Financial crises are thankfully infrequent. That means looking for patterns requires lots and lots of data. Two top macroeconomists, Ken Rogoff from Harvard and Carmen Reinhart from the University of Maryland, have been collecting financial crisis records covering many variables in many countries and going back many years. Their main finding is that, even though people always like to say, that this time is different, financial crises do follow patterns. Having heard about this work, scholars from around the world have contacted Reinhart and Rogoff about gaining access to their data and contributing even more data to expand the historical record. Rather than keeping this wealth of information to themselves, they plan to create a living and open-access database that researchers and the interested public can put to good use and help to expand. Launching this "International Financial Crisis Database" not only represents a great service to the field, it is also consistent with the Sloan Foundation's tradition of facilitating cooperation by scholars from around the world in compiling comprehensive, high quality, and open access research tools.

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) are supposed to help us measure the financial risk associated with securities issues by private and public organizations which turn to the public for financing. A bond rated AAA by Standard & Poor's, for example, means that its probability of default is deemed closer to zero than securities in any other category. On the other hand, a BB rating or lower earns it "junk" status, which the issuer must compensate for by offering investors a higher yield. Clearly, the issuers who pay for these ratings would like the highest grade possible. Do they "shop" by going to Moody's or Fitch or perhaps one of the lesser-known ratings agencies if they do not like Standard & Poor's estimates? Commentators have been quick to blame the CRAs for the current financial crisis since so many securities that they rated AAA or the equivalent are now considered toxic. Professor Chester Spatt has begun building the conceptual framework needed to address the important questions now being asked about CRAs.

As described in the Transition Strategy Paper, the Industry Studies Program as it has been structured in the past will be brought to a close in 2010. In December 2008 the Trustees approved the first element of that plan: providing final financial support for the Industry Studies Annual Conferences. This proposal implements the second key element of the plan: to provide tie-off funding for the secretariat at the University of Pittsburgh, in order to develop the Industry Studies Association (ISA) into a self-sustaining, independent organization. We have been moving along this path over the past two years. In October 2007 a legal entity-the Industry Studies Association-was incorporated in the State of Pennsylvania, and officers and members of its Board of Directors were chosen. Over the next few months Professor Frank Giarratani, coordinator of the industry studies secretariat at the University of Pittsburgh since 2003 and now the President of the ISA, will work with the ISA Board to map out a transition that will allow the ISA to become a self-sustaining, independent organization by December 2010 with its activities financed entirely by member dues, conference revenues, grants and gifts. The goal of this grant is to give those in this scholarly community a chance to show whether there is enough interest to support such an association.