ACCESS to Financial Security for All – An Online Platform by PolicyLink

PolicyLink has created ACCESS to Financial Security for All, a virtual platform for advocates of asset-building and economic equity to share information, learn about promising policies and connect with others. Although the economy is showing signs of improvement, millions of Americans are still struggling financially. According to the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), nearly half (43.9%) of American households are “liquid asset poor,” meaning they do not have enough money saved to last for three months in case of an emergency such as a lost job or medical crisis.

The new website is supported by the Building Economic Security Over a Lifetime (BESOL) initiative at the Ford Foundation, which supports organizations and research centers in efforts to expand opportunities for low-income communities to save and invest in long-term assets.

ACCESS to Financial Security for All is designed to recognize policies that address wealth inequality and connect these policies to community and economic development strategies that can be implemented on a local, regional and national level to create financial stability for families.

For more resources on asset-building, check out this blog post.

Fidelity Foundation Grants

Founded in 1965, the Fidelity Foundation awards grants to nonprofits with the aim of enhancing their organizational capacity.

Specifically, the Foundation allocates its philanthropic investments to these sectors: 

• Arts/culture
• Community development/social services
• Health
• Education

The Foundation typically awards funding to organizations with operating budgets of $500,000 or more with significant, transformative projects budgeted at $50,000 or more. The Foundation considers projects from organizations of regional or national importance throughout the country, especially those with potential to influence the nonprofit sector. Ultimately, an improvement in a nonprofit’s organizational capacity should lead to better results for the community it serves. In the past, the foundation has given grants to the Greater Boston Food Bank for a capital construction project and the Boys and Girls Club of Lawrence, MA, for an endowment. To apply, click here. 

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Sustainable Communities Guide to Federal Programs

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an interagency collaboration consisting of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Transportation (DOT), has released a guide to federal programs that support efforts to provide housing and transpiration choices, expand economic opportunity, encourage public health and protect clean air and water. Specifically, the Partnership administers grants, programs and technical assistance through each of the collaborating agencies.

The partnership offers several funding opportunities that can help communities address some of their most pressing concerns, ensuring that the residents have the opportunity to live in safe, health and accessible places. Below are a few of the funding opportunities and programs offered by the Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency.

TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) – Offered by the Department of Transportation, this grant program is a national competition for innovative multi-jurisdictional transportation projects intending to provide economic and environmental improvements to a metropolitan area or region. The program funds project improvements to roads, bridges, rail, ports, transit and intermodal facilities and planning activities. For more information, check out this blog post.

Community Development Block Grants – The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides formula funding directly to larger cities and counties through state governments, which aims to prevent or eliminate blight or meet urgent community development needs.

Smart Growth Implementation Assistance (SGIA) Program – Through the SGIA program, the Environmental Protection Agency solicits applications from state, local, regional and tribal governments that are looking to incorporate smart growth techniques into their future development. If selected, communities received technical assistance from national experts in either policy analysis or public participatory processes, such as visioning and design workshops.

For more information on these and other DOT, HUD and EPA grants and programs, check out Partnership for Sustainable Communities: Leveraging Partnership Programs.

National Service Task Force Created

Since 1993, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) has been the federal agency responsible for leading and expanding national service. In 2009, the Serve America Act (SAA) expanded CNCS’s authority to create service opportunities for Americans and has increasingly provided opportunities for CNCS to partner with other federal agencies and private organizations in national service.

Last month, President Obama released a memorandum announcing the creation of a new federal task force charged with identifying additional ways that public and private sectors can collaborate to support national service as a way to address priorities such as emergency/disaster relief, economic opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, healthy futures and veterans. Building on the SAA, the National Service Task Force is chaired by the Chief Executive Officer of CNCS and the Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Representatives of 13 cabinet departments, the Peace Corps, National Science Foundation, Office of Personnel Management, Environmental Protection Agency and the White House will make up the Task Force.

The Task Force will suggest ways to expand national service, strategies for coordinating volunteering and service programs across the federal government, create opportunities for interagency agreements between CNCS and other federal agencies and identify public-private partnerships in order to expand national service.

The creation of the Task Force builds on the success of other partnerships launched in the past year including FEMA Corps, School Turnaround AmeriCorps, and STEM AmeriCorps.

For more information, check out the Task Force’s website.

Stay tuned to our blog for updates on the newly-created National Service Task Force.

Is Your Financial Information Safer Online Today Compared to 5 Years Ago?

There exist countless possibilities of loss of financial information during online transactions. With the internet the methods used to compromise data is ever changing. What identity thieves target when carrying out attacks aimed at collecting people’s confidential financial information, are internet systems that are widely being used. These usually include popular shopping carts, outdated coding schemes and database programs.

In order to address these security concerns, internet based systems that are especially meant to process confidential financial information should be designed with security being addressed from the initial design stages. Below is a list of some of the old infamous internet breaches that have been instrumental to the current security state of the internet.

List of old internet practices
Robert T. Morris develops the Internet worm in 1988
TCP spoofing attacks
The Melissa worm (very problematic to email systems)
VBScript worm like the "ILOVEYOU"
Flash worms (SQL Slammer worm)

Today’s tools/resources that make the internet safer to use compared to 5-10 years ago.
Some of the popular avenues being used by hackers and fraudsters to access privileged financial information are through: a web server, the link between a computer and the Merchant site and the consumer’s computer.

• Firewall systems designed for private network systems to stop unauthorized access to this system
• Data encryption, involves converting of data into a more secure form to prevent it from being accessed. This is fast becoming one of the most popular way to protective sensitive information
• Network Access Control, designed to keep hackers and malware out of a network.
• Password management systems meant to keep people restricted access only to information that is relevant to their role.
• Use of protected information Discovery Tools that are used to scan through computers to locating information that could facilitate identity theft, such information could either be credit cards, bank accounts, social security number or even driver’s license. This tool is used to seek out such sensitive information so that appropriate action can be taken to safeguard such information.
• Secure wireless networks providing the benefits of such a network without the security lapses such a network usually causes.
• Virtual private networks which are known to provide secured channels of communication even when a person is off the premises. This is enabled through use of a secured interface.
• Various virus protection tools installed on computers to prevent attacks by spyware and malware software
• Periodic vulnerability scans on computers to carry out risk assessment about information management loopholes that might exist.

The internet is filled with stories of how ordinary people have had their personal information accessed without their consent leading to fraudulent transactions being conducted in their names or worse still having their finances being accessed by fraudsters. Internet users are advised to be security cautious when submitting confidential information.

Even though the internet presents challenges in areas of financial information management. It is much safer today than it was 5-10 years to conduct business transactions over the internet. Due to increased internet security measures being applied, online transactions are increasingly gaining popularity especially among the younger generations.

Author Bio:
Blair Thomas is an online electronic payment expert, who loves all things finance and planning. He is also the co-founder of eMerchantBroker.com, the #1 High Risk processing company in the country.& If you would like to see what he's up to, add him to your Google+ circle.

Photo Credit: https://sites.google.com/a/jeffcoschools.us/jeffco-internet-safety-resources/

Money Market Rates 6/13

Here are the latest money market interest rates of the banks that I've been tracking on my blog. Note that these rates are sorted by APY, and represent institutions that I have accounts at, or have otherwise mentioned in my blog:

0.85% American Express High Yield Savings
0.85% FNBO Direct Online Savings
0.84% Ally Bank Online Savings
0.80% Discover Bank Online Savings
0.75% Capital One 360 Savings (formerly ING Direct)
0.20% Western FCU Money Market
0.10% Chase Plus Savings
0.10% Citibank Savings Plus

In some cases, MMA interest rates are tiered. If this is the case, I usually report the interest rate at the $10,000 tier in these updates.

Rates are believed to be accurate as of 6/13/13. I did not include banks that had special, or introductory rates in the list because they are not ongoing interest rates. I am also not including non-liquid accounts such as CD's in the list. I have included a few credit unions in the list so that readers have a comparison point with banks.

It seems Urban Partnership Bank no longer allows you to apply for a new Online Savings account.  So, I have dropped it from the list. Ally Bank Online Savings has dropped a couple of notches from the top position on this list. Also, ING Direct has been replaced by Capital One 360.

The frequent changes show how changeable the money market is. Because this is a constantly moving target, it has been very hard to keep track of the rates that I've been getting in my various money market accounts, and this is the main reason I've decided to compile a list of these annual percentage yields.

So, that is the latest list of money market rates. Please let me know if you know of any higher interest rates.

DC

Helicopter Money - Doing the Drop on Currency

Would you like to own a 100 trillion dollar bill at a cost of 1.5 U.S. dollars? However, the dollar bill is not issued by the central bank of a world reserve currency but by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. When the government of Zimbabwe overspent on wars and employees’ salaries and swindled public money’s through corruption in the 2000s, the government decided to finance the deficit spending by printing new Zimbabwean dollars with expiration dates on the bills. The money velocity skyrocketed, leading to hyperinflation of more than 500 billion percent in 2008 and a complete loss in confidence of the currency’s future value. The helicopter money experience ended horribly as the Zimbabwean government abandoned its own currency and now uses foreign currencies with mostly the U.S. dollars.

What is helicopter money?
Helicopter money is a term used by the Monetarist economist Milton Friedman who advocated that price deflation can be saved by money falling out of a helicopter. It means that the government, not the central bank, sends free cash or cheques to its taxpayers in the hope that the inflation and money supply will rise, and the receivers will simply spend the money to increase the aggregate demand. Helicopter money is called for when the economy suffers a great contraction and deflation and is in a liquidity trap where monetary policy becomes impotent. Helicopter money is a fiscal policy and not a monetary policy tool. If there is a concern that funding the helicopter money spending through bond issuance will jack up interest rates, then the central bank can fund the deficits by holding the bonds in its own balance sheet and crediting the government’s account.

How is helicopter money different from quantitative easing?
Currently, quantitative easing (QE) has been widely used for monetary stimulus by global central banks. QE is the creation of money by the central banks to buy government bonds by creating excessive bank reserves in the banking system. However QE, unlike helicopter money, does not go directly to the pockets of the consumers and households but to the banking system that the central bank buys bonds from. If the banks decide not to lend out these excess reserves due to the fear of defaults and other reasons, the aggregate demand will not increase and the private economy remains stuck. QE is reversible while helicopter money is not. In the words of Financial Times’ Martin Wolf, helicopter money combines fiscal stimulus with monetary expansion.

Helicopter money and currency trend
Given the goal of the helicopter money is to resurrect deflation and drive up inflation, an economic consequence will be currency deprecation as inflation rises. If the helicopter is unloading too much money too quickly, hyperinflation will result, leading to massive damages in the economy and currency devaluations. To help its exports grow faster, every economy in the world currently would like to see its currency weaken. Therefore one country’s monetary easing policy leads to a competitive response by another country with the result of competitive devaluations. As one currency depreciates, another is forced to rise - the Japanese Yen during the 2008 financial crisis and the Euro/Dollar earlier this year, which will hinder the economic recovery.

Navigating using an online system
Helicopter money and quantitative easing are some of the macro themes that can have a tremendous impact on currency trends and developments and therefore your bottom line in currency trading. Forex traders should do enough homework to understand the macroeconomic policies and politics that influence the currency directions both in the short-term and the long-run. Using forex online trading that comes with free market insights, educational tools, a free demo account and charting resources is the best way for you to gain valuable knowledge of the forex market before dipping into the currency pairs with real capital.