Brooke Masters and Joseph Menn:

Reported thefts of information and electronic data have risen by half in the past year and for the first time have surpassed physical property losses as the biggest crime problem for global companies, the Kroll annual global fraud survey has found.

More than 27 per cent of 801 companies surveyed reported data losses, up from 18 per cent last year, while the share of companies reporting physical theft fell slightly from 28 per cent in 2009. Management conflict of interest rose slightly from 19 to 20 per cent.

“This is a reflection of the changing nature of the economy. More and more of the value of a company is intangible rather than things. Firms don’t make widgets. They make ideas,” said Richard Plansky, who heads the risk consultancy’s New York office.

David Freedman:

IN 2001, RUMORS were circulating in Greek hospitals that surgery residents, eager to rack up scalpel time, were falsely diagnosing hapless Albanian immigrants with appendicitis. At the University of Ioannina medical school’s teaching hospital, a newly minted doctor named Athina Tatsioni was discussing the rumors with colleagues when a professor who had overheard asked her if she’d like to try to prove whether they were true—he seemed to be almost daring her. She accepted the challenge and, with the professor’s and other colleagues’ help, eventually produced a formal study showing that, for whatever reason, the appendices removed from patients with Albanian names in six Greek hospitals were more than three times as likely to be perfectly healthy as those removed from patients with Greek names. “It was hard to find a journal willing to publish it, but we did,” recalls Tatsioni. “I also discovered that I really liked research.” Good thing, because the study had actually been a sort of audition. The professor, it turned out, had been putting together a team of exceptionally brash and curious young clinicians and Ph.D.s to join him in tackling an unusual and controversial agenda.

Last spring, I sat in on one of the team’s weekly meetings on the medical school’s campus, which is plunked crazily across a series of sharp hills. The building in which we met, like most at the school, had the look of a barracks and was festooned with political graffiti. But the group convened in a spacious conference room that would have been at home at a Silicon Valley start-up. Sprawled around a large table were Tatsioni and eight other youngish Greek researchers and physicians who, in contrast to the pasty younger staff frequently seen in U.S. hospitals, looked like the casually glamorous cast of a television medical drama. The professor, a dapper and soft-spoken man named John Ioannidis, loosely presided.

The Oil Drum:

Renewable energy pioneer Dr Hermann Scheer has passed away on October 14 in Berlin. Scheer was President of the European Association for Renewable Energy (Eurosolar), Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy (WCRE), winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize and Member of the German Bundestag. He was 66 years old.

Scheer entered the German parliament as a Social Democrat member in 1980 and was instrumental in introducing Germany’s solar roof programmes and the Renewable Energy Law. The Renewable Energy Law included the now widely replicated feed-in tariff. As a result a substantial percentage of the world’s wind farms and its solar panels are located in the country.

Robin Harding:

Google is using its vast database of web shopping data to construct the ‘Google Price Index’ – a daily measure of inflation that could one day provide an alternative to official statistics.

The work by Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, highlights how economic data can be gathered far more rapidly using online sources. The official Consumer Price Index data are collected by hand from shops, and only published monthly with a time lag of several weeks.

At the National Association of Business Economists conference in Denver, Colorado, Mr Varian said that the GPI was a work in progress and Google had not yet decided whether to publish it.

This is a great idea.

Dean Mosiman:

Staffing within the Madison Police and Fire departments has boomed under mayor Dave Cieslewicz while some agencies like streets and parks have declined, a State Journal analysis of city data shows.
Cieslewicz said more police and firefighters have helped cut crime and response times in a growing city and that technology and management have let streets and parks employees plow snow, collect garbage and mow grass with fewer workers.

The rate of increase in earnings by Police and Fire department staff also outstrips most other agencies, the analysis shows

Staffing is about “responding to the needs of the city,” especially in a recession economy, Cieslewicz said. “It’s good management.”
But others say more personnel is needed for other basic services.

A useful investigative article. Perhaps the State Journal will have a look at the schools as well.

Chystia Freeland:

For most of the past century, the big global narrative has been the clash of rival paradigms: Nazism versus liberal democracy, communism versus free market democracy, and, more recently, fundamentalist Islamic states versus the secular, democratic west. When the cold war ended, Francis Fukuyama predicted that this clash of paradigms would end. He was right, but not for the reason he thought.

The battle of rival ideologies has ended not because, as Fukuyama foresaw, the triumph of capitalist democracy has been universally acclaimed. Instead, it is because all of us have realized we face a new challenge — how to thrive in the high tech, global economy — and no one country or single ideology is yet certain of getting this exactly right.

Kristina Cooke, Pedro da Costa and Emily Flitte:

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – To the outside world, the Federal Reserve is an impenetrable fortress. But former employees and big investors are privy to some of its secrets — and that access can be lucrative.

On August 19, just nine days after the U.S. central bank surprised financial markets by deciding to buy more bonds to support a flagging economy, former Fed governor Larry Meyer sent a note to clients of his consulting firm with a breakdown of the policy-setting meeting.

The minutes from that same gathering of the powerful Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, are made available to the public — but only after a three-week lag. So Meyer’s clients were provided with a glimpse into what the Fed was thinking well ahead of other investors.

His note cited the views of “most members” and “many members” as he detailed increasingly sharp divisions among the officials who determine the nation’s monetary policy.

The inside scoop, which explained how rising mortgage prepayments had prompted renewed central bank action, was simply too detailed to have come from anywhere but the Fed.

James Warren:

“Waiting for Superman” is a hot documentary about our schools, not Rahm Emanuel’s run for mayor of Chicago. It’s why his “listening tour” is a good idea if it is partly fueled by humility about his steep learning curve.

A very smart political mechanic and tactician, Mr. Emanuel has been characteristically focused during his campaign preamble. He has dined with potential donors, like Sam Zell, the real estate broker. He has talked to sharp folks about issues. He has taken the temperature of potential rivals.

That’s all predictable. But the challenges he would face as mayor are ample and necessitate thinking beyond what has been his frequent professional reflex: getting 50 percent plus one vote in political and legislative campaigns.

Damien Paletta:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker scrapped a prepared speech he had planned to deliver at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on Thursday, and instead delivered a blistering, off-the-cuff critique leveled at nearly every corner of the financial system.

Bloomberg News
Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker
Standing at a lectern with his hands in his pockets, Volcker moved unsparingly from banks to regulators to business schools to the Fed to money-market funds during his luncheon speech.

He praised the new financial overhaul law, but said the system remained at risk because it is subject to future “judgments” of individual regulators, who he said would be relentlessly lobbied by banks and politicians to soften the rules.

“This is a plea for structural changes in markets and market regulation,” he said at one point.

Here are his views on a variety of topics.

Phillip Stephens:

I had hoped I might meet Tony Blair at one of London’s more bustling venues – mainly, I confess, because I wanted to measure the reaction of the throng. But the rules of Lunch with the FT leave the choice with the guest. So, after a certain amount of cloak and daggery, insisted upon by the police protection officers who still accompany him everywhere, I arrive at Blair’s local Italian, Locanda Locatelli.

It is one of those restaurants comfortable with celebrity. On a weekday lunchtime most tables seem to be occupied by business types but Madonna is said to be among the evening regulars. Our corner booth offers a panoramic view of polished wood, fabric wall coverings and soft leather banquettes. A head or two turns discreetly as Blair enters. No one is impolite enough to stare.

Britain’s former prime minister presents a conundrum. His memoir has invited torrents of invective from enemies (critics is much too soft a word) among metropolitan elites. Yet copies of A Journey are flying off the shelves as “real people” open their wallets to read Blair’s version of events. He did, after all, win three elections and put Britain back on the international stage. Then again, he also stood shoulder to shoulder with George W Bush in Iraq.