His rulings have made smart references to "The Big Lebowski," "Dr. Strangelove," and "SNL" parodies of the McLaughlin Group. Rather, before taking the judge position Faruqui was one of a group of prosecutors in the U.

There, Faruqui prosecuted cases that involved terrorism, child pornography, and weapons proliferation. But the ways Faruqui has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster. Crypto lawyers have drawn on his prior decisions in the context of the Tornado Cash sanctions, for example.

Faruqui spoke with Protocol about the power of his position, and what people in crypto should understand about the law. There was another prosecutor, Christopher Brown — you know, the other Chris Brown — and he had taken an interest in this when we were both working on financial crime in the Washington, D.

Our U. attorney at the time, Jessie Liu, had this idea of using financial investigations in a way that was not limited to just white collar crime, or even narcotics cases, but also for cyber investigations, to national security investigations, and in civil cases.

A lot of what we were investigating was related to following the money and so she wanted us to be this multidisciplinary unit. But I have to say, we started with the goal of wanting to make T-shirts, and we never did that while I was there. Your decisions have also gotten a lot of attention. We're public servants! And in order for the public to have faith and trust us, they need to understand what it is that we're doing and what we're saying.

Humor is one way, not using a lot of legalese is another way. But I think there are many judges who are trying to make the judiciary more accessible, and so people can see the work that we're doing and understand what we're doing and then make their own opinions about if it's right or wrong.

But at least, if it's understandable, then there's still some trust in the framework even if you don't agree with how our decisions are stated. We are ambassadors for the judiciary to the people in our courtroom — it's a very frightening proposition being in court if you've been federally charged, and people have perceptions of what they think can happen there in terms of fairness or unfairness.

But then it goes far beyond that. I do a lot of work with the Administrative Office of the Courts, our central body doing civic education and outreach to high schools, because I want college and high school students and law students to have an experience where they get a chance to talk to a judge. So my goal is certainly not just getting to one segment of the population, but it's making decisions accessible to whoever's interested in reading them.

What has it felt like for you switching from that prosecutor role to magistrate judge? Lawyers are trying to take different frameworks from one topic and apply them to another, and then convince you that that is or is not appropriate. Being a judge is very different because you're evaluating what the parties present to you as the applicable legal frameworks, and deciding how new, groundbreaking technology fits into legal frameworks that were written 10 or 15 years ago.

But that's not really a place where judges get involved in saying how it ought to be regulated. There was, famously, a judge in Florida that said cryptocurrency was not money because you couldn't put it underneath your bed, and that's what money is: something that is tangible.

So different people are going to have different decisions. And that's not just true for crypto, but also other areas of the law. Your best-known crypto decisions strongly assert that crypto is traceable. One way people try to make it less traceable is with mixers, and Tornado Cash was sanctioned by OFAC not too long ago.

Do you think the legal reasoning was sound enough for similar sanctions to be applied to other mixers, or decentralized exchanges? I don't know. I think there's been some discussion that people may litigate some of these things, so I can't comment, because those frequently do come to our courthouse. And I think there are certainly people opining on that, yes and no.

So much of what judges do is that we rely on the parties that are before us to tell us what's right and what's wrong. And then, you know, obviously, they'll have different views, and we make a decision based on what people say in front of us. Are you aware that some legal analysis of the Tornado Cash sanctions references your recent decision in a cryptocurrency sanctions case?

That's what good lawyers will always do. Even legislators might look at that as they try to think about where the gaps are. As a prosecutor I had a case where we sued three Chinese banks to give us their bank records, and it had never been done before. Afterwards, Congress passed a new law, using the decisions from judges in this court and the D. circuit court, the court above us. So I'm sure people look at prior decisions and try to apply them in the ways that they want to.

Are there any misconceptions about how the law applies to crypto, or how your decisions should be interpreted, that you wish you could get across? One misconception is that the judges can't understand this technology — we can. People have these views in two extremes. The lawyer's fundamental job is to take super complex and technical things and boil them down to very easily digestible arguments for a judge, for a jury, or whoever it might be.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Financial technology is breaking down barriers to financial services and delivering value to consumers, small businesses, and the economy. Fintech puts American consumers at the center of their finances and helps them manage their money responsibly. From payment apps to budgeting and investing tools and alternative credit options, fintech makes it easier for consumers to pay for their purchases and build better financial habits. Fintech also arms small businesses with the financial tools for success, including low-cost banking services, digital accounting services, and expanded access to capital.

We advocate for modernized financial policies and regulations that allow fintech innovation to drive competition in the economy and expand consumer choice. Spots are still available for this hybrid event, and you can RSVP here to save your seat.

Join us as we discuss how to shape the future of finance. In its broadest sense, Open Banking has created a secure and connected ecosystem that has led to an explosion of new and innovative solutions that benefit the customer, rapidly revolutionizing not just the banking industry but the way all companies do business.

Target benefits are delivered through speed, transparency, and security, and their impact can be seen across a diverse range of use cases. Sharing financial data across providers can enable a customer individual or business to have real-time access to multiple bank accounts across multiple institutions all in one platform, saving time and helping consumers get a more accurate picture of their own finances before taking on debt, providing a more reliable indication than most lending guidelines currently do.

Companies can also create carefully refined marketing profiles and therefore, finely tune their services to the specific need. Open Banking platforms like Klarna Kosma also provide a unique opportunity for businesses to overlay additional tools that add real value for users and deepen their customer relationships. The increased transparency brought about by Open Banking brings a vast array of additional benefits, such as helping fraud detection companies better monitor customer accounts and identify problems much earlier.

The list of new value-add solutions continues to grow. The speed of business has never been faster than it is today. For small business owners, time is at a premium as they are wearing multiple hats every day.

Macroeconomic challenges like inflation and supply chain issues are making successful money and cash flow management even more challenging. This presents a tremendous opportunity that innovation in fintech can solve by speeding up money movement, increasing access to capital, and making it easier to manage business operations in a central place.

Fintech offers innovative products and services where outdated practices and processes offer limited options. For example, fintech is enabling increased access to capital for business owners from diverse and varying backgrounds by leveraging alternative data to evaluate creditworthiness and risk models.

This can positively impact all types of business owners, but especially those underserved by traditional financial service models. When we look across the Intuit QuickBooks platform and the overall fintech ecosystem, we see a variety of innovations fueled by AI and data science that are helping small businesses succeed.

By efficiently embedding and connecting financial services like banking, payments, and lending to help small businesses, we can reinvent how SMBs get paid and enable greater access to the vital funds they need at critical points in their journey. Overall, we see fintech as empowering people who have been left behind by antiquated financial systems, giving them real-time insights, tips, and tools they need to turn their financial dreams into a reality.

Innovations in payments and financial technologies have helped transform daily life for millions of people. People who are unbanked often rely on more expensive alternative financial products AFPs such as payday loans, money orders, and other expensive credit facilities that typically charge higher fees and interest rates, making it more likely that people have to dip into their savings to stay afloat.

A few examples include:. Mobile wallets - The unbanked may not have traditional bank accounts but can have verified mobile wallet accounts for shopping and bill payments. Their mobile wallet identity can be used to open a virtual bank account for secure and convenient online banking. Minimal to no-fee banking services - Fintech companies typically have much lower acquisition and operating costs than traditional financial institutions. They are then able to pass on these savings in the form of no-fee or no-minimum-balance products to their customers.

This enables immigrants and other populations that may be underbanked to move up the credit lifecycle to get additional forms of credit such as auto, home and education loans, etc. Entrepreneurs from every background, in every part of the world, should be empowered to start and scale global businesses. Most businesses still face daunting challenges with very basic matters.

These are still very manually intensive processes, and they are barriers to entrepreneurship in the form of paperwork, PDFs, faxes, and forms. Stripe is working to solve these rather mundane and boring challenges, almost always with an application programming interface that simplifies complex processes into a few clicks. Stripe powers nearly half a million businesses in rural America. The internet economy is just beginning to make a real difference for businesses of all sizes in all kinds of places.

We are excited about this future. The way we make decisions on credit should be fair and inclusive and done in a way that takes into account a greater picture of a person. Lenders can better serve their borrowers with more data and better math. Zest AI has successfully built a compliant, consistent, and equitable AI-automated underwriting technology that lenders can utilize to help make their credit decisions. While artificial intelligence AI systems have been a tool historically used by sophisticated investors to maximize their returns, newer and more advanced AI systems will be the key innovation to democratize access to financial systems in the future.

D espite privacy, ethics, and bias issues that remain to be resolved with AI systems, the good news is that as large r datasets become progressively easier to interconnect, AI and related natural language processing NLP technology innovations are increasingly able to equalize access. T he even better news is that this democratization is taking multiple forms. AI can be used to provide risk assessments necessary to bank those under-served or denied access.

AI systems can also retrieve troves of data not used in traditional credit reports, including personal cash flow, payment applications usage, on-time utility payments, and other data buried within large datasets, to create fair and more accurate risk assessments essential to obtain credit and other financial services. By expanding credit availability to historically underserved communities, AI enables them to gain credit and build wealth.

Additionally, personalized portfolio management will become available to more people with the implementation and advancement of AI. Sophisticated financial advice and routine oversight, typically reserved for traditional investors, will allow individuals, including marginalized and low-income people, to maximize the value of their financial portfolios.

Moreover, when coupled with NLP technologies, even greater democratization can result as inexperienced investors can interact with AI systems in plain English, while providing an easier interface to financial markets than existing execution tools.

Open finance technology enables millions of people to use the apps and services that they rely on to manage their financial lives — from overdraft protection, to money management, investing for retirement, or building credit. More than 8 in 10 Americans are now using digital finance tools powered by open finance.

This is because consumers see something they like or want — a new choice, more options, or lower costs. What is open finance? At its core, it is about putting consumers in control of their own data and allowing them to use it to get a better deal. When people can easily switch to another company and bring their financial history with them, that presents real competition to legacy services and forces everyone to improve, with positive results for consumers.

For example, we see the impact this is having on large players being forced to drop overdraft fees or to compete to deliver products consumers want. We see the benefits of open finance first hand at Plaid, as we support thousands of companies, from the biggest fintechs, to startups, to large and small banks. All are building products that depend on one thing - consumers' ability to securely share their data to use different services. Open finance has supported more inclusive, competitive financial systems for consumers and small businesses in the U.

and across the globe — and there is room to do much more. As an example, the National Consumer Law Consumer recently put out a new report that looked at consumers providing access to their bank account data so their rent payments could inform their mortgage underwriting and help build credit. This is part of the promise of open finance.

At Plaid, we believe a consumer should have a right to their own data, and agency over that data, no matter where it sits. This will be essential to securing benefits of open finance for consumers for many years to come. As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times. Donna Goodison dgoodison is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers.

She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services. Both prongs of that are important. But cost-cutting is a reality for many customers given the worldwide economic turmoil, and AWS has seen an increase in customers looking to control their cloud spending.

By the way, they should be doing that all the time. The motivation's just a little bit higher in the current economic situation. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Besides the sheer growth of AWS, what do you think has changed the most while you were at Tableau? Were you surprised by anything? The number of customers who are now deeply deployed on AWS, deployed in the cloud, in a way that's fundamental to their business and fundamental to their success surprised me.

There was a time years ago where there were not that many enterprise CEOs who were well-versed in the cloud. It's not just about deploying technology. The conversation that I most end up having with CEOs is about organizational transformation. It is about how they can put data at the center of their decision-making in a way that most organizations have never actually done in their history.

And it's about using the cloud to innovate more quickly and to drive speed into their organizations. Those are cultural characteristics, not technology characteristics, and those have organizational implications about how they organize and what teams they need to have.

It turns out that while the technology is sophisticated, deploying the technology is arguably the lesser challenge compared with how do you mold and shape the organization to best take advantage of all the benefits that the cloud is providing. How has your experience at Tableau affected AWS and how you think about putting your stamp on AWS? I, personally, have just spent almost five years deeply immersed in the world of data and analytics and business intelligence, and hopefully I learned something during that time about those topics.

I'm able to bring back a real insider's view, if you will, about where that world is heading — data, analytics, databases, machine learning, and how all those things come together, and how you really need to view what's happening with data as an end-to-end story. It's not about having a point solution for a database or an analytic service, it's really about understanding the flow of data from when it comes into your organization all the way through the other end, where people are collaborating and sharing and making decisions based on that data.

AWS has tremendous resources devoted in all these areas. Can you talk about the intersection of data and machine learning and how you see that playing out in the next couple of years? What we're seeing is three areas really coming together: You've got databases, analytics capabilities, and machine learning, and it's sort of like a Venn diagram with a partial overlap of those three circles.

There are areas of each which are arguably still independent from each other, but there's a very large and a very powerful intersection of the three — to the point where we've actually organized inside of AWS around that and have a single leader for all of those areas to really help bring those together.

There's so much data in the world, and the amount of it continues to explode. We were saying that five years ago, and it's even more true today. The rate of growth is only accelerating. It's a huge opportunity and a huge problem. A lot of people are drowning in their data and don't know how to use it to make decisions.

Other organizations have figured out how to use these very powerful technologies to really gain insights rapidly from their data. What we're really trying to do is to look at that end-to-end journey of data and to build really compelling, powerful capabilities and services at each stop in that data journey and then…knit all that together with strong concepts like governance.

By putting good governance in place about who has access to what data and where you want to be careful within those guardrails that you set up, you can then set people free to be creative and to explore all the data that's available to them. AWS has more than services now. Have you hit the peak for that or can you sustain that growth? We're not done building yet, and I don't know when we ever will be. We continue to both release new services because customers need them and they ask us for them and, at the same time, we've put tremendous effort into adding new capabilities inside of the existing services that we've already built.

We don't just build a service and move on. Inside of each of our services — you can pick any example — we're just adding new capabilities all the time. One of our focuses now is to make sure that we're really helping customers to connect and integrate between our different services. So those kinds of capabilities — both building new services, deepening our feature set within existing services, and integrating across our services — are all really important areas that we'll continue to invest in.

Do customers still want those fundamental building blocks and to piece them together themselves, or do they just want AWS to take care of all that? There's no one-size-fits-all solution to what customers want. It is interesting, and I will say somewhat surprising to me, how much basic capabilities, such as price performance of compute, are still absolutely vital to our customers. But it's absolutely vital. Part of that is because of the size of datasets and because of the machine learning capabilities which are now being created.

They require vast amounts of compute, but nobody will be able to do that compute unless we keep dramatically improving the price performance. We also absolutely have more and more customers who want to interact with AWS at a higher level of abstraction…more at the application layer or broader solutions, and we're putting a lot of energy, a lot of resources, into a number of higher-level solutions.

One of the biggest of those … is Amazon Connect, which is our contact center solution. In minutes or hours or days, you can be up and running with a contact center in the cloud. At the beginning of the pandemic, Barclays … sent all their agents home. In something like 10 days, they got 6, agents up and running on Amazon Connect so they could continue servicing their end customers with customer service.

We've built a lot of sophisticated capabilities that are machine learning-based inside of Connect. We can do call transcription, so that supervisors can help with training agents and services that extract meaning and themes out of those calls. We don't talk about the primitive capabilities that power that, we just talk about the capabilities to transcribe calls and to extract meaning from the calls. It's really important that we provide solutions for customers at all levels of the stack.

Given the economic challenges that customers are facing, how is AWS ensuring that enterprises are getting better returns on their cloud investments? Now's the time to lean into the cloud more than ever, precisely because of the uncertainty. We saw it during the pandemic in early , and we're seeing it again now, which is, the benefits of the cloud only magnify in times of uncertainty.

For example, the one thing which many companies do in challenging economic times is to cut capital expense. For most companies, the cloud represents operating expense, not capital expense.

You're not buying servers, you're basically paying per unit of time or unit of storage. That provides tremendous flexibility for many companies who just don't have the CapEx in their budgets to still be able to get important, innovation-driving projects done. Another huge benefit of the cloud is the flexibility that it provides — the elasticity, the ability to dramatically raise or dramatically shrink the amount of resources that are consumed.

You can only imagine if a company was in their own data centers, how hard that would have been to grow that quickly. The ability to dramatically grow or dramatically shrink your IT spend essentially is a unique feature of the cloud.

These kinds of challenging times are exactly when you want to prepare yourself to be the innovators … to reinvigorate and reinvest and drive growth forward again.

Fewer than half across partisan groups say the outcome of Prop 30 is very important to them. When asked how they would vote if the election for the US House of Representatives were held today, 56 percent of likely voters say they would vote for or lean toward the Democratic candidate, while 39 percent would vote for or lean toward the Republican candidate.

Democratic candidates are preferred by a point margin in Democratic-held districts, while Republican candidates are preferred by a point margin in Republican-held districts.

Abortion is another prominent issue in this election. When asked about the importance of abortion rights, 61 percent of likely voters say the issue is very important in determining their vote for Congress and another 20 percent say it is somewhat important; just 17 percent say it is not too or not at all important. With the controlling party in Congress hanging in the balance, 51 percent of likely voters say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting for Congress this year; another 29 percent are somewhat enthusiastic while 19 percent are either not too or not at all enthusiastic.

Today, Democrats and Republicans have about equal levels of enthusiasm, while independents are much less likely to be extremely or very enthusiastic. As Californians prepare to vote in the upcoming midterm election, fewer than half of adults and likely voters are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the United States—and few are very satisfied.

Satisfaction was higher in our February survey when 53 percent of adults and 48 percent of likely voters were satisfied with democracy in America. Today, half of Democrats and about four in ten independents are satisfied, compared to about one in five Republicans. Notably, four in ten Republicans are not at all satisfied. In addition to the lack of satisfaction with the way democracy is working, Californians are divided about whether Americans of different political positions can still come together and work out their differences.

Forty-nine percent are optimistic, while 46 percent are pessimistic. Today, in a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, about four in ten Democrats, Republicans, and independents are optimistic that Americans of different political views will be able to come together. Notably, in , half or more across parties, regions, and demographic groups were optimistic. Today, about eight in ten Democrats—compared to about half of independents and about one in ten Republicans—approve of Governor Newsom.

Across demographic groups, about half or more approve of how Governor Newsom is handling his job. Approval of Congress among adults has been below 40 percent for all of after seeing a brief run above 40 percent for all of Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to approve of Congress.

Fewer than half across regions and demographic groups approve of Congress. Approval in March was at 44 percent for adults and 39 percent for likely voters. Across demographic groups, about half or more approve among women, younger adults, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos. Views are similar across education and income groups, with just fewer than half approving. Approval in March was at 41 percent for adults and 36 percent for likely voters.

Across regions, approval reaches a majority only in the San Francisco Bay Area. Across demographic groups, approval reaches a majority only among African Americans. This map highlights the five geographic regions for which we present results; these regions account for approximately 90 percent of the state population.

Residents of other geographic areas in gray are included in the results reported for all adults, registered voters, and likely voters, but sample sizes for these less-populous areas are not large enough to report separately. The PPIC Statewide Survey is directed by Mark Baldassare, president and CEO and survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California. Coauthors of this report include survey analyst Deja Thomas, who was the project manager for this survey; associate survey director and research fellow Dean Bonner; and survey analyst Rachel Lawler.

The Californians and Their Government survey is supported with funding from the Arjay and Frances F. Findings in this report are based on a survey of 1, California adult residents, including 1, interviewed on cell phones and interviewed on landline telephones.

The sample included respondents reached by calling back respondents who had previously completed an interview in PPIC Statewide Surveys in the last six months. Interviews took an average of 19 minutes to complete. Interviewing took place on weekend days and weekday nights from October 14—23, Cell phone interviews were conducted using a computer-generated random sample of cell phone numbers. Additionally, we utilized a registration-based sample RBS of cell phone numbers for adults who are registered to vote in California.

All cell phone numbers with California area codes were eligible for selection. After a cell phone user was reached, the interviewer verified that this person was age 18 or older, a resident of California, and in a safe place to continue the survey e. Cell phone respondents were offered a small reimbursement to help defray the cost of the call. Cell phone interviews were conducted with adults who have cell phone service only and with those who have both cell phone and landline service in the household.

Landline interviews were conducted using a computer-generated random sample of telephone numbers that ensured that both listed and unlisted numbers were called. Additionally, we utilized a registration-based sample RBS of landline phone numbers for adults who are registered to vote in California.

All landline telephone exchanges in California were eligible for selection. For both cell phones and landlines, telephone numbers were called as many as eight times. When no contact with an individual was made, calls to a number were limited to six. Also, to increase our ability to interview Asian American adults, we made up to three additional calls to phone numbers estimated by Survey Sampling International as likely to be associated with Asian American individuals.

Accent on Languages, Inc. The survey sample was closely comparable to the ACS figures. To estimate landline and cell phone service in California, Abt Associates used state-level estimates released by the National Center for Health Statistics—which used data from the National Health Interview Survey NHIS and the ACS. The estimates for California were then compared against landline and cell phone service reported in this survey.

We also used voter registration data from the California Secretary of State to compare the party registration of registered voters in our sample to party registration statewide. The sampling error, taking design effects from weighting into consideration, is ±3. This means that 95 times out of , the results will be within 3. The sampling error for unweighted subgroups is larger: for the 1, registered voters, the sampling error is ±4. For the sampling errors of additional subgroups, please see the table at the end of this section.

Sampling error is only one type of error to which surveys are subject. Results may also be affected by factors such as question wording, question order, and survey timing. We present results for five geographic regions, accounting for approximately 90 percent of the state population. Residents of other geographic areas are included in the results reported for all adults, registered voters, and likely voters, but sample sizes for these less-populous areas are not large enough to report separately.

We also present results for congressional districts currently held by Democrats or Republicans, based on residential zip code and party of the local US House member. We compare the opinions of those who report they are registered Democrats, registered Republicans, and no party preference or decline-to-state or independent voters; the results for those who say they are registered to vote in other parties are not large enough for separate analysis.

We also analyze the responses of likely voters—so designated per their responses to survey questions about voter registration, previous election participation, intentions to vote this year, attention to election news, and current interest in politics. The percentages presented in the report tables and in the questionnaire may not add to due to rounding. Additional details about our methodology can be found at www. pdf and are available upon request through surveys ppic.

October 14—23, 1, California adult residents; 1, California likely voters English, Spanish. Margin of error ±3. Percentages may not add up to due to rounding. Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way that Gavin Newsom is handling his job as governor of California?

Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way that the California Legislature is handling its job? Do you think things in California are generally going in the right direction or the wrong direction? Thinking about your own personal finances—would you say that you and your family are financially better off, worse off, or just about the same as a year ago?

Next, some people are registered to vote and others are not. Are you absolutely certain that you are registered to vote in California? Are you registered as a Democrat, a Republican, another party, or are you registered as a decline-to-state or independent voter? Would you call yourself a strong Republican or not a very strong Republican?

Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican Party or Democratic Party? Which one of the seven state propositions on the November 8 ballot are you most interested in?

Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. It allows in-person sports betting at racetracks and tribal casinos, and requires that racetracks and casinos that offer sports betting to make certain payments to the state—such as to support state regulatory costs.

The fiscal impact is increased state revenues, possibly reaching tens of millions of dollars annually. Some of these revenues would support increased state regulatory and enforcement costs that could reach the low tens of millions of dollars annually. If the election were held today, would you vote yes or no on Proposition 26? Initiative Constitutional Amendment. It allows Indian tribes and affiliated businesses to operate online and mobile sports wagering outside tribal lands.

It directs revenues to regulatory costs, homelessness programs, and nonparticipating tribes. Some revenues would support state regulatory costs, possibly reaching the mid-tens of millions of dollars annually. If the election were held today, would you vote yes or no on Proposition 27? Initiative Statute. It allocates tax revenues to zero-emission vehicle purchase incentives, vehicle charging stations, and wildfire prevention.

If the election were held today, would you vote yes or no on Proposition 30? Do you agree or disagree with these statements? Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way that Joe Biden is handling his job as president? Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way Alex Padilla is handling his job as US Senator? Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way Dianne Feinstein is handling her job as US Senator?

Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the way the US Congress is handling its job? Do you think things in the United States are generally going in the right direction or the wrong direction?

How satisfied are you with the way democracy is working in the United States? Are you very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, not too satisfied, or not at all satisfied? These days, do you feel [rotate] [1] optimistic [or] [2] pessimistic that Americans of different political views can still come together and work out their differences? What is your opinion with regard to race relations in the United States today? Would you say things are [rotate 1 and 2] [1] better , [2] worse , or about the same than they were a year ago?

When it comes to racial discrimination, which do you think is the bigger problem for the country today—[rotate] [1] People seeing racial discrimination where it really does NOT exist [or] [2] People NOT seeing racial discrimination where it really DOES exist? Next, Next, would you consider yourself to be politically: [read list, rotate order top to bottom].

Generally speaking, how much interest would you say you have in politics—a great deal, a fair amount, only a little, or none? Mark Baldassare is president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, where he holds the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Chair in Public Policy.

He is a leading expert on public opinion and survey methodology, and has directed the PPIC Statewide Survey since He is an authority on elections, voter behavior, and political and fiscal reform, and the author of ten books and numerous publications. Before joining PPIC, he was a professor of urban and regional planning in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, where he held the Johnson Chair in Civic Governance.

He has conducted surveys for the Los Angeles Times , the San Francisco Chronicle , and the California Business Roundtable. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. Dean Bonner is associate survey director and research fellow at PPIC, where he coauthors the PPIC Statewide Survey—a large-scale public opinion project designed to develop an in-depth profile of the social, economic, and political attitudes at work in California elections and policymaking.

He has expertise in public opinion and survey research, political attitudes and participation, and voting behavior. Before joining PPIC, he taught political science at Tulane University and was a research associate at the University of New Orleans Survey Research Center.

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Safex was formed in as an independent exchange and experienced steady growth over the following decade. In a separate agricultural markets division was formed for trading of agricultural derivatives. The exchange continued to make steady progress despite intensifying competition from international derivative exchanges and over-the counter OTC alternatives.

By Safex reserves had grown sufficiently to allow a significant reduction in fees it levies per future or options contract. Consequently all fees were reduced by 50 per cent that year and in the changes on allocated trades were removed. In the Equity Derivatives Market was established to provide a secure environment to trade derivatives in South Africa. It was formally known as SAFEX or South African Features Exchange.

In the exchange was acquired by the JSE Securities Exchange, with the JSE agreeing to keep the Safex branding. The exchange is a Self-Regulatory Authority and exercises its regulatory functions in terms of the Financial Markets Control Act of and its rules.

The Exchange in turn is supervised by the Financial Services Board. The JSE clearing house clears al contracts to reduce credit risk from over-the-counter transactions. The profit or loss on JSE Equity Derivatives are paid on a daily basis once the instrument is sold which is known as a variation margin and is equal to the day-to-day difference in the value of the Derivative.

Closeout dates exist on all JSE Equity Derivatives with the expiry of contracts. This occurs quarterly at 12h00 on the third Thursday in March, June, September and December. An auction process determines the closeout prices of JSE listed Equities between 12h00 and 12h JSE Clear clears all transactions in line with international requirements in order to reduce counterparty credit risk. Definition : A Derivative is a financial security with a value that is reliant upon or derived from an underlying asset or group of assets — a benchmark.

A derivative itself is a contract between two or more parties, and the derivative derives its price from fluctuations in the underlying asset. Example : A Derivative is an instrument whose value is derived from the value of one or more underlying, which can be commodities , precious metals, currency, bonds, stocks, stock indices etc. Key Purpose : The Key Purpose of a Derivative is the management and especially the mitigation of risk.

When a derivative contract is entered, one party to the deal typically wants to free itself of a specific risk linked to its commercial activities, such as currency or interest rate risk over a given period.

Use : Derivatives are used to hedge a position protecting against the risk of an adverse move in an asset or to speculate on future moves in the underlying instrument. Risk : Counterparty credit risk arises if one of the parties involved in a derivatives trade, such as a buyer, seller or dealer, defaults on the contract.

The risk is higher in over-the-counter or OTC markets, which are much less regulated than ordinary trading exchanges. Derivatives can be used to mitigate the risk of economic loss arising from changes in the value of the underlying. This activity is known as Hedging. Alternatively, derivatives can be used by investors to increase the profit arising if the value of the underlying moves in the direction they expect.

Trading Derivatives : Derivatives can be bought or sold in two ways: over-the-counter OTC or on exchange. OTC derivatives are contracts that are made privately between parties, such as swap agreements, in an unregulated venue while derivatives that trade on exchange are standardized contracts. Derivative Options: Options are a type of derivative security. An option is a derivative because its price is intrinsically linked to the price of something else.

If you buy an options contract, it grants you the right, but not the obligation to buy or sell an underlying asset at a set price on or before a specific date. Futures: are Derivative financial contracts that obligate the parties to transact an asset at a predetermined date and price.

Valuation: Derivative valuations are based on three components: future cash flows, the present value of future cash flows and the valuation model used. Margins : In Finance, margin is collateral that the holder of a financial instrument has to deposit with a counterparty most often a broker or an exchange to cover some or all of the credit risk the holder poses for the counterparty. Derivative Clearing Houses : A clearinghouse acts as an intermediary between a buyer and seller and seeks to ensure that the process from trade inception to settlement is smooth.

Its main role is to make certain that the buyer and seller honor their contractual obligations. Clearinghouses act as third parties to all futures and options contracts, as buyers to every clearing member seller, and as sellers to every clearing member buyer. Definition : Producers and other users of Agricultural Derivatives often use them to Hedge price risk. They are used for Hedging or to diversify a portfolio, both of which are ways of managing risk.

They are also often used to speculate on price, which is a way of profiting from price movements in the grains market. This instrument was developed for the grains market in South Africa as a platform for efficient price risk management. Future expiry date of Future Contracts ensures that both parties honour their position on the traded date.

Corn Corn Futures and Options are derivatives contracts that give investors exposure to the international price of corn. The underlying contract is the corn derivative contract as traded on the Chicago Board of Trade CBOT. The product gives local investors an innovative tool to hedge international price risk and the opportunity to better assess patterns in the global corn market. Contracts are cash-settled in Rand and easily accessed via JSE commodity derivatives members.

Soy Complex Futures and Options Beans, Meal, Oil Soy Bean, Meal and Oil Futures and Options derivatives contracts reference the Soy Bean, Meal and Oil contract traded on the Chicago Board of trade CBOT. The product gives local investors an innovative tool to hedge international price risk and the opportunity to better assess patterns in the global soy market.

Hard Red Winter Wheat These derivatives contracts give local investors exposure to the international wheat market. as determined by the Kansas City Board of Trade KCBT now owned by CME Group. Soft Red Wheat The underlying instrument meeting specifications as listed and traded on the Chicago Board of Trade CBOT , a division of the CME Group. These Options give exposure to the international crude oil price. It is a product that can be used to hedge against diesel price risk of local users and contracts are settled in Rand.

The most important feature is that it provides investors with hedge and exposure factors purely of the fact that oil is highly sensitive to political and socio-economic influences making an investment in oil extremely risky.

The underlying traded product is denominated in a foreign currency and settled in a domestic currency at a fixed exchange rate. Examples of Soft Commodities : Sugar, Corn, Coffee, Cotton, Cocoa, Soya Beans, Fruit and Livestock. Soft Commodity refers to future contracts where the actuals are grown rather than extracted or mined. Soft Commodities represent some of the oldest types of Futures known to have been actively traded. They are often referred to as tropical commodities or food and fibre commodities.

Soft Commodities play a major role in futures market. They are used by farmers wishing to lock-in the future prices of their crops, and by speculative investors seeking a profit. Due to the uncertainties of weather and other risks of farming, soft commodity futures tend to be more volatile than other futures.

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