07 Mar
2016
Encryption and Terrorism Dominate the Week Ahead – Tencount 3.7.16
- Argentina’s new president said he would make a priority of restoring the country’s ability to access capital markets for borrowing, and last week he took a significant step to doing so by settling a 15-year standoff with holders of defaulted Argentine debt. The deal still has to pass muster with the country’s congress, but it begins opening the door for significant foreign investment in Argentina. For more information about Sphere’s Argentina office and operations, contact [email protected].
- After a weekend of primaries and caucuses left even less clarity about who each party’s nominee will be, it’s on to Not-As-Super Tuesday, when the big prize of Michigan is up for grabs, along with Mississippi and, for Republicans, Idaho and Hawaii. Republicans in Washington, D.C. caucus on Saturday. And there are yet more debates, this time in Florida, which votes March 15. Democrats gather in Miami on Wednesday and Republicans are there on Thursday.
- The Apple encryption battle grows broader and deeper by the moment. Barely a day after it became public that Amazon had removed encryption capability from its Fire tablets last fall, the company said Saturday it would be restoring that option in an upcoming software update. Amazon was one of more than a dozen companies that last week filed a court brief supporting Apple in its iPhone encryption fight against the FBI.
- Wednesday is Justice Day, at least on Capitol Hill among members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is the committee’s guest for a Justice Department oversight hearing on Wednesday morning, while in the afternoon the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights will grill Antitrust Division Chief William Baer and Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.
- In the rest of Washington it’s Canada Week, as a host of events coincide with the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who will be the guest of honor Thursday at the White House for a State Dinner. Politico and the Canadian-American Business Council gets into the spirit on Tuesday with an evening seminar, “A New Agenda: Canada and the U.S. in the World,” featuring experts on the global economy, energy, security and the refugee crisis.
- Sunday is the deadline for avoiding a New Jersey Transit strike that could upend passenger traffic and freight shipments throughout the Eastern seaboard. New Jersey Transit has said that it would be able to accommodate only about 40,000 of the 105,000 commuters who travel by train from New Jersey to New York City each weekday. Union officials said the most recent settlement talks, on Friday, were “productive.”
- Spring is conference season, and this week brings the annual policy conference of the National Association for Business Economics, where on Monday Stanley Fisher, vice chairman of U.S. Federal Reserve System, and Sri Mulyani Indrawati, chief operating officer of the World Bank, will speak about matters financial and economic; Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker will headline on Tuesday.
- A week after a Georgetown conference on the development of blockchain technology, George Washington University conducts its first FinTech Forum, “The Convergence of Finance, Technology and the Law,” focusing on the future of disruptive financial technology – including blockchain – and what it means for the law.
- Prepare for a raft of media news and stock market reactions as Deutsche Bank hosts its 24th annual Media, Internet and Telecom conference in Palm Beach through Wednesday. Participating companies include everything from telecom behemoths like AT&T, Verizon and Walt Disney to technology upstarts like SnapChat and Fitbit.
- President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit South by Southwest Interactive, offering a keynote speech on Friday at the data-geek confab that corresponds with the hipster music and film festival. The address will follow a two-hour conference Monday at the White House on the use of open data by communities to “build strong ladders of opportunity.”