage" that has led to an accelerating transfer of high-wage jobs to India and elsewhere. He reckons this is adding to the bias towards jobless recoveries in western economies. Multinationals may in future do original R&D in low-cost places, but for the moment most of the jobs on the move are the paper-based back-office ones that can be digitalised and telecommunicated anywhere around the world, plus more routine telephone inquiries that are increasingly being bundled together into call centres. The offshoring business remains predominantly English-speaking. It is dominated by American and British companies outsourcing their internal operations to third parties in places such as Ireland, Canada and South Africa, but most of all in India. The main advantage of shifting business operations to India and similar low-cost countries comes from a combination of lower wages and the improvement in the quality and price of international telecommunications. But the benefits of offshoring are not confined to lower costs. For one thing, offshoring allows companies to work round-the-clock shifts, ferrying data back and forth from one place to another as the sun sets. For another, it allows them to rethink the way they solve IT problems.

he September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on America, and repeated warnings that the next targets could be Germany, England, France, or Italy show how vulnerable Europe is to new threats, from instability in regions far away, from failed or failing states and from the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In the past, many Europeans have seen such problems as America's to deal with, or no one's. At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Prague, the Czech Republic, on November 21st-22nd, 2002, and in the European Union's subsequent deliberations about the best use of its own embryonic rapid-reaction force, European leaders will commit themselves, at least on paper, to take on farther-flung responsibilities. After half a century of being wrapped up chiefly in their own affairs, Europe must think urgently about how best to defend themselves and their interests anywhere in the world. Although Europe has prided itself on their civilizing "soft power", most European governments recognize that more hard power, military capability, in short, is required. The go-anywhere NATO that is to be proclaimed at the summit will in any case face the old NATO's problems: too few fleet-footed capabilities, with smart weapons and secure communications, of the sort that America displayed in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and which are needed to win wars. The Iraq debate at the United Nations has been an all-too-familiar case-study in how Europeans get themselves at cross-purposes, with an activist Britain, a cautious France and an ohne mich Germany all pulling in different directions. America easily leads the world in almost every dimension of power. But Europe, with its bigger population and not much smaller gross domestic product, reckoned to be larger, in fact, until America's faster growth and the depreciating euro reversed the honors, has considerable heft, and that weight will grow as the EU takes in more members.

The article discusses the future of publishing with the advent of social media site Facebook and search engine Google. Topics include ways in which the sites help papers to sell subscription such as Facebook's display of logos of publishers in some of its posts, the agreement of U.S. news organizations to work with the two firms with the formation of their News Media Alliance and the argument by several newspaper executives that Google's dealings with them are more sincere compared to Facebook.

The article provides information on two studies about unusual names and individualism of migrants in the U.S. Topics discussed include conclusion of a paper by Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen of Lund University about people of similar backgrounds, results of Mounir Karadja and Erik Prawitz study about unions and left-wing parties in Nordic countries, and overview on research by Mesay Gebresilasse, Martin Fiszbein and Samuel Bazzi of Boston University about people in the western frontier.

The article reports that the Chinese military has been keeping its weapons development programs secret. The U.S. has reported that it is concerned over China's continued military secrecy, saying that it should state its intentions more clearly. The Chinese defense department published a 105 page paper describing its military ambitions, but the paper is unclear and lacks details.

The article discusses a paper titled "Is the 2007 Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? An International Historical Comparison," by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. The paper, which was presented at the 2008 meeting of the American Economic Association (AEA) in New Orleans, Louisiana, compares the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis with various historical banking crises. Reinhart and Rogoff conclude that the effects of the crisis will not be as drastic as the outcomes of previous crises.

The article reports on an election in Sarasota County, Florida, which illustrates the perils of malfunctioning electronic voting machines. After the chad controversy of the U.S. presidential election in 2000, Florida replaced paper ballots with millions of dollars worth of touch-screen voting machines. A close congressional race between Vern Buchanan and Christine Jennings has been contested, but the machines, with no paper record, cannot help to resolve the issue.

The author compares the reactions of the U.S. and the British media to the baring of singer Janet Jackson's breast on live television during the Super Bowl half-time. Competition, this newspaper believes, has beneficial effects pretty much everywhere. This week's British newspapers may lead higher-minded readers to disagree. On February 1st, a breast belonging to Janet Jackson, a singer, escaped during Super Bowl half-time. High-brow American papers reported the incident, but with no photo. Low-brow papers pictured the recapture, but not the breast. Michael Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission, called it a "classless, crass and deplorable stunt". There is to be an official inquiry. This seems odd to Britons, whose smaller broadcast channels keep themselves afloat on a sea of smut. Not only tabloid newspapers, but also the Times and even the Daily Telegraph (average age of reader 55) showed the star's spangled nipple, waving joyfully in the wind. Why the difference? Maybe because secular Britons are no longer shockable, while Americans have clung to their religion and associated puritanism. The Economist, of course, deplores the degradation of the British press. As a service to American readers, who should know how low it has fallen, we reprint the picture below.