These are some recent compliance-related stories that caught my attention.
Credit: Alyson Hurt
The Gold Boom, Then and Now by Jacob Goldstein in Planet Money
[o]n Jan. 21, 1980, gold hit what is still its all-time high in inflation-adjusted dollars. To match that high in today’s dollars, gold prices would have to rise by another 50 percent, to more than $2,400 an ounce.The core themes driving up the price were the same then as now: Inflation fears, global instability, and a lack of faith in governments and the currencies they back.
News Corp. May Be On Its Way To Voluntarily Disclosing Its Worst Secrets To The U.S. Government by Nathan Vardi in The Jungle
Now the independent directors of News Corp. have hired former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and their law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton, to advise them. News Corp. itself has hired Mark Mendelsohn, who ran the Justice Department’s FCPA unit and helped turn the statute from a backwater into a prosecution machine and a gold mine for lawyers and accountants. Mendelsohn reportedly has been hired to advise on a potential investigation.
Private sector joins calls for anti-corruption mechanisms in arms trade treaty by Maria Gili in Space for Transparency
Last week, the 192 member states of the United Nations (193 from mid-week onwards, as South Sudan was admitted on July 14) met in New York to continue their negotiations towards an “Arms Trade Treaty” (ATT). States are keen to agree on an ATT in 2012, reaching a long overdue international agreement to finally regulate the global trade in arms. We represented Transparency International’s Defence and Security Programme and participated along with more than 100 other NGO representatives.