ac – regional econ – florida – solves space

Even if a financial institution is initially solvent, it can fail because it doesn’t have enough liquid assets to make payments it has promised. The classic example of a liquidity crisis is a bank run. Depositors lose confidence in a bank, try to withdraw large amounts from their accounts, and exhaust the bank’s reserves and liquid securities. To make the payments it has promised its depositors, the bank must sell its illiquid assets at fire-sale prices (less than the assets’ true value), and losses on these transactions can push it into insolvency. Liquidity crises can also occur at nondepository institutions, such as hedge funds and investment banks. These institutions often raise funds by making shortterm loans and issuing commercial paper (short-term bonds). To stay in business, they must raise new funds continuously to pay off maturing debts. If creditors lose confidence and cut off funding, an institution can be forced into a fire sale of its illiquid assets, leading to insolvency. Liquidity crises can spread from one financial institution to another largely for psychological reasons. If a bank experiences a run, for example, depositors at other banks start worrying about the safety of their own funds. They may start making withdrawals, thus triggering an economy-wide bank panic and widespread failures.

The Next Space Age: A Commercial Space Paradigm

Brevard County Florida is a home to the NASA space program and many aerospace defense contractors. Governor Scott acknowledged that the termination of the space shuttle program and more recent sequestration of federal funding has had a marked impact on the local aerospace and technology based economy.

But Freilich acknowledged that is a big if, explaining that rising launch costs make "one or two" missions a year more likely. In light of recent launch failures, NASA Earth science officials are "carving money out of our budget for more expensive but hopefully more reliable launch vehicles," Freilich said Dec. 6 during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union here. Those decisions will lead to delays in some currently scheduled missions and reductions in funding for activities within the division that are not related to particular missions. Freilich added, however, that NASA officials are striving to protect nonflight programs from the brunt of the cuts. [The World's Tallest Rockets: How They Stack Up]

NASA Earth science programs have played a key role in developing our understanding of the Earth as a coupled system of inter- related parts, and in the identification and documentation of a series of global-scale changes in the Earth's environment, including ozone depletion, land use and land cover change, loss of biodiversity, and climate change. Other examples of societal contributions include improved weather forecasting, improved understanding of the large-scale climate variations, such as the El Nino- Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation that alter seasonal patterns of rainfall, and improved understanding of the status of and changes in marine and terrestrial ecosystems that contributes to more effective management of natural resources. What future benefits to the nation (societal applications) are possible that NASA Earth sciences could provide? What gaps in our knowledge must we fill before those future benefits are possible? In a broad sense, NASA Earth science activities are part of developing a global Earth information system that can provide ongoing and accurate information about the status of and changes in the atmosphere, oceans, and marine and terrestrial ecosystems that sustain life, including the impact of human activities. The continued development of observation systems, sophisticated Earth system models, data assimilation methods, and information technologies holds the promise of much improved predictions of weather and climate variations and much more effective prediction and warning of natural hazards. Much has already been accomplished to lay the groundwork for such a system, but many important questions remain. Some of the most important have to do with the functioning and human alteration of the Earth's carbon, nitrogen, and water cycles, and how these cycles interact; the regional manifestation of global scale climate change; and the reactions of ecosystems to simultaneous multiple stresses.