The finance industry has adopted the Equator Principles, a benchmark for managing social and environmental issues in project financing.

ECONOMIST: How companies manage risks to their reputation

Benchmark Co. analyst Daniel Kurnos asserts that the issues, if any, will be fleeting.

FORBES: Amazon Not Likely To See Lasting Effects From Web Outage

But there is an advantage to non-guaranteed issues as well: they provide a more obvious benchmark for evaluating corporate issuers.

ECONOMIST: Asian capital markets

They will miss the comfortable refuge from default risk, the wealth of noncallable issues, the exemption from state income tax and the dependable benchmark that corporate bond issuers use to price their securities.

FORBES: Treasurys, The Endangered Species

Although the Letter is a reliable benchmark, the Division will in some cases deviate from it depending on necessities raised by specific issues in any given investigation.

FORBES: Surviving e-Discovery With the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division